Blog rebirth - a plan for 2017

It is now the twilight zone between Christmas and New Year. 2016 has been a difficult and busy year, and my recreational physics and blogging has suffered. But it is time for a rebirth and I plan to get back to the writing about science and space here. But here's some things from 2016.

A Fortunate Universe: Life in a finely tuned cosmos was published. This has sucked up a huge amount of time and mental activity, and that continues. I will blog about the entire writing and publishing process at some point in the future, but it really is quite a complex process with many mine-fields to navigate. But it is done, and am planning to write more in the future.
We also made a video to advertise the book!

I've done a lot of writing in other places, including Cosmos magazine on "A universe made for me? Physics, fine-tuning and life", and commentary in New Scientist and several articles in The Conversation including

Peering into the future: does science require predictions?

and

The cosmic crime-scene hunt for clues on how galaxies are formed

And one of my articles from last year, We are lucky to live in a universe made for us was selected for inclusion in The Best Australian Science Writing 2016,
There has been a whole bunch of science papers as well, but I will write about those when the blog is up and running at full speed :)
Location: Sydney NSW, Australia

Comments

  1. Phillip Helbig29 December 2016 at 03:20

    Maybe you'll answer this here or in an email.

    I plan to buy the book. I also read many eBooks now, for various reasons. I have yet to test the idea of reading eBooks on an iPad Pro (which is great because it is the size of a magazine and hence ideal for reading PDFs formatted for that size, such as journal articles; there is also a reasonably good smart cover which doubles as a keyboard, giving almost laptop quality). On my tolino, about the size of a small paperback book, everything is great except high-resolution and/or colour pictures. Does the book contain any of those? If so, I'll have to test reading eBooks on the iPad first. If not, I can buy the ePub straight away.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cusp29 December 2016 at 11:53

      We have a few black and white astronomical images, but most are line images drawn with matplotlib so should all be fine :)

      Delete
  2. Cusp29 December 2016 at 11:53

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown16 February 2017 at 22:04

    Midbrain Activation Academy
    Midbrain Activation Academy
    Midbrain Activation Academy
    Midbrain Activation Academy
    Midbrain Activation Academy
    Midbrain Activation Academy
    Midbrain Activation Academy

    ReplyDelete
  4. Unknown20 March 2017 at 22:39

    If you want to boost the mind power or want to increase your memory then you need to work on your midbrain. Midbrain is basically the middle part of the brain that becomes lazy after a certain age.Go with midbrain activation in India.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous29 January 2018 at 22:03

    valentines day images and quotes
    valentine day images for husband
    good messages for teddy day
    teddy day love text messages

    ReplyDelete
  6. truongmuunghenhan3 June 2019 at 13:02

    Thanks for sharing, nice post! Post really provice useful information!

    An Thái Sơn với website anthaison.vn chuyên sản phẩm máy đưa võng hay máy đưa võng tự động tốt cho bé là địa chỉ bán máy đưa võng giá rẻ tại TP.HCM và giúp bạn tìm máy đưa võng loại nào tốt hiện nay.

    ReplyDelete
  7. sandy17 February 2021 at 07:21




    شركة نقل عفش بالقطيف
    شركة نقل عفش بالخبر
    شركة نقل اثاث عفش بالجبيل
    شركة نقل عفش بالدمام
    ارخص شركة نقل عفش بالمدينة المنورة
    ارخص شركة نقل عفش بمكة
    شركة نقل عفش
    ________--__________________________

    ReplyDelete
  8. Wemoversseo12 August 2021 at 17:29

    Topmost Movers in Abu Dhabi
    https://www.wemovers.ae/

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Falling into a black hole: Just what do you see?

Image
Everyone loves black holes. Immense gravity, a one-way space-time membrane, the possibility of links to other universes. All lovely stuff. A little trawl of the internets reveals an awful lot of web pages discussing black holes, and discussions about spaghettification, firewalls, lost information, and many other things. Actually, a lot of the stuff out there on the web is nonsense, hand-waving, partly informed guesswork. And one of the questions that gets asked is "What would you see looking out into the universe?" Some (incorrectly) say that you would never cross the event horizon, a significant mis-understanding of the coordinates of relativity. Other (incorrectly) conclude from this that you actually see the entire future history of the universe play out in front of your eyes. What we have to remember, of course, is that relativity is a mathematical theory, and instead of hand waving, we can use mathematics to work out what we will see. And that's what I did.
Read more

Journey to the Far-Side of the Sun

Image
There was a movie, in the old days, Journey to the Far-Side of the Sun  (also known as Doppleganger) which (spoiler alert) posits that there is a mirror version of the Earth hidden on the other side of the Sun, sharing the orbit with our Earth. The idea is that this planet would always be hidden behind the Sun, and so we would not know it there there. This idea comes up a lot, over and over again. In fact, it came up again last week on twitter. But there's a problem. It assumes the Earth is on a circular orbit. I won't go into the details here, but one of the greatest insights in astronomy was the discovery of Kepler's laws of planetary motion , telling us that planets move on elliptical orbits. With this, there was the realisation that planets can't move at uniform speeds, but travel quickly when closer to the Sun, while slowing down as their orbits carry them to larger distance.  There has been a lot of work examining orbits in the Solar System, and you can  s
Read more

Proton: a life story

Proton: a life story  by Geraint F. Lewis 10 35 years: I’ve lived a long and eventful life, but I know that death is almost upon me. Around me, my kind are slowly melting into the darkness that is now the universe, and my time will eventually come. I’ve lived a long and eventful life… 10 -43 seconds: A time of unbelievable light, unbelievable heat! I don’t remember the time before I was born, but I was there, disembodied, ethereal, part of the swirling, roaring fires of the universe coming in to being. But the universe cooled. From the featureless inferno, its character crystalized into a seething sea of particles and forces. Electrons and quarks tore about, smashing and crashing into photons and neutrinos. The universe continued to cool. 1 second: The intensity of the heat steadily died away, and I was born. In truth, there was no precise moment of my birth, but as the universe cooled my innards, free quarks, bound together, and I was suddenly there! A p
Read more