July 13, 2020 People who have never sailed on anything but perfectly calm seas will think it ridiculous that their decks or their stomachs could heave. So it’s to be expected that people today, having never seen anything but the calm sailing of the planets around the sun, should dismiss…
April 15, 2020 Halton Christian “Chip” Arp (March 21, 1927 – December 28, 2013) When our son was 2 and 3 and 4, he liked to climb up on high objects-the table, the refrigerator, the roof-and jump into our arms. When we weren’t available to “play catch”, he would climb…
February 26, 2020 What’s “reality”? For science, for the past century or more, it’s “what’s out there”, “the given”. And we get to know it by looking at it. (I say “looking” to mean all sensation.) To get to know it better, we need only to look closer. To that…
Nov 8, 2019 Is the Earth at the center of the universe after all? Or is the Expanding Universe an artifact of conceptual chromatography? Chromatography has been quite a useful invention. The high-school-science demonstration of it is to place a drop or two of ink in a beaker of water…
Jun 19, 2019 During my first close encounter with Wal Thornhill, he electrified me with a picture of Zeus holding a thunderbolt. The bolt was football shaped with stringy things spiraling out of it. Wal explained that it was the shape a plasmoid took in a vacuum. “Gee-golly-cornpone!” I thought….
Aug 23, 2018 Before the space age, astronomers looked up at the night sky and saw points and patches of light. With the aid of telescopes they could see more points and patches, and with the aid of spectroscopes they could discover what the points and patches were made…
Jul 5, 2018 If currently fashionable theories are Ultimate Truth (or at least smart ideas) and myth was stupid superstition, where is the dividing line? Was Ptolemy stupid and Newton smart? But General Relativity is not just an improved version of Newton’s theory, it’s different: Einstein’s stretchable space-time is…
June 6, 2018 It’s common to hear people refer to “what science says.” The usual assumption is that “what science says” is said indefeasibly. But the term ‘science’ has two conflicting senses: science as currently-accepted theory (CAT) and science as method. To conclude that method inevitably leads to CAT and,…
May 8, 2018 Christiaan Eijkman discovered that a bacterium in polished rice caused beriberi and an anti-toxin in the coating cured it. Eijkman verified his theory with a massive study of 280,000 people. He ruled out the possibility of other causal factors–sanitation, hygiene, and so on. And he cured…
Mar 26, 2018 What is light? When you’re in a boat, you see waves of water lap against the hull. If you could tie a flag to a molecule of water, you could see that molecule move up and down. When you’re at a concert, you hear waves of sound…
