Nobel Prizes are the next week. After Navier-Stokes we know that awards (as students's grades) aren't the most important, but they're fun to speculate with. In Physics, Clarivate, which tends to be quite reliable, goes for a Prize to a very applied area: organic light emitting diodes, combining […]

So I really wanted to read "The Burst", a short hard sf story published in Asimov's January 2012. It's recommended in https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/research/astro/people/stanway/sciencefiction/cosmicstories/dark-sector-2/ by @Tiylaya . It seems the only way is to buy a paper version of […]

Has anyone bought a digital version of a relatively old number of Asimov's sf magazine? I can't find how.

I've watched today this movie. Slow, intimate, half comedy, half drama. One member of the cast won the Palm Dog Award in Cannes. The Love That Remains - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Love_That_Remains

The Love That Remains - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I heard in a podcast that if you didn't like "Consider Phlebas", don't give up on the Culture and try "The Player of Games", you'll surely enjoy that on. That was my case many years ago and I can assure you it worked.

I like the videos by Up and Atom. She explains very well, like in this video. I think the first paradox has the clearest explanation I have seen about the criticism that Lochsmidt made to Boltzmann, and the consequent suggestion by Boltzmann that the universe should have begun in a very low […]

Can anyone comment on Destiny's Children, the continuation of the Xeelee saga, by Stephen Baxter? #scifi #sciencefiction

I finished Widow's Bay (season 1). I liked it. Matthew Rhys is superb in his role. The combination of horror and comedy really works, but notice that horror dominates, so it's certainly not for everyone.

I'm trying to understand the mechanisms that originate the Madden-Julian oscillation in the equatorial atmosphere. They involve a Rossby wave (to the west) and a Kelvin wave (to the east). I try to understand it "physically", not just solving the equations and watching a simulation, but uff, I […]

My German course began today. It's my fourth year learning German, and somehow I have lost an important part of the motivation. I need more and more time to do the homework and follow the course, time that I remove from reading, learning physics and math, writing in my blog... I could try going […]

In the last AMA episode, Sean Carroll was asked if an Alcubierre warp drive could escape from a black hole. I didn't fully understand what he said, but it was related to the fact that a black hole and an Alcubierre warp drive were both metrics, full solutions and it was difficult how to combine […]

TIL: "gravastar", an alternative to a black hole in a collapsing star. Its interior would have a de Sitter metric. I don't know how plausible consider the experts this proposal. Gravastar - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravastar

Gravastar - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The presence of dust from the Sahara desert intensified this sunset.

Just watched the first chapter of Widow's Bay. It looks nice. Clear homage to Carpenter's The Fog.

Regarding the Navier-Stokes equations: it's almost surely that all derivations of these equations that you have seen come from Newton's F=ma for fluids. Hamilton's least action principle is not well suited for non-conservative forces such as viscosity. Some modifications have been performed so […]

Lindy hop dance tonight in the wonderful British Club. (I like dancing very much).

Bandana Singh is a professor of Physics and a science fiction author. I discovered her in an episode of Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe, where Daniel recommended her book "The woman who thought she was a planet", and now I'm intrigued.

I may have reached my ceiling in learning General Relativity. I'm in the level where jumping to texts like Wald, Chandrasekhar or Hawking & Ellis is either beyond me or unrealistic in the time and effort invested and its combination with my daily life/ chores. Of course, there's *lot* of GR I […]

I may have reached my ceiling in learning General Relativity. I'm in the level where jumping to texts like Wald, Chandrasekhar or Hawking & Ellis is either beyond me or unrealistic in the time and effort invested and its combination with my daily life/ chores. Of course, there's *lot* of GR I […]

"For old people, beauty doesn’t come free with the hormones, the way it does for the young… It has to do with who the person is." Ursula K. Le Guin via @mariapopova , at https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/09/03/grace-paley-aging/

Grace Paley on the Art of Growing Older

themarginalian.org

How has the second season of Dark Matter begun?

Some people have asked Sean Carroll why AIs companies aren't into physics as they are into mathematics. The reason (Carroll thinks and I agree) is that physics is not an axiomatic system. In the end you have to go to the lab and face nature, who is an arbitrary, unfair? judge. AI could offer […]

"There Is No Antimemetics Division" and "Dungeon Crawler Carl" are two relatively recent books, originally self-published, with strong fandom appraisal (not sure what the critics think). The first one, while acknowledging the original idea, didn't work for me. The second one doesn't seem for me […]

Capitalism has discovered communism. RE: https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:tnde52rcbqxotp7a2cl7bmxu/post/3mui7jkpays27

Solved

This "course" begins with the basics of QFT and ends with the Standard Model. I guess it will teach you only the bare minimum, but for many it can be enough. Leonard Susskind had a collection of books that also taught you the very basics of theoretical physics (the theoretical minimum was […]

TIL: there's a field of science fiction called "hopepunk". It's about optimistic, cosy stories, like those written by Becky Chambers (I haven't read anything by her yet). Nice interview here. Dreaming Against the Machine: Episode 15: Hopeful Science Fiction, with Becky Chambers Página del […]

Interesting and slightly disruptive article. It defends that the universe isn't a (quantum) computer, which implies that action principles as Fermat's principle should be seen not as a computational trick, but perhaps as the inner working of the universe. "But it also wasn’t easy to fight other […]

In an episode of the great and fun podcast "Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe", Daniel mentions that he thinks the explanation of the direction of time in terms of the increment of entropy is a bit oversold. Curiously, that is my impression, too. Being a statistical description, it […]

One of the more unexpected things on looking for a partner is the incredible amount of energy it takes. Even without significant advances it can be exhausting. (Mental energy, I mean).