Category Archives: Science

“It started with a fortuitous chair squeak.”

NPR two-way: A Spider Across The Room Can ‘Hear’ You, Study Finds. By Merrit Kennedy.

“Scientists have discovered a new kind of spidey sense.

We already knew that jumping spiders have exceptional vision. We knew that they are great at perceiving vibrations. We even knew that they can “hear” at extremely close range.

But in research published in Current Biology, researchers at Cornell University found that a common species of jumping spider called Phidippus audax can actually hear from much farther away than we thought — at distances of 10 feet away, or more.”

Apes, like very young infants, understand subjectivity and the limits of perspective.

NPR Science: Apes May Be More Like Us Than We Thought. By Alva Noë.

“Suppose I take the candy from the cabinet where you left it and put it someplace else. Where will you look for it when you get home?

Children younger than 5 will rarely get this right. When questioned, they will say, mistakenly, that you will look for the candy at its new location. […] If you measure not what they say, but what they do, in particular, where they look, it turns out that they are able to anticipate that you will look for the candy where you mistakenly believe it still is.

We now know the same is true of apes.”

From a catastrophe to a new theory

Physics Girl: The Ultraviolet Catastrophe.

“How did the field of quantum mechanics come about in the first place? The Rayleigh-Jeans catastrophe, also known as the ultraviolet catastrophe was a prediction by the Rayleigh-Jeans law that a blackbody would radiate infinite amounts of ultraviolet light. It wasn’t until Max Planck came along and predicted that light came in packets or quanta that the field of quantum mechanics emerged and unintentionally solved the ultraviolet catastrophe.”

Wood Wide Web

Peter Wohlleben auf SWR4: Das geheime Leben der Bäume. (YouTube, knapp 18 Minuten)

“Bäume sprechen miteinander, sie haben ein kollektives Gedächtnis. Klingt unglaublich, ist aber wissenschaftlich belegt. SWR4 Redakteur Lars Michael Storm und Filmemacher Beat von Stein haben Förster Peter Wohlleben in seinem Wald getroffen.”

Das gleichnamige Buch habe ich vor einer Weile gelesen und fand es sehr informativ und interessant. Leseempfehlung!

Siehe auch Peter Wohlleben im Dialog mit Michael Krons am 08.11.2015 (YouTube, 35 Minuten).

Das Dreikörperproblem

… musste ich in meinem dritten Semester an der Uni für den Schein in theoretischer Physik Mechanik programmieren. Das sah natürlich längst nicht so schick aus wie diese Website, und davon abgesehen hatte ich einen Fehler im Programm, den ich erst nach mehreren Tagen gefunden habe – es war ein Vorzeichenfehler.

PhET Interactive Simulations, University of Colorado: My Solar System. (Flash)

You can simulate the orbits of two, three or four objects and change the mass, initial position and velocity for each one individually. Try to find stable or chaotic orbits!