Book Recommendation- Bill Bryson: A short history of nearly everything

Dr Dave Hone, a nice chap from the University of Bristol who specializes in dinosaurs and pterosaurs, has a list of his favourite science books in the Guardian today. What caught my eye was the one he has at the top of the list … Bill Bryson: A short history of nearly everything Quite simply … Read more

Oh heck, we made a mistake

Did you catch the news not too long ago about the discovery of a new form of life? Back, just a few days ago on 7 March, the St. Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute’s Sergei Bulat, who led the Russian team that drilled through 4 kilometers of ice to the surface of the lake last year, told … Read more

The Centre for Unintelligent Design

When faced with wacky ideas or beliefs that are quite frankly silly, it may at times become very emotionally frustrating and that it turn might tempt us to simply yell at the proponents. However, there is a better way to respond and at the same time to get the key point across – deploy satire … Read more

Birth of a Planet

Observations that have been made of a nearby star at infrared wavelengths have apparently detected the ongoing birth of a planet. Detail have been published in in the journal Astrophysical Letters Within the above are two views of the gas and dust around star HD 100546, via PopSci. Left: a visible-light image from the Hubble Space Telescope. Right: … Read more

New Study reveals “Beer belly not caused by alcohol” … Is this really true?

A new study has discovered that there is no scientific evidence to suggest that beer causes weight gain … or has it? The UK papers talk about “Nutritionist Dr Kathryn O’Sullivan, who carried out the review of the scientific review” … and also refer to a report entitled “Beer & calories; a scientific review”. Sounds … Read more

Why do well-educated smart people reject scientific ideas?

There is a rather interesting article in Edge that has been written by Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University, and also Deena Skolnick Weisberg, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Yale University. The paper is entitled “WHY DO SOME PEOPLE RESIST SCIENCE?”, and is in fact a modified version of a paper published in Science entitled … Read more