How good is your theory?

Ethan Siegel in How Good is Your Theory? Open Thread I : Starts With A Bang : Starts With A Bang, describes these levels of support, which I have numbered: 3: Scientific Law. Very well-supported theories that have successfully passed numerous tests. 2: Validated. Well-supported but with some problems, like unconfirmed or untested parts. 1: [...]

Musings on Immanuel Velikovsky’s Theories

Immanuel Velikovsky (1895-1979) is best-known for his controversial notions about the recent history of the Solar System, but there’s a bit more to be said.

I envy fungi and bacteria

I, lpetrich, envy fungi and bacteria. Many fungi and bacteria are capable of living off very limited selections of biological molecules, sometimes only one kind at a time, like glucose (a simple sugar molecule). I concede that I envy these organisms. I don’t like having to depend on something like 10 essential amino acids, 2 [...]

What’s in a Year?

For at least as long as people have had written records, people have used celestial effects to mark off time. This continued until half a century ago, when we developed clocks more accurate than most celestial effects and measurements. Thus, the day and the month and the year. There are two issues with these units [...]

Did They Find the Higgs Particle?

The biggest science news recently has been the almost-discovery of the long-sought Higgs particle or Higgs boson. I call it an almost-discovery because, while the particle seems evident, it does not seem strongly-enough evident. At CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland there are detectors around where the beams cross, detectors for detecting the particles produced [...]