Without exploration there is no progress, and without progress our civilisation decays. It takes machines like the LHC to journey to the edge of our understanding because, quite simply, the easy stuff has all been done.

It’s part of The Guardian’s larger series of feature articles on Cern.

And Steven?  Might be time to ditch the ‘fro.  Just sayin’.

(via New Scientist)

The reason we see our world as we do is because of what we use to observe it. The human body is a just barely adequate measuring device. Quantum mechanics does not always wash itself out, but to observe its effects for larger and larger objects we would need more and more accurate measurement devices. We just do not have the sensitivity to observe the quantum effects around us. In essence we do create the classical world we perceive, and as Brukner said, “There could be other classical worlds completely
different from ours.”

Zeilinger and his group have only just begun to consider the grand implications of all their work for reality and our world. Like others in their field, they had focused on entanglement and decoherence to construct our future information technology, such as quantum computers, and not for understanding reality. But the group’s work on these kinds of applications pushed up against quantum mechanics’ foundations. To repeat a famous dictum, “All information is physical.” How we get information from our world depends on how it is encoded. Quantum mechanics encodes information, and how we obtain this through measurement is how we study and construct our world.

It’s a great article, with a concise background history of quantum mechanics.

Despite a court-ordered ban on the teaching of creationism in US schools, about one in eight high-school biology teachers still teach it as valid science, a survey reveals. . . . US courts have repeatedly decreed that creationism and intelligent design are religion, not science, and have no place in school science classrooms. . . . ”It seems a bit high, but I am not shocked by it,” says Linda Froschauer, past president of the National Science Teachers Association based in Arlington, Virginia. “We do know there’s a problem out there, and this gives more credibility to the issue.”

(via New Scientist [there's more on the original study at Pharyngula])

“That’s a long time.” She thinks for a minute. “I don’t think I can walk that long.”

(via Uncertain Principles)

[and speaking of bunnies and time dilation...]

A robot that can pluck and move individual hair follicles on a person’s head makes hair transplants look more natural than those performed by humans, a US company claims.

Oh, the wonders of modern medical science.  Don’t you just get a happy little tingle every time you see the words “robot” and “pluck” together in a sentence?  Neither do I.

Once the “harvest” is over, the patient sits up to let the robot implant the follicles into the top of their head.

Again, another word that is just sinister when paired with robot: “harvest”.  Shudder.

I was very suspicious and asked a number of questions: Isn’t it dangerous? How do you know the learner doesn’t have a bad heart and can’t take the shocks? What if he wants to stop, can he get out of the chair? The professor assured me that the shocks were not painful or harmful since the amperage was lowered as the voltage increased. He let me feel what a 45-volt shock would be like: a slight tickle. I asked the learner if he was willing to do this and why he didn’t have any questions. He said, “Let’s try it.” With some trepidation on my part, we began the experiment.

(via MeFi)

Kodak provides a webcam in their nest, and you can watch the rest of the eggs hatch over the next few days.

Automakers, parts suppliers, governments and global agencies from the United Nations to the OECD are all looking at ways to relegate to memory the roughly 1.2 million deaths and 50 million injuries caused by motor vehicle crashes each year.

But in what some analysts see as a bid to hold its lead in consumer perceptions of safety, the Swedish carmaker now owned by Ford is the first to set a target date to eliminate death and injury in its cars.

That’s great news, because maybe then they can finally start working on an uglyproof car.

(via Scientific American)

If you try to reharden chocolate that’s been melted (say, in making chocolate covered strawberries), you’re frequently left with a matte finish and crumbly texture that in no way resembles the dark glossy chocolate you began with.

Testify, sister.  I’ve melted bucketloads of chocolate of all kinds, and only by accident have been able to get it to re-harden properly¹.

Apparently chocolate can solidify into any of six different forms:

Cocoa butter, one of the dominant ingredients in chocolate, contains several triglycerides that lock into a crystal form when cooled. However, there is not just one form that the triglycerides can lock into, but six of them (β(I) through β(VI)). Each successive form is more stable and has a higher melting point. Almost all commercial chocolate is in the β(V) form — from what I can tell, you only get to sample β(VI) in the afterlife, if you’ve been very, very good.

Huh.  I had no idea.

If someone were to ever write a “physics of food” book, I would be at the front of the line to buy it.