The new Cosmos series now playing in the US is not the only effort to communicate science to the public. Livescience.com recently reposted an article from the Australian site The Conversation on this topic. “No matter how strong the scientific argument and consensus among scientists there will always be people who reject the evidence. It happens on so many scientific topics, from climate change and vaccination to nuclear power and renewable energy… These are, of course, vastly different issues. Many of those who agree with one of the positions noted above will be horrified to find themselves included in the same sentence with another group.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Scientists tend to think that the way to resolve a disagreement is to get more facts, but when well-established science confronts hot-button, public-policy issues, this approach fails. To borrow a phrase from Stephen Jay Gould, the misunderstandings are “conceptual locks…

The Rev. John Cunningham is an associate professor at Loyola University Chicago. But, his background may surprise you. He is the chairperson and an associate professor in the Department of Physics. He has a long history in the fields of particle physics and astrophysics. Medill Reports interviewed him to learn more about his faith and his studies.
Q: Tell me about your background. How did you get your start?

A: In high school I was always very much interested in mathematics, so my history of my education in some ways started with the science first. I was interested in particle physics – quarks, leptons.

Out here in Batavia, Ill. was this place called Fermi National Accelerator. My goal was really was to work at that facility. I think it came down to a picture I saw in a book about the accelerator.

I don’t have a dramatic Jesuit story about…

By Mark Leberfinger

The first total eclipse of the moon since December 2011 will be visible in North America, just in time to greet last-minute tax filers in the United States.

However, many Americans may not be in a good place to see the eclipse because of cloudy and rainy conditions.

The total lunar eclipse, resulting from the Earth’s position between the moon and sun, will occur early Tuesday morning, EDT.

The eclipse will begin at 12:53 a.m. EDT Tuesday. It will reach totality at 3:06 a.m. EDT and end at 4:24 a.m. EDT.

Viewing conditions will be poor in the eastern United States, except for South Florida, AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Brian Edwards said.

“A front will stretch from central Quebec down through the Appalachians into the Gulf Coast,” Edwards said. “It will bring clouds, showers and even thunder in the South and mid-Atlantic. It will be mostly dry but clouds…

Your mobile phone has the equivalent processing power of a 1979 Cray supercomputer.

And you use it to play Flappy Bird (semi-topical burn).

The flipside of the ridiculous, exponential growth in computer power available to everyone is the vastness of the untapped processing potential in your pocket.

The unused power of desktops is already being tapped into by the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI@home, to analyse radio telescope data as part of your screensaver … (I’m not avoiding work, I’m looking for aliens!) … and now Samsung wants to apply that thinking to phones.

Samsung’s Android Power Sleep app sends smalls packets of data from the University of Vienna for your phone to process when it charges at night.

(Despite the noble content, it’s dangerously close to the
piss-take generic corporate video I posted last week)

The particular data your phone is processing is protein folding, which is regarded as one of the hardest problems…