Although Stephen Hawking has developed theories for basically everything in the universe, there’s still one thing he can’t seem to grasp… women. In an interview with New Scientist, Hawking states that women are what he thinks about most during the day, saying “They are a complete mystery”.
He also took time to answer more serious questions, such as “If you were a young physicist just starting out today, what would you study?”, to which he replied: “I would have a new idea that would open up a new field.” Beyond this, Hawking also admitted that he’s made scientific errors, specifically mentioning his previous belief that information was destroyed in black holes – a theory that was disproved in 1997.
In recognition of Hawking’s upcoming 70th birthday, the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology, University of Cambridge, is hosting a symposium entitled “The State of the Universe” on January 8. In addition, an exhibition of his life and work will open at the Science Museum, London, on January 20.
(via Geekosystem)
Using anti-pill fleece, Minky, stretch knit, wire and safety eyes, Ayaka Darkly created this plush example of Science the Rat, who you may remember as Princess Bubblegum’s pet in the Adventure Time episode “From Bad to Worse”. The plush has posable legs and tail and stands roughly 12″.
Ayaka has an Etsy shop, and we can only hope that Science will be appearing there at some point.
(DeviantArt via SuperPunch)
In Portal 2, GLaDOS is temporarily put into a potato battery. Now you can make a PotatOS of your very own. This science kit comes with everything but the potato. Get one from the grocery store, and you’ll be making it light up and play one of 17 clips from the game in no time.
Product Page ($29.99)
Realizing that many students in his school’s technology club enjoyed chess, St. Louis chemistry teacher produced this chemistry themed chess board on the fly using flasks for pawns, the tops of pipettes for rooks, crucibles for knights, beakers for queens, 10ml volumetric flasks for bishops, and graduated cylinders for kings.
(via Make)
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In a bit of news that will surely have the attention every Star Wars fan, a team using data from NASA’s $600 million Kepler telescope have discovered a planet that has two suns. Although its official title is “Kepler-16b”, scientists at NASA and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute [SETI] have informally named the planet “Tatooine” – a nod to George Lucas and the Star Wars universe. According to SETI’s Laurance Doyle, who led the team of researchers:
“When we first discovered it … I sent around a message, ‘Hey, you know guys, we should ask George Lucas if we can nickname this guy Tatooine. Suddenly and unexpectedly after years of looking for a circumbinary planet – we got a beauty.”
Doyle also reported that a double sunset on the real Tatooine would be much more dramatic that what we see in “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.” For someone standing on the planet’s surface, one of the suns would appear orange and the other red. If you’re hoping for a trip to the newly discovered planet, it’s probably not going to happen. It is located about 200 light years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. Getting there would take about two centuries if you were going at light speed, or 186,282 miles per second.
Check out the video after the break to learn more.
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Carl Sagan’s groundbreaking 13-part series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage is getting a sequel with the venerable astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson at the helm.
That is truly awesome news—and Neil deGrasse Tyson is the perfect person to take over for Sagan. So who do we have to thank for all this?
Seth MacFarlane. Yeah, Family Guy Seth MacFarlane. He will be a producer on the new series along with Sagan’s widow Ann Druyan and his colleague Steven Soter.
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Physicists at the Hong Kong University of Technology and Science crushed the dreams of millions of nerds when they published a study claiming that time travel is impossible.
The belief was that if a single photon could exceed the speed of light, time travel was within the realm of what is physically possible. However, Shengwang Du and his team measured the ultimate speed of a single photon and found that it cannot achieve these speeds.
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Nanoscientists at the University of Nottingham’s Nanotechnology and Nanoscience Centre were able to etch the entire periodic table onto a single human hair using focused ion beams. The result was the complete table, including all known actinides and lanthanides, that was so small that it could have been written on post-it note well over a million times with room to spare.
Check out the process on CubicleBot, where you can also watch them engrave “Merry Christmas” on a snowflake.
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Cheerleader nerds. Amazingly enough, they actually exist. Check out the video after the break to see the Science Cheerleaders in action.
Maybe there’s hope that one day, a group of hot cheerleaders will root for you as you troubleshoot network problems at the office. Sniff…never give up hope.
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Remember when everyone was freaked out that the scientists at CERN would end the world by using the The Large Hadron Collider housed there?
Well, it turned out the scientists there have successfully created a “mini-Big Bang” and, while they generated “dense fireballs that have temperatures of about 10 trillion °C.”, we’re all still here.
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