June 4, 2013 - There was an interesting announcement at the International Astronomical Union conference yesterday. A team of astronomer from France have photographed a planet orbiting a distant star. Usually only indirect evidence of such planets is found, but this is a legitimate photo of a distant world. This one has been given the lovely name "HD95086B".
June 1, 2013 - Today marks the thirtieth anniversary of the discovery of the Z-boson. Maybe not something everyone celebrates, but still a fascinating event in the course of scientific history...
May 28, 2013 - Some sad news from NASA, it appears that the Kepler probe has had a mechanical failure which may render it unusable. The satellite has been collecting data on extra-solar planets for many years, and has probably found hundreds of new worlds. Hopefully the team can still get it back online, but they say it isn't looking good at this point.
May 25, 2013 - Happy Geek Pride Day! A day to celebrate all things geeky and nerdy. Not sure how I will spend the day, but flip it, I will find something geeky to do!
May 15, 2013 - In response to several requests, I have rewritten several of my old astrophysics & cosmology lectures and tutorials into a book, and it has been sent off for publication. The title is "Touring The Universe: A Modern Guide To Astrophysics & Cosmology" and it should appear in book shops sometime later this year.
May 11, 2013 - Today would have been the 95th birthday of the great American theoretical physicist, Richard Feynman. Not only a brilliant researcher, but also an amazing teacher who inspired generations of young minds to dream of science and knowledge, and to view the world in a unique way. Here is one example, of Feynman discussing a flower.
May 8, 2013 - For those of you interested in astrophysics and gravitational lensing, there is a new website where amateurs can aid the scientific community in finding and identifying examples of galaxies being lensed by other galaxies. It is a fun way to waste a few hours, but it also helps physicists to study the mass of galaxies, and test the laws of general relativity. The site can be found at spacewarps.org.
May 3, 2013 - Interesting astronomy news this morning. The Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope observed a record setting gamma-ray burst, which was the brightest such event yet witnessed and lasted long enough for other experiments and observatories to quickly focus on it and get quite a bit of data.
April 30, 2013 - Now I feel old. It was twenty years ago today (April 30, 1993) that CERN officially released the World Wide Web into the world. And being that it was built by physicists and not businessmen, they also immediately made it free to use the software so that anyone anywhere could set up a website. Congratulations to CERN and the now twenty year old World Wide Web!
April 24, 2013 - The LHCb experiment is announcing today that they have observed CP-violation in one of the neutral B-mesons, making this only the fourth such particle to be observed. In less technical terms, this observation shows a difference in the decay rates of matter and antimatter, which could be critical as theory predicts equal amounts were produced, but the visible Universe has almost no antimatter in it! (See the original news release here)
April 21, 2013 - For those who haven't seen it yet, there is an interesting article in SkyNews this month on the CHIME experiment in Pentiction, BC. When operational and reporting data, it will be searching the cosmos for details on the elusive Dark Energy (and its Canadian!).
April 15, 2013 - Some people have been inquiring as to why some of my widgets are not working and/or why my dictionary website is not available. The reason is that the webhost for both of these is currently experiencing unexplained technical difficulties. If they are down for very long, I will relocate the website, but they say they will be back online very soon. (UPDATE: As of April 16, 2013 my websites and widgets are back to normal. Apparently a construction crew working next to the webhost's building forgot to check for underground cables, and cut right through them)
April 9, 2013 - For those living in the area of Victoria,British Columbia, the University of Victoria is hosting a public lecture on the Higgs boson and on its recent discovery at the Large Hadron Collider. The lecture is being given by Prof. Lefebvre who is an excellent speaker, and I would highly recommend this lecture to anyone who in in the region and can attend.
April 6, 2013 - Just a reminder that this is National Robotics Week. Like it or not, robots are the future. In another decade, they will be in every home doing unforetold service to humanity - either that or they will have overthrown humanity and we will be serving them. Either way, there is no better time to start learning and building.
March 31, 2013 - HAPPY EASTER!!
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