January 2011
6 posts
New theories reveal the nature of numbers →
This feels like it should be exciting, but is also frustratingly above my head. What can be gleaned from press releases is this: a partition of a number is simply a way of writing it as a sum. So, 4 = 3+1 = 2+2 = 2+1+1 = 1+1+1+1, which means that the number 4 has 5 partitions. But the number of partitions grows very rapidly. By the time we’re at 100, the number is more than 190 million....
Jellyfish Are the Dark Energy of the Oceans →
It’s relatively common in science for a specific effect to be assigned a conventional cause, only for further measurements and calculations to find that the conventional cause can’t account fully for the effect. Far from being cause for panic, this is really a fantastic opportunity to discover exciting new facts about the world. For example, the conventional explanation for why the...
Infrasound →
Infrasound is sound with frequencies below the hearing range, generally below 20 Hz. Sounds in this range generally can’t be heard by humans, but they can reportedly be felt. Symptoms associated with infrasound include anxiety, fear, chills, sadness, a general feeling of oppression. These symptoms are suspiciously close to what people report experiencing in “haunted” places,...
