Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
Physics suggests equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been made in the Big Bang.
In 2010, researchers at the Tevatron accelerator claimed preliminary results showing a small excess of matter over antimatter as particles decayed.
The team has submitted a paper showing those results are on a firmer footing.
Each of the fundamental particles known has an antimatter cousin, with identical properties but opposite electric charge.
Christopher Hitchens pens his thoughts on Bachmann … here are a couple of extracts …
That was actually three dripping custard pies, rather than just the one, with which Rep. Michele Bachmann assailed her own face by bragging to Fox News about her small-town Iowa roots …
… boasted by the sturdy small town of her girlhood, she went on to claim that “John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa …It was his namesake John Wayne Gacy, serial rapist and killer of 33 teenage boys and young men, who spent time in Waterloo…
One of the cool aspects involved within on-line skeptic forums such as reddit /r/skeptic is the access you gain to a pool of folks who quite often demonstrate a great sense of humor (I’m getting to a point … stick with me).
On one occasion, not too long ago, I stated what could be best described as the bleeding obvious. The following well deserved comment soon came back
In other news, scientists present the first conclusive evidence of a bear defecating in the woods. Film at 11.
New Scientist has a great review of Chris Stringer’s latest book, “The Origin of Our Species” (no prize for spotting the hat-tip to a rather more famous publication by a certian Mr Darwin). … The book is the first popular treatment to take on board the recent sequencing of the Neanderthal genome and the discovery … Read more
Time and time again we find that religious folks, who claim to hold the ultimate form of morality (an apparent direct line to a God) to be a tad lacking in basic ethics. The most common example we all often come across consists of Christian Creationists lying for Jesus and more or less making stuff up that they then claim is “proof”. When you go through it with them, it does not make one iota of a different, they might as well have stuck their fingers in the ears and babbled “la la la” while you patiently explained things. The very next day they will be back to babbling the same old rhetoric.
Is it just the Christians? Nope, not at all. Today we have an Islamic example. Andrew Gilligan writes in today’s Telegraph about an East London Mosque that had faithfully promised to ban homophobic preachers. Well yes, I’m sure you can guess where this is going … he writes …
Damian Thompson writes today on the telegraph with data that appears to show that anyone who has bought into Goldman Sachs’ $50 billion valuation of Facebook, which is based on projections of revenue growth that seem ludicrously optimistic in the light of the data now available … Here’s a chart showing year-on-year growth (again, click … Read more