Fred Bortz's blog
When Pittsburgh Voyager began its unique river-based educational programs, I was in academe and was asked to join its Board of Directors.
When I left my "day job" in 1996 to write full-time, it was time for someone else to take my spot on the Board.
But I still have a soft spot for the organization, which now has a new name that captures its spirit of experiential learning.
The latest Science Shelf Newsletter is now online. It includes plenty of interesting titles, plus one I review negatively.
Ever since I interviewed members of the Alvarez team (who developed the asteroid impact theory of the great Cretaceous/Tertiary extinction) and Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker (of the 1994 "Great Comet Crash" fame) for a 1997 young adult book called To the Young Scientist, I've been following news of comet and asteroid impact events closely.
I haven't lost any sleep over the possibility of a collision with the Earth orbit-crossing asteroid Apophis, but it certainly couldn't be ruled out in my lifetime (though I'd be quite old by 2036).
Here's a NASA news release with good news about that asteroid. Note that superstitious people might have been worried at one time about an impact on a certain Friday the thirteenth in 2029.
Following the release are specific links to a few of my books for children and teens.
I've updated my Science Shelf book review archive with two interesting titles, Pluto Confidential and Rising Plague.
Another blogger here has posted regularly with claims of theories that supersede both Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. I have been his primary challenger, though others have chimed in. Ultimately, I have concluded that his papers are either erroneous or not novel. But at least he has offered a claim that can be tested by observation. Now the possibility of such a test appears to be closer at hand.
In the August issue of Physics Today, there is an article entitled "Iron-based superconductors" by the magazine's senior editor, Charles Day. The magazine summarizes it this way: "For 22 years ceramic oxides of copper seemed to offer the only way to reach high-temperature superconductivity. Now, a new and unexpected route is being charted: through semimetal compounds of iron."
It makes me wonder whether we are about to see a repeat of the mania of the late 1980s with the discovery of "high-temperature" superconductivity in a family of cuprate ceramics with a particular crystal structure that gave them the designation of perovskites.
I will be offering a "lifelong learning" course based on my twentieth-century physics history book, but I think the material lends itself to other courses as well.
I promise not to keep posting about PZ Myers, who went from a little bit snooty when bashing Science Blog to downright nasty in bashing his fellow Science Blogs-ers Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum.
But if you are a Science Blogs reader who has gotten tired of the infighting over there, I have a much more civil alternative to suggest.
PZ Myers sometimes gets a bit snooty over at his well-read Pharyngula Blog. For instance, in a recent posting, he dismisses Science Blog with this description: "it's a site that simply reprints press releases. Send 'em anything, and they'll spit it back up on the web for you."
I beg to differ. And if I'm lucky PZ, in the spirit of open-mindedness, will deem this posting worthy of a link on his pages.
Jupiter has been hit again and has the scar to prove it. Though occurring on the anniversary of the 1994 impact of first fragment of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, this new impact event is apparently not of the same scale of the multi-day event known as the "Great Comet Crash." Still, it raises some interesting questions about what we should expect in the future.
With so many people misrepresenting what physicists say here on Science Blog and elsewhere on the net, I decided to reproduce a news release I got from the Center for the History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics. Its title: "Online Archive of Legendary Physicists in Their Own Words."
Shorter versions of this review have appeared in several major metropolitan newspapers. This is the review that appears on my Science Shelf on-line book review archive.
It seems hard to believe that Exxon has given the green light to a major alternative energy project.
An essay in the 13 June issue of New Scientist suggests that people who study engineering in college are more likely to become terrorists or extremists.
Review of Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
by Richard Wrangham
(Basic Books, 312 pages, $26.95, June, 2009)
Reviewed by Dr. Fred Bortz
