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I don't wanna be human . I want to see Gamma Rays . I want to hear X-Rays and I wanna smell Dark Matter . I wanna reach out with something other than these paws. And feel the solar wind of a Super Nova . So lamented Brother Cavil in Battlestar Galactica, to his creator. Now, thanks to University of Cardiff, you will at least be able to see Gamma Rays and X-Rays. In their new site ( link to the site ) you can see the result of the brand new Planck Satellite' ( link to the site ) full sky scans in different wavelengths. They are gorgeous!

It a common argument I hear in epistemological discussion I have from time to time: We cannot hear or touch or see electromagnetic waves, but we know they exist. Apart from the fallacy that seeing is feeling the electromagnetic waves we know as light, this is a great example of how we come to knowledge through science. Hans Christian Ørsted noticed that electric current produced magnetic forces. Faraday took this observation further, and through his experiments showed changing magnetic forces create electric current. Both of these were descriptive laws, however no mathematical derivation from first principles were provided. It was Maxwell who combined these laws in his equations, which made testable predictions such as the existence of radio waves which were capable of action at distance. Hertz demonstrated that this is the case, and it is thanks to these people you are able to read this post. Long story summarized, scientific method works! This wonderful picture is another beautiful ...

The revolutionary idea of Newton was not finding out there is a force pulling the apple that fell on his head. It was all to obvious. What he found, and made the thinkers of his time so upset -the science was about to be born, it was called natural philosophy back then- was that the same set of rules govern the celestial bodies such as stars and planets -which were perfect and eternal,- and moral bodies such as an apple or humans. He was able to explain the astronomical laws that Kepler derived based on the painstaking observations by Tycho Brahe, with the laws he derived from everyday objects. The world and the skies were never to be seen as different spheres anymore. This year marks also the 400th anniversary of Galileo's observation of the stars and the planets, and the birth of modern astronomy. Following the path he opened, that is using publicly available observations, we are able to construct a fairly complete model of the history of our universe since -and before- its birth...

Basic questions sometimes lead to incredible discoveries. I am not gonna act like a life coach -what a funny term- and try generalize this. Ask yourself these two questions if you have not already done, and contemplate. I will write in my next post about the answers, and the great mind who solved them. 1- The speed of light does not depend on the observers speed. What happens to an observer who is traveling faster and faster. What would an observer "see" when he is as fast as the light? 2- You are in an elevator. As it accelerates, you feel lighter. As it decelerates you feel heavier. What if the earth were one large elevator?

400 years ago Galileo Galilei first gazed at the skies through a telescope. He was probably the first human to gaze at the brilliant moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn and many unseen stars and galaxies. But more than what he saw anything, how he saw what he saw, and how he used these observations have literally changed the world. Instead of submitting to dogma about how objects -or generally the world- should behave, he relied on observations, and a methodology to understand the behavior of objects. He was probably the most important figure in the development of science as we know it. He was also the first astronomer in the Western civilization. In honor of this great mind, UNESCO named 2009 the World Astronomical Year. I have 2 great sites in the spirit of this year: * Galaxy Zoo : The number of galaxies in the observable universe are thought to be in 100 billion range. Organizing, and classifying them is a galactical task. It turns out that human eye and mind are far better than ...

I had written previously about the blurry nature of the answer to the question "What is it that makes us human?" To me it seems like science, arts, and philosophy may be the three truly human activities. Had I been brave enough to pursue my " Teenage Dreams ," I would have been a theoretical physicist, and rather than getting excited about what I read in popular science magazines, I would be working on these topics. Lately, my favorite reading on the Internet are the 3 "Dark Mysteries" of cosmology. Let me introduce you to the three biggest issues that challenge our understanding of the universe: Dark Matter This is the most "basic" problem, in the sense that it can be understood by employing basic Newtonian physics. If you ever had a long key chain, I am sure you did spin the key chain. Given a constant spinning force, the velocity with which the keys spin depend on the length of the chain, and the mass of the keys. It is not trivial to extend t...

Dan Dennet likens the erosion of the conception of God in the public sphere from an omnipotent and omnipresent power which is playing around with everything in the universe, to a "form of energy/force/power" that binds everything together and various variants of this somehow "new-age" conception, to Mount Everest eroding to the gracious hills of the Hill Country. Before judging the truth value of this analogy, I asked myself what do I understand from the word Energy? From the Physics textbooks, I remembered the definition: "Energy is the ability to do work." But what is work then? Again the textbook definition of work is "transfer of energy." What? So energy is supposed to be "the ability to transfer energy." What a great definition! It turns out defining what energy is not that easy, especially in terms of the two modern theories of Physics (yes they are also only theories like Evolution, a fact that doesn't lessen their value or t...

Büyük deney öncesi birkac senedir takip ettigim konu hakkinda ögrendigim bilgileri sizinle paylasmak istedim. "Large hadron collider" baslikli girdilerimi arayarak konu hakkindaki Ingilizce girdilerimi bulabiirsiniz. -LHC: Deneyin yapildigi duzenegin adi Buyuk Hadron Carpistiricisi. Hadron Proton ve benzeri parcaciklarin genel adi. Bu duzenegin su ana kadar calisan parcacik hizlandiricilarindan bir farki yok, senkronize halde calisan hizlandirici elektrik ve döndürücü manyetik alanlar ile kursun iyonlari ile protonlari yerin altinda 27 kilometrelik bir torus icinde hizlandirildiktan sonra cok hassas olcum aletlerinin oldugu bir noktada carpistiriliyor. Isik hizina yakin hizlarda carpisan bu parcaciklar oncelikle enerjiye donusuyor. Bu enerji yogunlugu Big Bang'den hemen sonrraki enerji yogunluguna yakin. Bu kadar yogun enerji tipki Big Bang'den sonra oldugu gibi parcaciklara donusuyor. Olusan parcaciklarin biraktiklari izler -elektrik ve manyetik alandaki degisimleri...

Check out these gorgeous high resolution pictures of the LHC: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/the_large_hadron_collider.html and learn about whats going on there trough this Geek-rap video: CERN Rap from Will Barras on Vimeo and if this is not enough, read all the specifications of the devices and the experiments on here. http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/-page=extra.lhc/jinst

Being a materialist (as opposed to a dualist, not in the bling-bling sense of the word) one of the topics that come out often in discussions with dualist or dualist-leaning friends is the limits of observation. The argument goes, what if there is some form of matter that you cannot observe? Well the answer is, there is such matter, which does not interact with the electromagnetic radiation, and thought to be made out of particles that are not included in the current standard model of particle physics. But their mere existence should be detectable by some means. This means is the gravity that they cause. As a matter of fact their existence were first postulated by observations of the rotational speeds of the galaxies and their distribution in the cosmos, which required more matter than the observed matter within the galaxies. A new study of the collision of galaxy clusters -nor galaxies but their clusters- provided more evidence on the properties and the existence of dark matter. When ...

* My childhood dream was becoming a radio-astronomer. My high school dream was becoming a theoretical physicist, after reading Stephan Hawking's A Brief History of Time. I ended up a electrical engineer, but I try to nurture my childhood dreams by following the developments on both fields. It's been said that these days are the best days to be a physicist since the days of Einstein. The reason for this excitement is the Large Hadron Collider which will be operational this month in CERN, Switzerland. The largest particle collider ever built, the largest scientific instrument as a matter of fact, accelerates fundamental particles to near speed of light speeds and collide them, and observe the wreck. The biggest problem in physics today is a very fundamental one. Why do particles have mass? In the beginning there was only light, or energy, which are carried by massless photons. Somehow all this massless energy ended up having mass, and that is how I am writing this entry, and you...