Blogging is a real-time, often informal affair, and most posts aren’t meant to be interesting forever. But some might be. Here I’m collecting some of my most useful or interesting blogging over the years, originally at Blogspot and later at Discover magazine). In 2012 I went solo again, moving back here. For other kinds of writing see my CV, or writings.
Late-Universe Cosmology
- Was Einstein wrong?
- Was Friedmann wrong?
- Dark energy equation of state: I, II, III, IV
- Escape from the clutches of the dark sector?
- The future of the universe
- WMAP results — cosmology makes sense
- The Screwy Universe
- Dark Matter Exists
- A Dark, Misleading Force
- Dark Photons
- Dark Energy FAQ
- Dark Matter vs. Modified Gravity: A Trialogue
- Dark Matter vs. Aether
- South Pole Telescope and CMB Constraints
Early-Universe Cosmology
- The Arrow of Time
- The anthropic principle
- Boltzmann’s Anthropic Brain
- How Did the Universe Start?
- Arrow of Time FAQ
- Are Many Worlds and the Multiverse the Same Idea?
- A Universe Out of Chaos
- The Eternally Existing, Self-Reproducing, Frequently Puzzling Inflationary Universe
- A Universe from Nothing
Relativity
- Testing general relativity
- Synchronized time
- Does the Earth move around the Sun?
- Does Space Expand?
- Rules for Time Travelers
- Energy Is Not Conserved
- Fractal Black Holes on Strings
- Can Neutrinos Kill Their Own Grandfathers?
Quantum Mechanics
- Beyond clockwork
- No reasonable definition of reality should be expected to permit this
- Quantum interrogation
- Quantum Hyperion
- Quantum Mechanics and Decision Theory
- Quantum Mechanics When You Close Your Eyes
Particles/Fields/Strings
- CERN
- Two Cheers for String Theory
- Hidden symmetries
- Lorentz invariance and you
- How many dimensions are there?
- The String Theory Backlash
- The Trouble With Physics
- String Theory: Not Dead Yet
- What Will the LHC Find?
- The Fine-Structure Constant Is Probably Constant
- Why We Need the Higgs, or Something Like It
- What Particle Are You?
- Live-Blogging the Higgs Seminar
- Top Ten Amazing Higgs Boson Facts
- Thanksgiving (Gauge Symmetry)
- How To Explain the Higgs Mechanism
- The World of Everyday Experience, In One Equation
- How Quantum Field Theory Becomes “Effective”
Other Science
- Dinosaur report: I, II, III
- Hallucinatory neurophysics
- N Bodies
- Thanksgiving: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010
- Martian Colors
- Telekinesis and Quantum Field Theory
- Have a Thermodynamically Consistent Christmas
- Free Energy and the Meaning of Life
- My Favorite Star
- Non-Normalizable Probability Measures for Fun and Profit
- Using Information to Extract Energy
- The Pi-On
- Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Time
- Predictions for 2012
Meta-Science
- Doubt and dissent are not tolerated
- Interestingness
- Theories, Laws, Facts
- The Physics of Imaginary Things
- What I Believe, But Cannot Prove
- The Alternative-Science Respectability Checklist
- Everything I know about the universe I did not learn from newspaper headlines
- Anatomy of a Paper: Inspiration, Calculation, Culmination
- Science and Unobservable Things
- Happy Darwin Day
- Venus Hottentot and the Irony of Science
- Data on “Facts” and Facts on “Data”
- Is Dark Matter Supernatural?
- Scientists Aren’t Always Complete Idiots
- Science, Morality, Possible Worlds, Scientism, and Ways of Knowing
- What Is Science?
- Let’s Stop Using the Word “Scientism”
Philosophy
- What we know, and don’t, and why
- Art and theory
- Can moral reasoning convince anyone of anything important?
- The world is not magic
- The universe is structured like a language
- Richard Rorty
- Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?
- Turtles Much of the Way Down
- Marriage and Fundamental Physics
- Abortion and the Architecture of Reality
- Philosophy and Cosmology Live-Blogging: Day One, Two, Three.
- You Can’t Derive Ought From Is
- The Laws Underlying the Physics of Everyday Life are Completely Understood:
One, Two, Three. - Is Dark Matter Supernatural?
- Dysteleological Physicalism
- Physics and the Immortality of the Soul
- Free Will Is As Real As Baseball
- Downward Causation
- What Can We Know About the World Without Looking At It?
- On Determinism
- Metaphysics Matters
- Does This Ontological Commitment Make Me Look Fat?
- Moving Naturalism Forward: Videos and Recap
- Mind and Cosmos
Religion
- God: threat, or menace?
- Flying the coop
- Purity of essence
- Popery
- Rapped on the Head by Creationists
- The God Conundrum
- Thank You, Richard Dawkins
- Consolations of Materialist Philosophy
- Please Tell Me What “God” Means
- Politicians and Critics
- Chatting Theology with Robert Novak
- Moral Authority
- The Sacred
- What Questions Can Science Answer?
- The Truth Still Matters
- Reluctance to Let Go
- Stephen Hawking Settles the God Question Once and for All
- Preaching to the Unconverted
- Faith and Epistemological Quicksand
Academia
- Should you become a scientist?
- Sex and science!
- The scientific method
- Unsolicited Advice:
- Bell curves
- Is this a date?
- Summer School
- How Nice Should We Be to Students?
- Focus
- Academics: Still Totally Lame
- How to Get Tenure at a Major Research University
- Scientists, Your Gender Bias Is Showing
- Bias, Bias Everywhere
Politics
- Career choices explained
- The important shit
- Cartoons
- The wrongness singularity
- It Does Matter What People Think About How the World Works
Other
- Improving Euclid’s Fifth Postulate
- iChing
- Minus numbers
- Three and I’m under the table
- People Fusion
- Feminism: Destroying the Planet
- Lessons from Monopoly
- Liquid
- Throwing While Black
- Defense Wins Games
- Love and Blogging
- The Best Things in Life Can Be Pricey
- Fixing the Lottery
- Spontaneous Social Symmetry Breaking
- The Hidden Complexity of the Olympics
- The Grid of Disputation
- Test Drive: Tesla Roadster
- Black and White and Blue All Over
- Being Polite and Being Right
- Time Travel in Lost: The Metaphorics of Predestination
- Report from Colbert
- A Mystery Box Full of Red Matter
- Science of TRON
- The Mighty THOR
- Trusting Experts
- Many Kinds of Smart (A Continuing Series)
- Comment Policy
- Math(s)
- Electrical Resistance
- On Templeton
You are an amazing person. This is an amazing blog. Thanks a lot.
Hello! I am a fan of yours, and also of the great public conversations available about science today that non-specialists can learn from and follow. One of the conversations I’d like to find is between yourself and Richard Muller, whose book _Now: The Physics of Time_ I recently read. It seems like both you and Dr. Muller have ideas about entropy, and they don’t match, and I’d love to know more! Thank you. Chrissy Senecal