'Foundations of science' Category
Everybody loves a Beagle!
The Beagle Project is an effort to build a replica of the HMS Beagle, the ship that took Charles Darwin on his famous voyage of discovery from 1831 to 1836.
Episode 8 — General Relativity
Now that we have some of the preliminaries out of the way, it’s time to take a quick look at General Relativity. Fortunately for the physics impared, it’s actually a bit easier to get your head around than is Special Relativity — and you get black holes, the big bang, and gravitational lensing in the bargain!
Episode 6 — Special Relativity
So, you may be asking, what’s so darned special about relativity? Well, it’s just the foundation of modern physics — and then, there’s that little E=mc2 thing. At the very least, as preparation for some future episodes, you’ll need a little background in modern physics. If you’re new to the podcast, you’ll want to check out episode 4 (Physics: A Brief History) first, just to put this in context with its historical predecessors….
Episode 5 — Meet the Neanderthals
As a prelude to some episodes on human evolution and our historical relatives, I thought it would be helpful to start out with a bit of history. So this episode is devoted to the history of Neanderthal discoveries, and how those discoveries were viewed culturally….
Episode 4 — Physics: A Brief History
In future episodes, I’ll be discussing various turning points in our understanding of the universe around us — so it made sense to me to start with a little historical context. This episode is an overview of the history of physics, at a very high level so I can get through everything (at least briefly) in under half an hour…
