So that physics announcement that I posted the rumors about happened, and it was indeed just as big of a deal as rumor had made it. Here are a few links I've found that summarize the results nicely:

• An overview for general audiences by Scientific American.
• A nice discussion of the details along with some reasons for the usual skepticism.
• An informal ( Read more... )

Wow: the xkcd webcomic had an entry called "Time" a while back that was notable because the image updated every hour(?), gradually telling some sort of story. Some dedicated people have been following it carefully, and it just reached "The End" in the past day or so (3099 frames total!). The story starts out pretty slow, but it builds to a strong ( Read more... )

This is an absolutely stunning image: the Curiosity rover spotted while descending to the Martian surface, dangling under its parachute. It took some tremendously careful calculations by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter team (and some good luck) to snap this shot of a fast-moving object in the few moments available (they had to aim the camera in ( Read more... )

The rumors were true! Both experiments at the LHC that were searching for the Higgs announced discovery-level evidence early this morning. This is a Big Deal, even if we did pretty much expect that the LHC would produce a result like this eventually. There's a lot to say (and lots of good discussions out there at various technical levels), but for ( Read more... )

When our college president sent out his monthly campus update, I was pleasantly surprised to see my picture: he was happy about the very successful public viewing event that another professor and I arranged for the transit of Venus on June 5. (I'm up for tenure this fall, so the recognition is good!) We got an article on the front page of the ( Read more... )

When we realized that our trip to see family in Los Angeles was going to line up with the (partial) solar eclipse, Kim and I made sure to bring a pair of the solar viewing glasses that Harvey Mudd sent out to alumni a few weeks ago. We were on our way to dinner when it started (after showing off the baby to a bunch of thrilled relatives all ( Read more... )

One of the things that still blows my mind about our studies of planets around other stars (beyond the simple fact that we can see them at all) is that astronomers are actually able to figure out the composition of their atmospheres. That's possible when a planet passes between us and its star: it creates a tiny shadow that dims the star's light ( Read more... )

I am really excited by what I've heard about Planetary Resources, a private company that has just announced plans to mine near-earth asteroids for precious metals and other resources. Here's a write-up from the Bad Astronomy blog that goes into details: it sounds like these folks have a plausible business plan (as well as the necessary level of ( Read more... )

My "Physics of Video Games" talk at AlmaCon went beautifully. (The con as a whole seems to be going really well, too. Thank goodness!) Many thanks to those of you who suggested ideas: some of those confirmed the value of thoughts I'd already had and others filled exactly the gaps that I had been worried about finding good examples for. My turnout ( Read more... )

Just before finals last year, I put up some workplace safety posters around our building:
( Read more... )