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Category Archives: Extra Credit
Citizen Science: Answering the Call (Physics Central Podcast)
The last two months have been really busy, and I’m just beginning to catch up! Here’s a podcast I did for Physics Central on a few physics-themed citizen science projects that are enlisting the help of the public to sift through large datasets. In the case of Planet Hunters, the quarry is extrasolar planets that […]
Posted in Extra Credit, Physics Central
Physics Central Podcast: Gravitational Waves
Exciting news! I just completed my first episode for the PhysicsCentral podcast (part of an overall outreach effort by the American Physical Society), and it looks like I’ll be able to contribute regularly! The podcast is aimed at anyone (roughly high school level and up) with an interest in physics, and this episode focuses on […]
Posted in Extra Credit, News, Physics Central
New Books in Astronomy: Lawrence Lipking, What Galileo Saw
Yesterday I had a lovely and long conversation with Dr. Lawrence Lipking about his latest publication, What Galileo Saw: Imagining the Scientific Revolution. Although our chat was nominally for the New Books in Astronomy podcast, it’s the first one I’ve done that’s featured a humanist, and it felt really good to dive into seventeenth-century thoughts […]
Posted in Extra Credit, NBN Episodes
#NerdsOnWheels: Road Trip to Meteor Crater!
A little more than 48 hours ago, I piled into an RV with a few friends and fellow members of the Nerd Brigade, and we headed out to find an extraterrestrial…or at least, the remnant of one. Meteor Crater, the result of a 50,000-year-old impact, lies in the northern Arizona desert about 500 miles from […]
Posted in Extra Credit, News, Reflections
New Books in Physics: Roberto Trotta, The Edge of the Sky
This week for New Books in Physics, I spoke with Dr. Roberto Trotta of Imperial College London about his new book, The Edge of the Sky: All You Need to Know About the All-There-Is. Inspired by xkcd’s Up-Goer Five comic, Trotta describes the current state of astrophysics and cosmology using only the ten-hundred most common words in […]
Posted in Extra Credit, NBN Episodes
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
“La science, mon garçon, est faite d’erreurs, mais d’erreurs qu’il est bon de commettre, car elles mènent peu à peu à la vérité.” “Science, my boy, is made up of errors, but these errors are worthwhile to commit, because they lead little by little to the truth.” –Jules Verne, Voyage au Centre de la Terre Eighteen hundred […]
Posted in Extra Credit
New Books in Physics: Don Lincoln, The Large Hadron Collider
Last Monday, I sat down (via Skype) with Fermilab senior scientist Don Lincoln to discuss his new book, The Large Hadron Collider: The Extraordinary Story of the Higgs Boson and Other Stuff That Will Blow Your Mind. This interview is my first contribution to the New Books Network (I’ll specifically be contributing to the Physics and […]
Posted in Extra Credit, NBN Episodes
MAVEN and the mystery of the Martian atmosphere
Just a few hours ago, a visitor from Earth reached the Red Planet and traded her terra-bound orbit for a Mars-centric one. The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft, or MAVEN, has a specific assignment: to characterize the upper atmosphere of our neighboring world and the processes that shape its evolution over time. MAVEN is an […]
Posted in Extra Credit, Reflections, Uncategorized
Catching up with #TalkNerdy
Over the weekend, I sat down with Cara Santa Maria, an amazing science communicator (just check out her website) to chat for a bit on her podcast, Talk Nerdy. To be honest, I was surprised Cara asked me to be on her show (which, aside from me, has an impressive guest list!), but we ended up […]
Posted in Extra Credit
Taking “No Snark” to the Next Level
The first four episodes of the new Cosmos reboot have now aired,1 including a few somewhat problematic animations involving Giordano Bruno, Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke, and William Herschel. I won’t try to summarize here the many responses that these portrayals have prompted, although many of them make for fine reading. Instead, I want to talk […]
Posted in Extra Credit, Reflections