Many have no doubt heard of Lemaitre’s important contributions to cosmology theory. In this brief post, I provide links to Lemaitre’s original papers: 1. Lemaitre proposing that the universe is expanding: Full paper available here for free 2. Lemaitre proposing that the universe had a beginning, the original Big Bang model: Full paper requires subscription […]
Here are some links to some excellent cosmology lectures on YouTube. The videos actually teach you cosmology, as you would see it in a university/college setting. They do require some knowledge of General Relativity, but one in principle, can get away by knowing what a metric tensor is, Christoffel symbols are, and the various Riemann […]
There has been much noise in recent days of Sikhs wanting to enlist in the U.S. Army and being unable to do so because they insist on following their religious mandates of uncut hair, an untrimmed beard, and covering their hair with a turban. The recent news stories are summarized here: http://www.newsday.com/opinion/sikh-student-faces-the-army-s-catch-22-editorial-1.9627206 As usual, a […]
Many people have obviously been reading Lawrence Krauss’ infamous book: “A Universe from Nothing: Why There is something Rather Than Nothing” Krauss and many other physicists continuously engage in this type of low-level philosophy with the ironic goal of diminishing the value of philosophy using “science”. This paper dissects all the arguments in Krauss’ book […]
I greatly debated with myself on whether to write this posting. I have seen Interstellar twice now including the special 70 mm IMAX screening, and am seeing it a third time later today. Simply put, the movie is fascinating. It combines, (yes) accurate science and real depictions of general relativistic effects with a great story […]
For years now, I have heard this constant story of how it is acceptable for Sikhs to celebrate Diwali as per the Hindu traditions of lighting lamps, etc… Further, Raagis and Bhai Sahibs in Gurdwaras have conflated Bandhi Chorr Diwas with lighting lamps as per Hindu Diwali traditions. They further support these ideas with the […]
As has been well documented over recent days, there has been great excitement over the recent activity of full and partial solar eclipses, with students, astronomy enthusiasts, etc… all over showing great enthusiasm. However, a vast majority seem to be completely unaware as to why these solar eclipses are so important. Their most important purpose is that […]
I recently came across the article/op-ed in the NYTimes, titled, “God, Darwin, and My College Biology Class”, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/opinion/sunday/god-darwin-and-my-college-biology-class.html?_r=0 In this article, it is stated: “Since Darwin, however, we have come to understand that an entirely natural and undirected process, namely random variation plus natural selection, contains all that is needed to generate extraordinary levels of […]
Using methods from stochastic calculus, brownian motion, and statistical mechanics, we have developed algorithms to predict the outcome of the 2014 US Senate Midterm elections. You can find our results below. Note, the raw data was obtained from http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster, a great service provided by Huffington Post. We used MATLAB to implement the algorithms and create the […]
Relativity Digest 