Another early morning rainbow

About to ride to the bus station this morning; greeted by another nice rainbow:

 

Brought to us by the laws of physics. No pot of gold evident. Pity.

LIGO Gravitational Wave detection: the work of many…

I think it’s worth noting that 3 of the authors of the LIGO Gravitational Wave detection paper are listed as deceased (two in 2015 and 1 in 2012) and humbling to realise that, especially in a field like cosmology or particle physics, a scientist could spend his or her working life on something like this and never see the sought-after result.

It also emphasises that Science is usually not about a single person working in isolation, but about the work of many people collaborating and competing over a long period of time.

An ABC post about David Blair’s work on this for 40 years further underscores the point.

Congratulations to the hundreds (from the author list alone!) of scientists, engineers, and support people who contributed in some way to the first direct detection of gravitational values 100 years after their prediction from general relativity by Einstein.

It’s Darwin Day (actually)

Happy Darwin Day 2016!

Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science. (Charles Darwin)

The darwinday.org website has lots of resources about the life and work of Charles Darwin (1809 to 1882) and the Richard Dawkins Foundation has recently added teacher materials.

From so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. (Charles Darwin, Origin of Species)

Meanwhile, let creationism talk itself into oblivion.

It has often and confidently been asserted, that man’s origin can never be known; but ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge; it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. (Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man)