I recently reread a wonderful account of the invention of thermonuclear weapons and the initial years of the cold-war, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, by Richard Rhodes. The book goes into the science and history of the work done at Los Alamos, but also describes the political intrigues and espionage carried out on behalf of the Soviet Union. One thing that stands out is the number of Jews among the ranks of the atomic spies. The most damaging information was provided by the German physicist Klaus Fuchs who was part of the English team at Los … Continue reading
The Blessing on a Scientific Discovery
Jews love to recite blessings. We have a blessing to thank God when we wake up, when we put on our clothes, and of course before we eat – with a specific benediction for each category of food. Spices and fragrances have their own blessing as does viewing the first blossoms on a tree, strange looking animals, a rainbow, and a host of other phenomena and events. One blessing is recited when hearing good news, and another when hearing sad tidings. A meticulously observant Jew tries to make no less than one hundred blessings each day! One explanation for this … Continue reading
Leave the Physicists in Peace – We can Always Shoot Them Later
In the 1940’s and 50’s, Russian science was heavily influenced by Stalin’s darling, Trofim Lysenko. Under Lysenko, not only was research directed towards areas that would advance the state, but even theories that were not politically correct were banned and dissenters eliminated. One of the key examples was the attitude taken towards Mendelian genetics and Darwinian evolution, whose focus on the primacy of the genetic mechanism of inheriting characteristics were seen as promoting a class-based world-view. Lysenko and Stalin advocated the Lamarckian approach – inheritance of acquired characteristics, which was more in line with what they termed “proletarian” biology. In … Continue reading
Innovation, or Nothing New Under the Sun
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9) One of the courses that I took during my first semester in grad school at Columbia Engineering was an introduction to lasers. The professor was a world-renowned expert in free-electron lasers but not the most interesting orator. At one point during one of his lectures my mind started to drift – but not too far from the drone of his voice monologueing on about Bragg diffraction – and I came up with what I thought was … Continue reading
Stigmergy Structures and Yom Kippur
The term stigmergy was coined in the 1950’s to describe the structures that organisms build – things that are “outside” the organism, but clearly a fundamental part of that organism’s life. Giant termite mounds or ant hills or bee hives are as much a defining part of the animals that build them as their wings or legs are. The beautiful shell that murex and other snails build is another example of a stigmergy structure. Which leads to the existential question (that termite philosophers no doubt endlessly debate) as to what are the borders of that which constitutes the “self.” As … Continue reading
Nature’s Brightest Color
My good friend, Professor Tom Skalak from the University of Virginia sent me a link to an article by researchers at Cambridge investigating a type of African berry called Pollia. Here is how phys.org summarized the find: The ‘brightest’ thing in nature, the Pollia condensata fruit, does not get its blue colour from pigment but instead uses structural colour – a method of reflecting light of particular wavelengths – new research reveals. The study was published today in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In The Rarest Blue, we discuss in great detail the five … Continue reading
Taking the Plunge
I can’t imagine doing what my son, Yair, did in the picture. Bungee jumping off a bridge over an Ecuadorian gorge hundreds of feet deep is incomprehensible to me. I could barely muster the courage to accompany another son, Gilad, on Treetop Adventures near Turtleback Zoo. Balancing on a rickety bridge a few feet above the soft ground (albeit securely holstered) seemed as daunting as walking a tightrope across the Grand Canyon. My fear of heights was outstripped only by my fear of being forever labeled a wimpy dad. But in life, sometimes you have to be willing to … Continue reading
A Religious Scientist
As far back as I can remember, I always loved science. I would read popular books on different science-related topics like Isaac Asimov’s essays or Broca’s Brain by Carl Sagan. My favorite movie was The Andromeda Strain and I dreamed about working in a high-tech laboratory with lasers and test-monkeys and vacuum-sealed air locks. The first time I actually learned any real science was in my first year at college (having spent the four years of high-school in a teacher-induced intellectual coma). My first year physics teacher was a young graduate student who I thought was brilliant, and he introduced … Continue reading
What is the Blue Blog?
I guess that the first thing in starting up a blog is to define what exactly you are trying to do. It is important to set some expectations with respect to what subject matter you intend to write about, and to put your ideas into some sort of context as far as who you are and where you are coming from. Maybe we can leave those last two things, namely my background and how I define myself, for later posts. As our book, The Rarest Blue, goes to print, I decided to initiate this blog as a running discussion relating … Continue reading