Unruled Notebook

We begin with the usual Intro: Nature and Nature’s funny little quirks were hidden by the Dark Internet Chatter. And no one said “switch off that da** computer and start reading a good book”….So, let Newton be wherever he chose to be, and while that computer is still on, welcome to the Philosophia Naturalis #2, the carnival on physical sciences and advanced technology. You could after all finish the rhetoric with “let (Science) Blogs be, and all was Light”…

• PN#2-cos (Cosmology)

We shall begin at the “end (of physical laws - so to speak)” with the excellent explanatory post on Micro Black Holes by Sabine at Backreaction blog, merging together completely different fields of physics: From General Relativity to thermodynamics and quantum field theory and more.

And of course, we know “black holes ain’t no black”; what about their wind? Check out The Wind from a Black Hole by Charles Daney at Science and Reason…

• PN#2-astro-ph (Astronomy)

Moving on to Astronomy, first check out the nice pictures provided by the Opportunity (Mars) rover at the “Victoria Crater” as part of the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE).

And then, we shall ask the question again: Are we living in a Flat World (Earth)? Of course not, once the Earth is seen as a “whole” - in a larger scale. But, wait, what if we increase the scale of our purview to a scale that includes the Solar System in its entirety. Now, are we living in a Flat World? Or perhaps in a Disk World? Phil Plait at the Bad Astronomy blog explains more and discusses the recent insights using the Hubble…

• PN#2-cond-mat (Condensed Matter)

Does this topic need a non-technical but correct introduction? Probably yes. The condensed matter physics post by Alan Reifman, a non-physicist (?) at his watered-down physics blog is appropriate enough to teach us of this…

• PN#2-math (Mathematics)

Kasper Olsen at his Thoughts on Science and Life blog provides a good overview of Perelman, the Poincare Conjecture and a Fields Medal, one of the two recent issues that “shook” mathematics.

The other one is more recent and is about the withdrawn paper of Dr. Penny Smith on the proposed existence solution for the Navier Stokes equations. Instead of directing us to the more sensational blog posts on this topic, we shall direct us to Penny Smith�s Proof on the Navier-Stokes Equations, a post by Brooks Moses at his Notes on Divergent Simulations blog, which explains the technical possibilities of such a scheme of transforming the NS equations into a hyperbolic equivalent and the implications.

• PN#2-ear-sci (Earth Sciences)

…and land back on Earth and its sciences by wondering “Are droughts better of worse?” Daniel Collins briefs about the Trends in 20th century drought over the U.S., a post and the links therein providing us a peek into the exiting world of Earth Sciences.

• PN#2-tech (Technology)

Heard of the exciting latest physics news? The experimental demonstration of teleportation involving both light and atoms, done at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, as reported by at Uncertain Principles blog.

Heard of the Lichtenberg Figures and their applications? Check out the post Lichtenberg Figures / Artificial lightning fossils by Joe Kissell at his Interesting Thing of the Day blog. The post details how an 18th-century German physicist found a way to capture the shape of a lightning discharge, and how the discovery forms the basis of today’s photocopiers and laser printers. It also makes for some nifty high-tech art.

• PN#2-comp-biochem (Computing and Bio-chemistry)

Moving away from the Anisotropy of the CMB, you could catch the excitement of protein structure and dynamics, through a review of the Anisotropic Network Models by Eyal, Lang and Bahar, in a post Protein flexibility and elastic networks by Deepak Singh at the business|bytes|genes|molecules blog (Deepak: what is mndoci?).

And on the Bio-chemistry side, The matter of the 3 hydrogen bonds posted by AOrstan at Snail’s Tales caught my attention: with the involved personalities being Crick, Watson, Pauling and Corey, it becomes a nice bio-chemistry tale…

• PN#2-pol-phy (Politics or Physics?)

Should we be concerned about “politics” or only about science? Shouldn’t we be concerned about what happens on this Earth as a World Citizen or not?

Alighieri Dante said “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.”

For too long scientists have approached politics with one hand tied behind their backs. This November, Chris Mooney at SEED Magazine blog says, that’s going to change.

I think as we remain neutral, eventually there won’t be any “nature” to “philosophize” about…Check out “Iranian Nukes - Plain Language Repost” where Steinn Sigur�sson at the Dynamics of Cats argues that the focus on uranium enrichment is a red herring.

• PN#2-no-no (Nobel and the not so Nobel)

And the obligatory Nobel posts are here: Just to be irreverential, we start of with the IgNobel and go ignoble noodling with Jennifer Ouellette (alter ego of Jen-Luc Piquant!) at her Cocktail Party Physics blog.

After the party, let us sober up with the actual 2006 Physics Nobel winning discovery of the Anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Backround radiation and its implications on the Big Bang theory are explained in at the Galactic Interactions by Rob Knop (Rob: congrats on the recently acquired, Second Best Nerdiest Science blogger title!).

• PN#2-revs (Recent Books and Paper Reviews)

Beginning with this edition, Philosophia Naturalis could include links (not necessarily blog posts) of reviews on recently published books and research papers of note, within the subject scope of the carnival.

We start of this section with a review of Alexander Vilenkin’s Many Worlds in One , done by Christine C. Dantas at her Christine’s Background Independence blog.

The second one is by Sabine on Lee Smolin’s Trouble with Physics. The post is a bit old, but nevertheless topical, as the book is out in the stands now. Check also the related entry of Lee Smolin’s interview.

The third book review is by Alejandro on Price’s Time’s Arrow and Archimedes’ Point at Reality Conditions. In the post, Alejandro discusses Price’s arguments about time asymmetry in quantum mechanics which led him to propose a re-interpretation of the theory.

• PN#2-f-art (Fellow-sophia Artificialis)

Well, too much of Philosophia Naturalis already I guess; Let us end with how to spot instead a Fellow-sophia Artificialis. The Crackpot Index by John Baez should give us some clues. If you think you haven’t met anyone of that kind and John is just too sarcastic, check out on a related note, the recent controversy of A Plea to Save New Scientist and the follow up entry New Scientist Reacts (and in particular, the comments section of both these posts), at The n-Category Cafe, a blog co-authored by John Baez.

• PN#2-pn (Philosophia Naturalis)

A one-stop source (with feed) for this carnival is the separate blog [ Philosophia Naturalis ] where announcements on all the past, present and future editions and the carnival posts will be aggregated.

[Science and Reason] by Charles Daney, the originator of the carnival published the [ Philosophia Naturalis #1 ].

[Geek Counterpoint] by Lorne Ipsum will host the Philosophia Naturalis #3 four weeks from now

• And the Outro…

Thanks for all of those who submitted their entries and/or tipped me on other worthwhile entries and for Charles for allowing me to host the carnival.

It took me some days to conceive this carnival from its now deleted pre-prints…(BTW, the sections in this carnival are styled after the pre-prints archive codings… ;)).

Hope it takes more of your time to enjoy its contents. Happy exploration…

Tags: blog carnival, philosophia naturalis, science blog carnival