Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a story that all started with a high school student’s innocuous question on TikTok, leading academic mathematicians and philosophers to weigh in on “a very ancient and unresolved debate in the philosophy of science,” reports Smithsonian magazine. “What, exactly, is math?” Is it invented, or discovered? And are the things that mathematicians work with — numbers,…
Tag: Plato
Lack of Broadband and Devices Hobbles America’s Remote Learning
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Fifty-eight years after Roger Ebert reported on the PLATO system’s potential to deliver online learning to homebound students in a 1962 News-Gazette article, Bloomberg Technology’s Emily Chang takes a look at the nationwide struggle to shift to remote learning, interviewing McKinsey Education Practice Manager Emma Dorn, Khan Academy founder Sal Khan, and former U.S. Secretary of…
New exoplanet system is ‘mirror image’ of Earth and sun
Researchers from Germany and the US have discovered an exoplanet less than twice the size of Earth orbiting at about the same distance from its star, making it the closest analog to the Earth-sun system known so far. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/exoplanet-kepler-160-mirror-image-earth-sun…
1962 Roger Ebert Article Unearthed On Distance Learning For Homebound Students
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: In 2011, the late film critic Roger Ebert gave tech’s movers-and-shakers a PLATO history lesson in his Remaking My Voice TED Talk. “When I heard the amazing talk by Salman Khan on Wednesday, about the Khan Academy website that teaches hundreds of subjects to students all over the world, I had a flashback,” explained Ebert. “I…
What is a waxing gibbous moon?
A waxing gibbous moon appears more than half lighted, but less than full. It rises before sundown and sets somewhere between midnight and dawn. Source: https://earthsky.org/moon-phases/waxing-gibbous…
The Man Who Made Wolfenstein
theodp writes: Over at Polygon, games journalist Colin Campbell remembers the late Silas Warner in The Man Who Made Wolfenstein. Before Doom, there was Warner’s Castle Wolfenstein (1981) and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein (1984), which counted id Software’s legendary John Carmack and John Romero as fans. After completing his degree in Physics at Indiana University, Warner found work at IU installing a…
Europe’s CHEOPS mission will shed light on strange new worlds
The European Space Agency has successfully launched its CHEOPS space telescope, the 1st of 3 planned missions to study distant exoplanets in greater detail than ever before. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/cheops-space-telescope-launch-dec-2019…