- Who is your archnemesis and how to deal with him/her?
- Earth’s early atmosphere could have produced chemicals necessary for life—contradicting the view that life’s building blocks had to come from comets and meteors.
- On some precision experiments that would drive most people bonkers
- A concept that is common to nanoscale physics and high energy physics — process suppression due to lack of available states.
- On the myth of Darwin’s delayed publication:
There are plenty of these myths in the history of biology. One of the longer lasting ones, although it turns out to be a late arrival, is the myth that Darwin didn’t publish for 20 years, from 1839 when he first conceived of evolution, to 1859, because he was afraid or worried about how his theory would be received.Now John van Whye, who is the fellow responsible for putting Darwin’s works entirely online (apart from the second edition of the Descent, but I live in hope), has published a very nice paper [PDF] re-examining this myth. He concludes that it is false, and that reading Darwin’s letters, notes and published works afresh gives no reason to think there was such a delay. Instead, says van Whye, Darwin sketched out a plan of work that he stuck to pretty closely thereafter.
- Are undergrad labs really essential for learning science?
Have fun!
