Now that's an amphora I can get behind, literally.

#archaeology
#science

Are there any experts on General Relativity and Einstein-Cartan theory here? I have some technical questions

#physics
#cosmology

O-Ton Martin Luther
Ihm ging es wohl beim Übersetzen der Bibel nicht besser als so manchem zeitgenössischen Autor, und man kann sich vorstellen, dass er auf der Wartburg auch ziemlich an Bewegungsmangel litt...

TL;DR close encounter with large invasive pufferfish

So I came eye to eye with "the most dangerous fish in the mediterranean" (*) today, a pretty big specimen of Lagocephalus scleratus, I would estimate 55cm long. It's an invasive species of large pufferfish migrating from the tropics due to clinate change causing big problems. Very interesting behavior, the fellow was not the least bit afraid of anything, and almost mockingly swam up to me, and occasionally came up to the beach its body halfway out of the water to search for prey I suppose. If you're the most poisonous fish in the ocean (to eat, that is), with the biting force to cut metal, you can afford to be a bit cocky

(*) if you eat it, and to a lesser extent if you handle it

#wildlife #biology #ClimateChange

Should I stay or should I go now?

I will tell my children that this is Bob Ross
#physics

Beruhigend!

Where is this universal cereal bus I was promised?

itsy bitsy spider mating system

Eine ganz beachtliche Listspinne mit Gepäck im Dossenheimer Wald.

Ich habe jetzt mal das Paarungsritual auf Wikipedia geleaen und es ist so mit das Lustigste, was ich je diesbezüglich gesehen habe
#biologie
#animalphotography

Super weird collective movement of aphids on a stem in our yard. Have you ever seen this behavior?
#biology
#animalphotography

We are thinking a lot lately about the role of writing and the purpose or lack thereof of writing assignments in school, in the age of LLMs, in an age of purportedly diminishing reading and writing skills.

Anyway, time to repost this wonderfully provocative and irreverent talk/course on writing effectively which I find very relevant to the discussion, and especially to the question whether some assignments which became pointless in the age of AI maybe weren't all that useful before, either.
Watch it!

https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM

#writing #authors

#hamradio

p.s. The time will probably be between 12:00 and 14:00 CEST, and we will probably be using the special callsign

DF70UKW

celebrating our 70th UKW ham radio conference this year, so tune in, catch a picture and send us a report!

Preliminary #hamradio Announcement:

Balloon 70cm SSTV experiment on June 25 in Weinheim with special call DF70UKW

On June 25, we will, weather permitting, launch a weather balloon in Weinheim @DL0WH carrying student-built payloads.

Apart from LoRaWAN-experiments, we will test our prototype of an SSTV module transmitting live pictures on 70cm FM. We will announce the QRG(s) and SSTV Mode!

Stay tuned and tune in, send us a report!

Maudlin likes preferred foliations of spacetime in order to formulate quantum theory (i.e. the fact that there is a preferred local frame of reference is hidden by the dynamics such that things look Lorentz invariant, but really aren't at the foundation.

This has the wild consequence that in principle, there could be superluminal communication with respect to this frame without violating causality. As a Star Trek fan I find this prospect for SubSpace comms very neat, but - he then claims that there are traces of superluminal communication hidden even in relativistic QFT, ways to circumvent the space like field commutation relation [phi(x), phi(y)]=0 which ensures that there is no causation outside the light cone, via a conceptual loop hole, and THAT is far out. My interest is peaked to understand where this claim comes from precisely though I don't believe a word of it.

#physics

Nice discussion on the foundations of Quantum Mechanics with Tim Maudlin, I feel like Brian Greene has gotten better at #physics #scicomm

https://youtu.be/VbXEc9vpeIM

Here's my explanation of the usual mistake

"Apropos of recent events, here's the periodic reminder what "sigmas" mean for the probability of experimental results, because this is almost always presented wrong by popular texts and journalists "

https://astrodon.social/@quantensalat/114351902139431834

Watched three popular science interviews/talks and they all explained statistical "sigmas" backwards, and now I'm doubting my sanity.

#physics
#mathematics
#scicomm

Sometimes you come across things from different cultural circles that are just bizarre but intriguing.

Case in point, this TV concert from india which is somehow at the same time a Taj Mahal tea commercial, features some seriously pop- westernized sounding music, and has Madhuri Dixit as... an important person somehow, although the exact purpose of her presence eludes me. In any case, I love indian classical music, and.. am somehow fascinated by whatever this is. Maybe someone from the country can explain the format :)

https://youtu.be/nUs5SJyQPnM

#music
#classicalmusic

Question for #physics people, especially #physicsedu

It's a popular subject to talk about forms of energy and their conversion.

When you turn a crank to drive a generator, say, and between the crank and the generator there's a shaft.

What form of energy do we have in the shaft between crank and generator, and why? I'm having a discussion

1. what it is

2. what to call it in class