Marcus Wilson • Oct 21, 2013 •
A highlight of the recent NZ Institute of Physics conference was the Dan Walls medal talk given by Matt Visser. Matt has been working on general relativity. That's not desparately unusual for a physicist, but Matt has been successful in working on some of the crazier aspects of relativity and getting it published - wormholes, dumb holes … Read More
Marcus Wilson • Oct 09, 2013 •
....Well, what do you think? No surprises this year. Francois Englert and Peter Higgs have been awarded this year's Nobel Prize in physics for the theoretical 'discovery' of the Higgs mechanism. The citation, however, I find very interesting: for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of … Read More
Marcus Wilson • Nov 13, 2012 •
An interesting problem to ask students to think about is this: Write down a definition of 'left' (as in the opposite of right). It's something every adult knows, but how do you define it. There's little wonder that children take a long time to grasp wh... Read More
Marcus Wilson • Sep 11, 2012 •
A few months ago I agreed to do a physics talk for the Hamilton Junior Naturalists (Junats). When pushed for a title I decided on the Large Hadron Collider and the Higgs Boson. Hmm. How does one go about explaining the Higgs Boson to an 11 year old? (I... Read More
Marcus Wilson • Aug 24, 2012 •
On Monday evening this week I managed to do a bit of time travelling while driving back home. I was driving back through one of those heavy showers that have been marauding around the place recently, with windscreen wipers full pelt on a rather wet roa... Read More
Peter Griffin • Jul 05, 2012 •
Marcus Wilson • Feb 23, 2012 •
Breaking news...(ish)...Well, only a few hours old...Maybe the faster-than-light neutrinos are caused by a dodgy connection.Einstein can sleep easy again. … Read More
Marcus Wilson • Feb 21, 2012 •
This morning I was over in Tauranga giving a talk to the Continuing Education group (i.e. 'older' people) on the CERN - Gran Sasso neutrino experiment. (For those interested, you should be able to download the full paper on this work here.) My philosophy is that no piece of work is too difficult to explain to … Read More
Marcus Wilson • Dec 14, 2011 •
Well, CERN was certainly twittering away last night, though, to be fair, I'm glad I didn't stay up for the press conference. Some things are worth trading in your sleep for, such as an eclipse of the moon (occasionally) or other astronomical event, an Ashes test, a Royal Wedding (just about), but, I'm afraid, not a seminar on … Read More
Marcus Wilson • Nov 21, 2011 •
Reading opinion polls in the papers tends to cause despair and hilarity in roughly equal measure. Despair, not because my current favourite party might be nose-diving in the polls, rather because of the journalists scant regard for statistics, and hilarity for the way a story is built up where no story exists.A really, really rough understanding of statistics is all … Read More