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Functional Family: Mock theta mystery solved Erica Klarreich A pair of mathematicians has solved a problem that had tantalized number-theory researchers for more than 8 decades. It is the so-called final problem of the legendary Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. In the years before his death in 1920, Ramanujan studied theta functions, which are numerical relationships that show special symmetries. On his deathbed, Ramanujan wrote a letter to his British collaborator G. H. Hardy, in which he listed 17 complicated formulas for new functions. He called them mock theta functions because they had some properties similar to those of theta...

I just won a bet I made in 2002 with physicist Michio Kaku. I bet him $1,000 that “by 2020, no one will have won a Nobel Prize for work on superstring theory, membrane theory, or some other unified theory describing all the forces of nature.” This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics, which recognized solid work in cosmology (yay Jim Peebles!) and astronomy, was Kaku’s last chance to win before 2020. Kaku and I made the bet under the auspices of Long Bets, a “public arena for enjoyably competitive predictions, of interest to society, with philanthropic money at stake.” Long...

The host of the Jacki Daily show has had an impressive career in energy, law, and politics. Most recently, Jacki served as General Counsel to an engineering firm specializing in energy, national security and environmental cleanup. Previously, she served many years as legal counsel on Capitol Hill to the Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and the former Ranking Member of the Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee, advising on the oversight of federal agencies. Prior to her career in Washington, she worked as a corporate litigator, and as an Assistant Vice President for a national bank. She entered...

A couple of days ago, there was a quite successful thread here entitled Top Physicist Freeman Dyson: Obama 'Took the Wrong Side' on Climate Change. As an admirer and follower of Professor Dyson, I enjoyed it greatly, and posted several items on it. That thread got me interested in Dyson once again, and in looking for Dyson material I found this remarkable lecture on YouTube. I believe it is worth anyone's time to listen to in its entirety. At a little more than an hour in length, it is a bit long for one sitting, but I am sure most...

Why did one of the world's top physicists—ever—sign the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation's Open Letter to Pope Francis on Climate Change, which challenges climate alarmism, though he's a liberal, a Democrat, likes President Obama, and has a strong background in climate science? His interview with the UK Register and his foreword to a new study titled Carbon Dioxide: The Good News reveal some of his reasons. Freeman Dyson believes increasing atmospheric CO2 content does more good than harm and that President Obama "chose the wrong side" in the climate debate. He explains that climate change "is not a...

Freeman Dyson, one of the world’s top theoretical physicists and a self-described “100% Democrat,” criticized President Barack Obama for his views on climate change, stating that he was on the “wrong side” of the issue and that Republicans were on the “right side” of the topic. “I'm 100 per cent Democrat myself, and I like Obama. But he took the wrong side on this issue, and the Republicans took the right side,” Dyson told The Register last week.

Twenty-nine nuclear scientists have signed a letter to US President Barack Obama praising the Iranian nuclear deal, the New York Times reports Saturday night, calling it “innovative” and “stringent.” Signatories include Richard L. Garwin, a longtime Washington advisor on nuclear issues and arms who helped design the first hydrogen bomb; Siegfried S. Hecker, who directed the Los Alamos nuclear testing and development program from 1986-1997; and Rush D. Holt, a physicist and former member of Congress who now leads the American Association for the Advancement of Science. …

Freeman Dyson, an award-winning British scientist and retired professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, said that the science on climate change isn’t “at all clear,” and in fact, humans are actually helping the planet. […] “Well, what I would like to emphasize is that human actions have very large effects on the ecology which have nothing to do with climate. Carbon dioxide is what we’re producing in big quantities and putting into the atmosphere,” Dyson said. “It happens to be a very good fertilizer for all kinds of vegetation, good for wildlife, good for agricultural production. “So...

One of these days, a guy is going to show you a brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken. Then this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of this brand-new deck of cards and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, you do not accept this bet because, as sure as you stand there, you're going to wind up with an ear full of cider. So said Sky Masterson, gambler and philosopher, in Guys and Dolls.  Brother Sky was a skeptic.  He believed...

Freeman Dyson is a physicist who has been teaching at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton since Albert Einstein was there. When Einstein died in 1955, there was an opening for the title of “most brilliant physicist on the planet.” Dyson has filled it. So when the global-warming movement came along, a lot of people wondered why he didn’t come along with it. The reason he’s a skeptic is simple, the 89-year-old Dyson said when I phoned him. “I think any good scientist ought to be a skeptic,” Dyson said. ------------------------------------------------------ Dyson said his skepticism about those computer models...

Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons, and Alternative Theories of Everything by Margaret Wertheim Walker, 323 pp., $27.00                                                   Pierpont Morgan Library/Art Resource An engraving by William Blake from The Song of Los, 1795 Physics on the Fringe describes work done by amateurs, people rejected by the academic establishment and rejecting orthodox academic beliefs. They are often self-taught and ignorant of higher mathematics. Mathematics is the language spoken by the professionals. The amateurs offer an...

