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November 23, 2013
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Happy Halloween!!

October 31, 2013
Happy Halloween Everyone!!

Remember to be cautious when driving tonight, as there will be many excited children flying on a sugar buzz and not always paying attention to their own safety. We want to keep the night fun for families, and devoid of accidents and injuries.

So go out, have fun, and most of all be safe.
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A Distant World

October 31, 2013
Just in time for Halloween, a team of astronomers has announced the discovery of a planet very similar to Earth, but much hotter. New studies of an Earth-sized planet circling the sun-like star Kepler-78 have shown that it has quantities of iron and rock comparable to those in Earth, and it is the first world of this size for which astrophysicists are able to calculate both its density and diameter. (Kepler-78 is located about 400 light years away in the constellation Cygnus.)

Unfortunately th...

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Posted In : Astronomy 

 

The End of Planck

October 31, 2013
Today is a bit of sad day for the astrophysics community. The European Space Agency's space telescope, named Planck, was finally shut down after a little more than four years of collecting data.

The goal of Planck when it was launched back in 2009 was to provide higher quality data on the Cosmic Microwave Background. When the Universe was a mere 380,000 years old, the atoms that would form all matter cooled down to the point where they were no longer absorbing and emitting large numbers of pho...
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Posted In : Astronomy 

 

Laser Acceleration

October 9, 2013
There has been a lot of news coverage over the last few years of the Large Hadron Collider, and discussions about how it is setting records for the highest energy accelerator, the high costs and the engineering advances. However last week a team of scientists from Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching published results of experiments on a more affordable and compact method of accelerating subatomic particles. If successful, future accelerators could be made an order of magnitude ...
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Higgs Gets the Prize

October 8, 2013
In a surprise to no one, the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Peter Higgs and Robert Engelert for the development of the Higgs model and prediction of the Higgs boson. Physicists searched for it for nearly five decades before the LHC confirmed its existence in 2012. Congratulations to them both, (and to the all of the other Higgs pioneers who can bask in reflected glories)!

I have written extensively about the Higgs model in the past (see for example, Still the Higgs, FAQs of Hi...
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Inspirational Address

October 2, 2013

There is a great video circulating the internet (viewable here along with a transcript) of a convocation address given by Tim Minchin at the University of Western Australia. I have attended a few such ceremonies, but this is one the best and most inspirational speeches I have heard in a while, and I wanted to share it here.

“In darker days, I did a corporate gig at a conference for this big company who made and sold accounting software. In a bid, I presume, to inspire their salespeople to gr...


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Robotics Limbs

September 30, 2013
This past week the New England Journal of Medicine reported an interesting advance in prosthetic limbs - the development of nerve controlled robotic limbs. The original article can be accessed here.

Although robotic hands and arms*, and even a few experimental legs have been built before in robotics labs around the world, this new result incorporates the patient's original nerves in a new way. Specialized surgeons redirect the severed nerves into part of the thigh muscle, resulting in small mu...
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Posted In : Medical 

 

The End of Deep Impact

September 24, 2013
Last week NASA reported with pride that Voyageur 1 was still going strong after more than thirty years in space, and became the first man made object to leave the solar system. This week comes less joyful news that the Deep Impact probe has been formally declared to be dead.

Deep Impact was launched on a Delta II rocket on January 12, 2005 with the goal of performing several fly-bys of nearby comets. The first target was Comet Tempel 1, which was extensively photographed in July 2005, before t...


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Posted In : Astronomy 

 

Voyager Has Left the Solar System

September 16, 2013
Some readers may remember back in July that some scientists at NASA believed that the Voyager 1 probe had left the solar system, but there was still some debate about the issue. Now, just over two months later, there is more evidence that it not only is beyond the edge of our solar system, but that it may have left as early as August 2012. (The official news release can be found here.)

Unfortunately there is no clear delineation of the boundary between the solar system and interstellar space. ...
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Posted In : Astronomy 

 
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About Me


Dr. Chris Bird I am a theoretical physicist & mathematician, with training in electronics, programming, robotics, and a number of other related fields.

   

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