tingilinde

saving the big bang horn antenna and its site

A petition to save the famous antenna that was used in the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation.

snip

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Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1988, the Horn Antenna sits on 42 beautiful acres in Holmdel Township on Crawford Hill, the highest point in Monmouth County. The Horn Antenna was instrumental in the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation by scientists Dr. Robert Wilson and Dr. Arno Penzias, which helped confirm the “Big Bang” theory of cosmology. Both men earned Nobel Prizes for their discoveries.

The Holmdel Township Committee recently authorized an investigation into whether the property where the Horn Antenna resides should be designated as “an area in need of redevelopment.” Consequently, this property is in danger of becoming a high-density residential development and the future of the Horn Antenna is at stake.

Citizens for Informed Land Use (CILU), Friends of Holmdel Open Space (FOHOS) and Preserve Holmdel (PH) say NO to developing the property and removing or destroying the Horn Antenna.

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the einstein papers

Another volume has been related .. a large undertaking with original papers as well as translations.

 

bizarre questions that one hopefully shouldn't have to ask

 

 

 

a deeper look at an ancient document

Evidence for the lost Hipparchus Star Catalog.. and it's more accurate than Ptolemy's 

 

New evidence for Hipparchus’ Star Catalogue revealed by multispectral imaging

Victor Gysembergh, Peter J. Williams, and Emanuel ZinggView

Abstract
New evidence for ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus’ lost Star Catalogue has come to light thanks to multispectral imaging of a palimpsest manuscript and subsequent decipherment and interpretation. This new evidence is the most authoritative to date and allows major progress in the reconstruction of Hipparchus’ Star Catalogue. In particular, it confirms that the Star Catalogue was originally composed in equatorial coordinates. It also confirms that Ptolemy’s Star Catalogue was not based solely on data from Hipparchus’ Catalogue. Finally, the available numerical evidence is consistent with an accuracy within 1° of the real stellar coordinates, which would make Hipparchus’ Catalogue significantly more accurate than his successor Claudius Ptolemy’s.

maria sibylla merian

A Royal Society piece on one of the earliet entomologists and ecologists

for the physics types - a lecture by gamow during the 50s

ignored

The Szilard petition on July 17, 1945.  There were 69 signers on another page.  It wasn't declassified until the 60s.

 

two physicists confronted with the end

Enrico Fermi and John von Neumann had very different reactions when they learned they would die of cancer. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar knew both and was asked to comment in an interview:

 

 

 

the liverpool atom smasher

A history of the University of Liverpool's synchrocyclotron - the last big particle physics machine in the UK.  There's a great section on a heated discussion of the magnet's polarity.

It takes a society with a good deal of optimism about the future to build such devices ..  particularly when they're rebuilding.

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Funding for the new accelerator was granted to the university in 1946 in acknowledgment of the work that Chadwick and other Liverpool physicists did on the Manhattan project. “When you look and see the deprivation after the war, this machine had priority money from the government, so it’s clear how important it was,” says Mike Houlden, a retired physicist from the university who first studied there during the final years of the accelerator’s operation. The synchrocyclotron itself cost £500,000, and the building that housed it is listed as having cost £235,000 – a considerable investment in a country heavily hit during the war. Taking inflation into account, the synchrocyclotron would have cost the equivalent of almost £28.5m today.

“The country was still recovering from the war, so it was amazing that the government had prioritized building a particle accelerator in 1947 and 1948,” Houlden adds, pointing out an image of the Liverpool skyline at the time of the accelerator’s construction in 1951 that shows cranes in the city still repairing damage from German bombing.

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szilard

This talk may be interesting if you know anything about him - otherwise it may be a bit scattered.  One of the more unusual characters in physics.