Normally the word “chaos” evokes a lack of order: a hectic day, a teenager’s bedroom, tax season. And the physical understanding of chaos is not far off. It’s something that is extremely difficult to predict, like the weather. Chaos allows a small blip (the flutter of a butterfly wing) to grow into a big consequence (a typhoon halfway across the world),…
Tag: blip
Astronomers Trace Mysterious Fast Radio Burst To Extreme, Rare Star
The first detection of a fast radio burst inside the Milky Way leads scientists back to a magnetar, partially solving a long-standing mystery. CNET reports: Sifting through a trove of radio telescope data in 2007, Duncan Lorimer, an astrophysicist at West Virginia University, spotted something unusual. Data obtained six years earlier showed a brief, energetic burst, lasting no more than 5…
Researchers track slowly splitting ‘dent’ in Earth’s magnetic field
A small but evolving dent in Earth’s magnetic field can cause big headaches for satellites. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/researchers-track-dent-in-earths-magnetic-field…
‘We Won’t Remember Much of What We Did in the Pandemic’
Tim Harford, writing for Financial Times (not paywalled): Last spring, I returned from the holiday of a lifetime in Japan, and reflected on the richness of the memories it had generated. Time flew by while I was there, but in hindsight 10 days somewhere vividly new had produced more memories than 10 weeks back home. I likened the effect to the…