The value of the Hubble constant plays a crucial role in cosmology in calculating the age of the universe. The most direct way to obtain it is to measure the distances to stars and galaxies and galaxy clusters and map them against their speeds. The Hubble-Lemaitre law of cosmic expansion predicts that the resulting data should lie on a straight line and from the slope of that line one gets the value of the constant. But while obtaining the speeds of each stellar object is relatively easy using the red shift of light, measuring distances is a very tedious and painstaking business in which one has to use a ‘ladder method’ involving different techniques, starting with finding the distances to the objects closest to you and using those results to find the distances to the next distance set, often using a different method, and so on. This technique is highly prone to systematic errors because any error at any stage gets magnified as you go to more distant elements. The people who do this kind of work have to pay extremely close attention to detail and I salute them for their diligence.
[Read more…]

The sharp cold spell due to the ‘polar vortex’ that we had last week, when temperatures plummeted so low that schools and universities were shut in much of the northeast, brought out the tired old ‘jokes’ about what happened to global warming, with Donald Trump among those thinking it was hilarious. But those cold days were rapidly followed by balmy, spring like weather that reached record highs, as this Plain Dealer report from yesterday stated.

Both the Cleveland and Akron-Canton areas on Monday smashed records for high temperatures. At Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, it was 61 degrees, breaking the record of 56 set in 2016. In Akron-Canton, the high of 60 topped the previous record of 55 degrees in 2016. Normal highs for the date are in the 30s.

[Read more…]

The field known as particle physics has as an important goal the search for the fundamental constituents of matter and it has proved very fruitful, leading us to our present understanding of matter being made up of quarks, gluons, and leptons. Pretty much everyone has heard of the Large Hadron Collider, the massive accelerator of radius 27 km near Geneva that was built mainly to search for the Higgs boson, and found it. But as is always the case with physics, immediately after any discovery comes the question: What next? And in this case, the answer is not clear. The Higgs was the last remaining particle in the Standard Model of particle physics so in one sense one can say that that chapter has come to end. But is the end merely that of the chapter or is it the end of that particular physics book, that we have reached the end of particle physics and all that remains are just mopping up operations?
[Read more…]

Take a look at this person who appears on Newsmax (that alone should tell you how much his opinion is worth) to share his blockbuster revelations about climate change.

(If you cannot see the video, go here.)
[Read more…]

Tomorrow (Sunday) is the day when the Super Bowl is played, when much of America gathers around their TVs to watch the game and/or the commercials and/or the halftime show. I will not be among them, having sworn off the game because of the accumulating evidence of the serious brain damage that the players are risking. I think that while adults can choose to take such risks, it is immoral for schools and universities to encourage young people to do so and they should remove it from the list of activities.
[Read more…]

We know that global warming skeptics like to use the fact that it snows in winter as an argument that global warming is a big hoax, a silly argument that is a perennial favorite, But 2018 was the fourth warmest year since accurate records started being kept. The last four years have been the warmest with the very highest in 2016 and the other two in 2015 and 2017, followed by 2018. That looks bad, no? But not for for global warming skeptics who are willing to misrepresent and distort statistics to turn this new information into an argument against global warming.
[Read more…]

Adam Conover from the show Adam Ruins Everything explains why the theories of how the moon landing was faked by director Stanley Kubrick working for NASA could not possibly be true. Not that this will convince the skeptics of course. They will say that Adam is part of the conspiracy.

UPDATE: I came across this Mitchell and Webb sketch on this topic.

The flight of an arrow is often used as a metaphor for going straight. Xeni Jardin says that Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame has a new show called Mythbusters, Jr. where he teams up with young people to see how straight an arrow flies. He recruits an expert archer Byron Ferguson who can shoot an apple thrown in the air. Pretty amazing.

How good is master archer Byron Ferguson, who is helping @donttrythis and his #MythBustersJr co-hosts out on tomorrow's Straight as an Arrow myth? Yeah. THIS GOOD. Watch Wednesday at 9p on @ScienceChannel. pic.twitter.com/3HLFVWUDNs

— MythBusters (@MythBusters) January 16, 2019

[Read more…]

I keep learning new stuff about dishwashers. Almost five years ago, I wrote about one misconception of how it worked that got removed when I saw a video taken inside one while it was operating. Now this article tells me that my practice of pre-rinsing before putting items in the dishwasher is not only wasteful of water, it actually leads to less clean dishes!
[Read more…]