Friday, December 24, 2010

Merry Sci-Fi Christmas!

Scientific poetry...

To a beautiful girl
(author unknown, posted on PhysicistTV.com)

I’d like to integrate your curves
over your entire surface
or to make a fourier analysis
of your sinuses and cosinuses
and measure the intensity
of the wonderful peaks I’d get. [...]

For the remainder of the verse look at here.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

What is a black hole?

To most observers and phenomenologists, a black hole might just as easily be a black box - a flexible source of power whose properties are limited only by its total mass and the referees of theoretical papers.

Roger Blandford, To the lighthouse.

Perhaps, math is not everywhere...

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Snow in space?

This morning, while coming in my office, I heard the  weather forecasting from an Italian broadcast news. They spoke about "snow above 500 thousands meters" (sic!). This means that there is snow in space, because 500 thousands meters or 500 km is - more or less - the average altitude of the Low Earth Orbit, where are the International Space Station and of Hubble Space Telescope.

Quantum border

Friday, December 10, 2010

Mathematics and Sex

There is a unique book sitting on the shelf of the Math Library at UCLA. Admittedly, it is a samizdat (self-published) book. But it is typed and bound and sits with perfect dignity alongside many another august tome. It is:

Sex, Crime, and Functional Analysis
Part I: Functional Analysis
by J.D. Stein

[S.G. Krantz, Mathematical Apocrypha, The Mathematical Association of America, (2002), p. 9]

Forecasts

Thursday, December 9, 2010

How stars affect human lives?

"I believe the stars can affect human lives... particularly by providing employment for thousands of astronomers!"

Virginia Trimble at the Texas Symposium 2010 in Heidelberg (Germany)

The power of the words