Interest of the day

Researchers are reporting that gravitational waves produced during the rapid inflation of the early universe were detected by the effect they had on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation polarization. Phil Platt wrote a good article at slate called Astronomers Find the Twisted Fingerprints of Inflation in the Background Glow of the Universe, and Sky and Telescope has the article First Direct Evidence of Big Bang Inflation.

Researches at Stanford have designed a 50 cent origami microscope to test a billion people to fight malaria. Bioengineer Manu Prakash describes the design in his TED talk.

The creators of MinutePhysics and MinuteEarth have expanded with a new website MinuteLabs. MinuteLabs contains videos, images, games, and interactive simulations to teach science in new ways.

MIT is sponsoring the Climate Colab to facilitate large groups of people in addressing global climate change. The center has developed a crowdsourcing platform where citizens work with experts to create, analyze, and select detailed proposals for what to do about climate change.

NOVA has posted the very good summary 2.5 Ways to Die in a Black Hole which describes the problems with the current theories of black holes: spaghettification, firewall, and scrambling.

Bill Dunford at the Planetary Society has posted the blog: A Spin Through the Inner Solar System that shows neat videos of the Sun, Mercury, Venus, the moon, Mars, and Dawn. The detail of the images are incredible. It seems that we have the better view of the moon as well, but seeing the "dark side of the moon" is still fascinating.

Simpsons fans check out The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets. It was cool reading about all the in jokes, freeze frame gags, and the background of the writers. Nicely done. Also, two university professors use math from the Simpsons in their courses and as a result these courses have become very popular with the students.

The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics has post 50 or so very cool logos for famous physicists. These logos or posters where created by Dr. Prateek Lala. The logo for Richard Feynman is shown below.

A Boeing lead consortium discovered a plant called a halophyte that grows in sea water and can be used to make a high grade biofuel. In 4-5 years if all goes well, we could completely sustainable jet fuel. The halophytes would could be grown in deserts integrated with fish farms and mangrove for an environmentally friendly system.

The Fermi lab has posted a neat illustration of the earth as seen with neutrinos in the posting Seeing the world with neutrino eyes. The bright spots in the images blow are nuclear reactors. The image on the right adds the continental outlines.