Author Archives: Luc Beaulieu

Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarisation telescope in Antarctica found first direct evidence of cosmic inflation

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In case you have missed it, an official announcement of the experimental detection of gravitational waves were experimentally was made yesterday by the BICEP2 collaboration. Press release by the Havard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics can be found here and further coverage here.

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A very interesting video explaining the phenomena can be found here on the Space Travel Foundation Blog.

One of the great thing about a scientific theories and models is that not only should it be able to explain one or more known phenomena but it should be able to have some predictive components (which allows to prove or disprove the model/theory!). The detected waves are part of the predictions made by the inflationary model. While the absence of the waves would mean that the theory is wrong (in part or completely), the experimental observation (if confirmed) is a vindication of the model.

To be followed but extremely exciting.

The World Wide Web is turning 25 this week

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Wired magazine is running a piece on Tim Berners-Lee and his view 25 years later. You will further find his thought on decentralization, openness, privacy and so on. As a bonus a series of 10 comments by experts. Nice read!

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3D printing, the ultimate gadget for grown-up kids

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“Tea. Earl Grey. Hot” — Picard in ST:TNG

star-trek-replicator

…Oops in the title, I meant serious scientists, of course 😉 The first time I saw a 3D printer under 10000$ in action, I told myself they were right again, “they” meaning Star Trek.

Almost a year ago, we bought a MakerBot Replicator 2 for our research group. Our interest was to be able to do fast prototyping, quickly create small pieces, adaptors and so on. It certainly change the way approach our laboratory experiments, more importantly we do not have to go to machine shop until we have a much better idea of what work and what doesn’t. We were even able to start exploring way 3D printing could change one our field of applications (brachytherapy, if you need to know!). We also found out that printing with PLA resulted in much more sturdy and better print quality than ABS plastic.

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3D printing is a game changer not only in scientific research and engineering but also in medicine, where application in dentistry and organ printing, liver was even predicted in 2014! Of course you can find this great talk about 3D printing and airplane or 3D printing in space.

However, 3D printing will become mainstream technology very quickly. Already, cheap 3D printers can be bought in Staples. The biggest news, to me, is that public libraries are about to make3D printing accessible to… the public. The Toronto public library has made such announcement recently: 5 cents a minute, maximum of 2 hours of printing time. Of course, this bring a fairly good number of questions regarding intellectual properties. For instance, you could print your own Lego-like blocks at home; the raw material costs about 40$ per Kg. If you type in Google “3D printer and IP”, you will get thousands of hits.

If you need a good primer on 3D printing technology, Wikipedia has a very nice one.

PhD thesis examination: you are the expert, behave like one!

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An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.

– Niels Bohr

Quite interestingly graduate studies usually take about 5 years total in order to obtain a PhD. It can sometimes be one year less or one or a few years over (too long is usually not seen as a good sign however). Assuming that this is basically your full time occupation, have you notice that at the end of this time frame, you will have reached about 10000 hours of dedicate training in your field.

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The status of science… 450 years after Galileo!

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“A quarter of American adults do not know that the Earth goes round the sun. Half think that antibiotics kill viruses and almost as many believe electrons are larger than atoms” Stephen Luntz – I Fucking Love Science.

In an earlier post, I reported that a majority of young adult in the US thought that astrology was a science. Similar numbers and others can be found in a biennial survey from the USA National Science Foundation. A round up can also be found here, with link to the said survey and a link to the Science and Engineering Indicators.

Meanwhile the 450th anniversary of the birth of Galileo, who was persecuted for something that is now proven without the shadow of a doubt (for those who may wonder, I refer you to the first sentence of the quoted text above 😉 ), was just a few days ago.