Tag archives: Facebook poll

By Hamish Johnston

German words in the physicist’s lexicon. (Image by Mathew Ward)

Like many disciplines, physics incorporates words from a number of different languages – and this can often leave a physicist tongue-tied.

How should a native English speaker pronounce Einstein, for example? Should it be the Germanic “Ein-shtein” or the anglicized “Ein-stein”? How should one say De Broglie, Raman or Bernoulli? Should a native English speaker even attempt zitterbewegung, or translate it to “trembling motion”?

I’m sure that some physics terms of English origin are tricky for native speakers of other languages, and their pronunciations are sometimes adjusted accordingly.

Some believe that making an effort to use the original pronunciation shows respect and knowledge of the origin of a word. Others are happy to use the pronunciation they are most comfortable with.

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By James Dacey

Do you agree with the principle of academic boycotts?

Yes
No

Have your say by taking part in this week’s Facebook poll. As always, please feel free to explain your answer by posting a comment on Facebook or below this article.

This question has arisen after it was revealed yesterday that Stephen Hawking will be boycotting a prominent conference in Jerusalem in protest against the policies of the Israeli government. The British cosmologist and science communicator had been set to talk at the Israeli Presidential Conference: Facing Tomorrow, which will take place in June and which will feature a string of high-profile speakers, including Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. But the University of Cambridge has confirmed that Hawking, who is director of research at its Centre for Theoretical Cosmology, has pulled out of the conference for political reasons. Physics World has spoken to a university spokesperson who confirmed that Hawking has sent a letter to the conference organizers to explain his decision not to take part. The UK newspaper the Guardian has today published what it says is the full text of this letter, dated 3 May.

“I accepted the invitation to the Presidential Conference with the intention that this would not only allow me to express my opinion on the prospects for a peace settlement but also because it would allow me to lecture on the West Bank. However, I have received a number of e-mails from Palestinian academics. They are unanimous that I should respect the boycott. In view of this, I must withdraw from the conference. Had I attended, I would have stated my opinion that the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster.”

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By James Dacey

Physics World film shoot at MIT Media Lab.

The proliferation of online video in recent years has triggered tidal waves of content across the globe. As well as all the dancing cats and piano-playing dogs, it has brought new opportunities for journalists to tell stories in more visual and personal ways.

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By James Dacey

Comparing apples and oranges. (Courtesy: iStockphoto/Raymond Gregory)

In an opinion article just published on this website, the historian and philosopher Robert Crease discusses the pitfalls when trying to measure the “value” of artefacts in culture and society. The article was inspired by an appearance Crease made at a group debate at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. The panel were trying to identify ways to measure the museum’s impact on culture and the wider economy.

Crease refers to something known as Goodhart’s law, which he explains as follows.

“Named after the British economist Charles Goodhart, who devised it in 1975, the law essentially says that once a measure is chosen for making policy decisions, it begins to lose value as a measure. Goodhart applied it to banking policy, but in other fields, too, measurement can distort not only the practice being measured, but also perception of the goal.”

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By James Dacey

Whether you love giving them or loathe the entire experience, everyone has to deliver a presentation at some point during an academic career – be they student or professional researcher. It might be the presentation of your results to supervisors and peers. Or it might be an outreach talk to explain your research to people who have probably never heard of you or your very interesting academic niche. There is no magic formula to giving a successful presentation, but instinctively I think we all know when it’s gone well. Likewise, I think we all know when we could have spent a bit more time whipping those slides into shape, or when we perhaps should have put a bit more thought into the appropriateness of that risqué joke.

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By Tushna Commissariat

An artist’s impression of one of the most distant and brightest quasars ever seen. (Courtesy: NASA)

This week marks 50 years since astronomer Maarten Schmidt’s discovery of the quasar, using the giant Palomar Observatory telescope. Quasars or quasi-stellar objects are a kind of active galactic nucleus that astronomers believe are powered by supermassive black holes and are scattered throughout the universe. They have always fascinated me, being some of the brightest, most distant and highly red-shifted astronomical objects in our universe. Over the years, thousands of quasars have been identified and they have dramatically influenced our ideas about the scale of the observable universe and have helped astronomers shed some light on the early universe.

In fact, just this week an international team of researchers announced the discovery of an extremely rare triple quasar system – only the second one observed to date. These systems are considered to be extremely rare and are difficult to spot. By combining multiple telescope observations and advanced modelling, the team – led by Emanuele Farina of the University of Insubria in Como, Italy – was able to discover the triplet quasar, called QQQ J1519+0627. The researchers say that light from the quasars has travelled nine billion light-years to reach us, meaning that it was emitted when the universe was only a third of its current age. Advanced analysis confirmed that what the team found was indeed three distinct sources of quasar energy and that the phenomenon is extremely rare.

So in light of these exciting findings, in this week’s Facebook poll we are asking you to pick your favourite astronomical objects.

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