If you've been keeping an eye on any of the wire services (or Language Log), you may have noticed that the members of the International Astronomical Union meeting in Prague have been wrangling, Vatican-style, over the definition of the word planet. Judging by the periodic puffs of contradictorily-colored smoke the meeting is emitting, it sounds like they may be getting bogged down in the details. (That's where the Devil is, you know.) Well, defining words involves language, and language is what linguists study, so that means this is a linguistic problem. Let's roll up our sleeves and see what all the trouble is.
Continue reading "Defining Planet" »
I was watching a recent episode of Nova about the neutrino titled "The Ghost Particle", and at one point I was nearly overcome by a powerful wave of pure physics envy. In discussing the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, a huge ultraclean spherical acrylic tank of heavy water located two kilometers below the surface of the Earth in a nickel mine in Ontario, Canada, Prof. David Wark said:
When the SNO detector was finished, the exact center of the SNO detector has the lowest level of radiation of any point in the Solar System.
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This year's Nobel Prize for Medicine has been awarded to Barry Marshall and Robin Warren for their discovery of the bacterium that's responsible for most peptic ulcers. There, that sounds nice and polite, doesn't it? The real story is nastier and much more entertaining.
Continue reading "Mad Scientists Win Nobel" »
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