A group of engineering students at Purdue University built a Rube Goldberg machine that depicts a history of the universe, in about a minute. (Thanks to Scott Langill for bringing it to our attention.) See it in the videos below. It’s an alternative universe history to Eric Schulman’s classic “A History of the Universe in […]
Tag: universe
Improbable Research in Washington Feb 19!
If you’ll be in or near Washington, DC on Feb 19, come to the Improbable Research show at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). See: Improbable Research editor Marc Abrahams Manuel Barbeito (Ig Nobel Prize winner for determining by experiment that microbes cling to bearded scientists) in his […]
Good sketchy histories of the universe
Except for a very few people who know everything, nobody knows in detail how the universe started or what happened between then and now. But we’ve been given many interesting suggestions. Some, biblical in nature, tell take-it-leave-it stories. Others offer some combination of evidence and logical reasoning. John Baez‘s majestic “The Earth—for Physicists” appeared in […]
Mr. Hinkley’s universe
Mr. Robert Hinkley sent us a letter. In the spirit of exploration, we searched the universe (or a portion thereof) and discovered copies of similar letters. One was published recently in The Daily Review, in Mr. Hinkley’s home town, Towanda, Pennsylvania, USA. Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post received a similar letter from Mr. Hinkley […]
Black holes and the law
Professor Eric E. Johnson of the University of North Dakota School of Law tries to solve the legal conundrum of the Swiss black hole. In “The Black Hole Case: The Injunction Against the End of the World” (Tennessee Law Review, no. 819, 2009, arXiv:0912.5480v2) he writes: “What should a court do with a preliminary-injunction request […]