"Fermi Bubbles, " which might appear as a void in visible light in spiral galaxies. is the term used by Richard Carrigan at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in his work on the search for cosmic-scale artifacts like Dyson spheres or Kardashev civilizations. A Fermi bubble would grow as the civilization creating it colonized space, according to Carrigan... Searching for signatures of cosmic-scale archaeological artifacts such as Dyson spheres or Kardashev civilizations is an interesting alternative to conventional SETI. Uncovering such an artifact does not require the intentional transmission of a signal on the part of the original civilization... James...

Below is the O so apt resignation of  Steven J. Welcenbach from the American Chemical Society (ACS). In it he describes how the largest scientific society in the world has become a non-scientific activist group bowing to political pressure and ignoring it’s members objections. Such is his ire and dismay, he is not only pulling his membership but vows to do all he can to make sure ACS does not receive public money. He suggests that many former members will form a new society that rigorously follows the scientific method (hear hear). It’s time to start talking about that new...

theodp writes "In The Civil Heretic, the NYT Magazine takes a look at how world-renowned scientist Freeman Dyson wound up opposing those who care most about global warming. Since coming out of the closet on global warming, Dyson has found himself described as 'a pompous twit,' 'a blowhard,' and 'a mad scientist.' He argues that climate change has become an obsession for 'a worldwide secular religion' known as environmentalism. Dyson has been particularly dismissive of Al Gore, calling him climate change's chief propagandist and accusing him of relying too heavily on computer-generated climate models and promoting 'lousy science' that's...

... Lately, however, since coming “out of the closet as far as global warming is concerned,” as [eminent physicist Freeman] Dyson sometimes puts it, there has been noise all around him. Chat rooms, Web threads, editors’ letter boxes and Dyson’s own e-mail queue resonate with a thermal current of invective [...]. Dyson had proposed that whatever inflammations the climate was experiencing might be a good thing because carbon dioxide helps plants of all kinds grow. ... IT WAS FOUR YEARS AGO that Dyson began publicly stating his doubts about climate change. Speaking at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the...

Talks George Dyson: Let's take a nuclear-powered rocket to Saturn. About this talk Author George Dyson spins the story of Project Orion, a massive, nuclear-powered spacecraft that could have taken us to Saturn in five years. His insider’s perspective and a secret cache of documents bring an Atomic Age dream to life. About George Dyson A historian and philosopher of science, George Dyson takes a clear-eyed and deeply researched view of our recent scientific past -- while showing where it may lead us

In the absence of audience interruptions Mr. Dyson had and argument anyway with the scores of people like Al Gore who weren`t present to defend their belief in the dire consequence of global warming . ("There`s no accounting for human folly", Mr .Dyson said when asked of Mr.Gore`s Nobel prize.) Saying on a recent trip he and his wife found Greenlanders to be delighted with their warmer climate and increased tourism, Mr.Dyson suggested that representing "local warming by a global average is misleading." In his comments to both the Nassua Club and Labyrinth, he decried the use of computer modeling...

HERETICAL THOUGHTS ABOUT SCIENCE AND SOCIETY [8.8.07]By Freeman DysonFREEMAN DYSON is professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton. His professional interests are in mathematics and astronomy. Among his many books are Disturbing the Universe, Infinite in All Directions Origins of Life, From Eros to Gaia, Imagined Worlds, and The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet. His most recent book, Many Colored Glass: Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe (Page Barbour Lectures), is being published this month by University of Virgina Press.Freeman Dyson's Edge Bio Page HERETICAL THOUGHTS ABOUT SCIENCE AND SOCIETY1. The...

Transcripts are clickable on the site too if you dont want to watch. You can read instead. Three interesting clips. This guy is not caught up in the hype over atmospheric CO2. He slams computer models pretty hard. Three short vids. First one should start right away. Select the last two on the dropdown menu on the left. http://www.peoplesarchive.com/browse/movies/1248/en/ 144. Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere: the balance between vegetation and atmosphere [Duration 00:06:33] 145. Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere: global warming and stratospheric cooling [Duration 00:01:27] 146. Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere: conclusions [Duration 00:02:42]

Freeman Dyson: My optimism about the long-term survival of life comes mainly from imagining what will happen when life escapes from this planet and becomes adapted to living in vacuum. There is then no real barrier to stop life from spreading through the universe. Hopping from one world to another will be about as easy as hopping from one island in the Pacific to another. And then life will diversify to fill the infinite variety of ecological niches in the universe, as it has done already on this planet. ... Concerning the climate models, I know enough of the details...