background preloader

Science

Facebook Twitter

Brain Games & Brain Training - Lumosity. Future Society & Enviroment. NASA Starts Work on Real Life Star Trek Warp Drive. What happens when you take a scientist, liquid nitrogen and 1500 table tennis balls? High speed video reveals the bizarre physics of an ordinary water droplet.

- StumbleUpon. What is Occams Razor? [Physics FAQ] - [Copyright] Updated 1997 by Sugihara Hiroshi.

What is Occams Razor?

Original by Phil Gibbs 1996. Occam's (or Ockham's) razor is a principle attributed to the 14th century logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. Ockham was the village in the English county of Surrey where he was born. The principle states that "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily. " "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate" "Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora" "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem" In fact, only the first two of these forms appear in his surviving works and the third was written by a later scholar.

Many scientists have adopted or reinvented Occam's Razor, as in Leibniz's "identity of observables" and Isaac Newton stated the rule: "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. " In physics we use the razor to shave away metaphysical concepts. References: W. W. Tiniest trickle will speed all-electronic lab-on-a-chip. 10 Strange Things About The Universe. Space The universe can be a very strange place.

10 Strange Things About The Universe

While groundbreaking ideas such as quantum theory, relativity and even the Earth going around the Sun might be commonly accepted now, science still continues to show that the universe contains things you might find it difficult to believe, and even more difficult to get your head around. Theoretically, the lowest temperature that can be achieved is absolute zero, exactly ? 273.15°C, where the motion of all particles stops completely. However, you can never actually cool something to this temperature because, in quantum mechanics, every particle has a minimum energy, called “zero-point energy,” which you cannot get below. One of the properties of a negative-energy vacuum is that light actually travels faster in it than it does in a normal vacuum, something that may one day allow people to travel faster than the speed of light in a kind of negative-energy vacuum bubble.

Relativity of Simultaneity Antimatter Retrocausality. Penn Gazette. By Andrew Newburg | Yawn.

Penn Gazette

Go ahead: Laugh if you want (though you’ll benefit your brain more if you smile), but in my professional opinion, yawning is one of the best-kept secrets in neuroscience. Even my colleagues who are researching meditation, relaxation, and stress reduction at other universities have overlooked this powerful neural-enhancing tool. However, yawning has been used for many decades in voice therapy as an effective means for reducing performance anxiety and hypertension in the throat. Several recent brain-scan studies have shown that yawning evokes a unique neural activity in the areas of the brain that are directly involved in generating social awareness and creating feelings of empathy.

One of those areas is the precuneus, a tiny structure hidden within the folds of the parietal lobe. Why am I so insistent? As a young medical student, I was once “caught” yawning and actually scolded by my professor. My advice is simple. - StumbleUpon.