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A team of astronomers is now looking for Dyson Spheres, massive star-scale solar power plants that extraterrestrial hunters hope alien civilizations employIn 1960, mathematician, physicist, and all-around genius Freeman Dyson predicted that every civilization in the Universe eventually runs out of energy on its home planet, provided it survives long enough to do so. Dyson argued that this event constitutes a major hurdle in a civilization's evolution, and that all those who leap over it do so in precisely the same way: they build a massive collector of starlight, a shell of solar panels to surround their home star. Astronomers...

Substitute hosting MSNBC's The Ed Show, Georgtown University Professor Michael Eric Dyson defended comedian Chris Rock's recent lambasting of July 4 as "white people's Independence Day." Dyson even invoked a quote from 19th century abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass expressing similar sentiments, missing the point that, in modern times, all Americans benefit from America's existence as an independent nation. By contrast, during the years slavery still existed in 19th century, it was more reasonable to complain that actual slaves were not benefiting from independence. Dyson rationalized: What Chris Rock alluded to is hardly new. In 1852, Frederick Douglass gave...

Professor Michael Eric Dyson Calls Jay-Z 'An Icon Of American Excellence'By: Vibe - Posted 12-7-2011 9:09 am Professor Eric Michael Dyson may be academia's biggest Jay-Z fan. His course at Georgetown University, “Sociology of Hip Hop: Jay-Z," has been both looked down upon and praised by his peers. He recently spoke to the Sun Times in Chicago on what Jay-Z represents to American culture. “It just happens to have an interesting object of engagement in Jay-Z — and what better way to meet people where they are?” Dyson said. “It’s like Jesus talking to the woman at the well. You...

AN Australian inventor has taken out one of the world's most prestigious design awards with a bazooka that saves lives, rather than claims them. Sam Adeloju last night won the £20,000 ($32,000) James Dyson Award, named after and patronised by the inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner which carries the Dyson name. His entry, the Longreach, is a modified bazooka which fires an expanding lifebuoy 150m out to persons in distress. Mr Adeloju, who studies Industrial Design in the Faculty of Built Environment at UNSW, beat other designs from around the world such as a vest that delivers CPR...

Democratic Socialists of America member Dr. Michael Eric Dyson gives an impassioned speech on his “brother” Barack Obama to last weekend’s “We Count! The Black Agenda is the American Agenda” Conference in Chicago, while comrade Cornel West nearly wets himself with excitement. Dyson is a former co-parishioner with Obama of Marxist Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ, in South Chicago. He claims to have known Barack Obama since 1991. This makes Dyson , along with Dr. Quentin Young, Timuel Black, Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, Congressman Danny K. Davis, Cornel West , Lou Pardo and possibly Rev. Jim Wallis...

Cygnus bubble detail_4m Mayall NOAO (1) Is the solar-system sized bubble in the Consellation Cygnus a planetary nebulae or could it be an "AC" or astroengineering construction, also known as a Dyson sphere, named after Freeman Dyson of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study who proposed the theory? Dyson's thought experiment suggested that in our search for advanced extraterrrestrial civilizations that Instead of radio signals we should look for spheres, which are artificial mega structures that enclose the orbit of a star, fabricated from the material of that solar system. The key is to distinguish a Dyson sphere from...

Dyson launches the bladeless electric fan By Paul Taylor Published: October 13 2009 00:09 | Last updated: October 13 2009 00:09 First there was the bagless vacuum cleaner, then the towel-less hand dryer: Now James Dyson, the British inventor, has developed a bladeless electric fan which goes on sale on Tuesday in the US and Australia. The Dyson Air Multiplier fan – which looks like something straight out of a sci-fi movie - uses advancements in airflow engineering instead of traditional blades to ‘multiply’ air 15 times and push out 119 gallons of smooth and uninterrupted air every second. As...

BBC Audio: Dyson and Clarke Will life spread out from Earth to flourish in the cosmos? Freeman Dyson has always supported the idea, and with great persuasiveness. BBC Four has created an archive of interviews on its Web site, among which is a clip of Dyson discussing life’s variety and the imperative of broadening its range. The theoretical physicist, who played an important role in the development of the ‘atomic spaceship’ concept called Project Orion, doesn’t believe man’s role is simply to send the occasional astronaut out in what he calls ‘a metal can’ to look out a window....

In their search for patterns, mathematicians have uncovered unlikely connections between prime numbers and quantum physics. Will the subatomic world help reveal the elusive nature of the primes?In 1972, the physicist Freeman Dyson wrote an article called "Missed Opportunities." In it, he describes how relativity could have been discovered many years before Einstein announced his findings if mathematicians in places like Göttingen had spoken to physicists who were poring over Maxwell's equations describing electromagnetism. The ingredients were there in 1865 to make the breakthrough—only announced by Einstein some 40 years later. It is striking that Dyson should have written about...

Bill Cosby spawned a cottage industry among opinion writers when he ascended a podium in Washington last year and harangued inner-city parents for doing too little to educate their children. He threw salt in the wound by saying those parents were spending too much on expensive sneakers and not enough on books. Those brief remarks have continued to reverberate through the court of public opinion. Conservatives are hailing Mr. Cosby as the tough love truth teller of the moment. Liberals have come close to describing him as a race traitor, as Prof. Michael Eric Dyson of the University of Pennsylvania...

QUESTIONS FOR MICHAEL ERIC DYSON Bill Cosby's Not Funny Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON Published: March 27, 2005 Q Your new book is a rhetorical screed against Bill Cosby, and the title alone is not exactly subtle: ''Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?'' When a comedian throws a pie in the face of a powerful person, it's funny. When he throws a pie in the face of a homeless mother with three kids, that's not very funny. You're referring to Cosby's recent harangue about lower-income black people, whom he faults for neglecting their children,...