Physics Buzz

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? —William Blake, The Tyger Evariste Galois is perhaps one of the most romantic figures in mathematics. While still in school, he sent his great breakthrough in geometry to established Parisian mathematicians; unfortunately, the breakthrough was written out in such an ungodly scrawl that the wise men had no idea what to make of it. By the age of twenty, he was languishing in prison for his revolutionary acts (political, this time); with cholera threatening, he and other prisoners were sent to a clinic where he fell in unrequited love with a doctor's daughter. Then, on May 30, 1832, he died of a wound from a gunshot fired in a duel that arose under murky circumstances. The night before, realizing that he might not have another chance, Galois did some major cramming. He gave his best shot at explaining his ideas about geometry in the clearest language he could mu

Physicist Josh Silver's specs may look retro, but they can change lives. Back in July, I wrote about the 2009 TED Global Conference , held at Oxford. The Global Conference is a sort of carnival of ideas, with talks and presentations by by great thinkers of every stripe, from storytellers to designers, anthropologists to physicists, and videos of this years talks have started to trickle onto TED's online archive. Physicists, of course, were well-represented among the ranks of TED speakers, but when Oxford prof Joshua Silver took the stage, the audiences weren't in for the usual science lecture. Silver is an atomic physicist, but lately he's been obsessed with optics; not because he wants to design an invisibility cloak or improve high-speed communication, but because he wants to address a very important problem for the world: bad vision. As Silver points out in his talk , glasses, contact lenses, and even laser eye surgery are facts of life for about half the peopl

The hallowed halls of Oxford University have been echoing with even more good ideas than usual lately. Last week the venerable institution hosted the 2009 TED Global Conference . A sort of variety show for the mind, the conference featured talks by innovators, thinkers, musicians, artists, architects, scientists, and even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (warning before you click: his talk is about pretty tough stuff, and includes photos from war zones in the first few minutes.) If you haven't heard of TED, go right to the website . There you can find videos of talks by anyone from famed primatologist Jane Goodall to engaging string theorist Brian Greene, and former UN director Louise Fresco to aspiring millennium man Ray Kurzweil . The brainchild of WIRED editor-in-chief Chris Anderson , TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. It's like a mini-YouTube for the most daring, unusual, thought-provoking ideas (and thinkers) out there. Think of it like the Ha