Not as much of a story, but the concept, physics, and engineering in Larry Niven’s Bigger than Worlds brings out ideas that most of us have only thought about for a few seconds, if at all. A synopsis of how a man-made structure could exist in a way to accompany humanity, the essay has a…
DetailsThough it has not been verified yet, it appears that CERN pushed a particle faster than light last week. If it is true, nearly all of modern nuclear physics will need re-definition, and that will mean it was lucky that the first nuke didn’t destroy all of the earth, because they didn’t fully know how…
DetailsInstead of a lecture this week, we have a short story by Larry Niven, All the Myriad Ways, which is a confusing little ditty about free will, quantum physics, and the nature of the universe. It is worth a read if you have a few minutes to spare… Copyrighted under Creative Commons for Kevin Johnston…
DetailsThis has been floating around for a few years now, and was worth a post: A thermodynamics professor wrote a take-home exam for his graduate students. It had one question: Is Hell Exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Support your answer with a proof. Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs…
DetailsWTC building 7’s sudden implosion on 9/11 strikes me as particularly odd, though I am no engineer:
Yeah, yeah, it’ll never happen here. Then just think about it for fun. This is your lecture of this week – surviving a nuclear attack: