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McCain made a blunder when he cited the “overhead projector” at Adler Planetarium in Chicago in Tuesday night’s debate as a 3 million dollar pork barrel earmark project. Actually the overhead projector he referred to is the Sky Theater, which fans call “one of the most engrossing, gorgeous venues for displaying visuals about space.”

According to the news story, the Adler Planetarium has issued a wonderful statement correcting McCain:

“To clarify, the Adler Planetarium requested federal support — which was not funded — to replace the projector in its historic Sky Theater, the first planetarium theater in the Western Hemisphere…. To remain competitive and ensure national security, it is vital that we educate and inspire the next generation of explorers to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math.”

If you want to help ensure national security, support the Adler.

Hubble Finds Unidentified Object in Space, Scientists Puzzled.

Although CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has been getting a lot of press recently, I didn’t really understand what its purpose was until I watched this stunning explanation by Brian Cox. Listening to Cox’s elegant and simple explanation of the universe as we know it made me feel an almost overwhelming sense of wonder and amazement that I am alive, and that I am sharing this incredible experience with all of you. Not bad for a fifteen minute video. Go make some tea, and watch this. You may want to have a loved one present.

Although it is possible that the LHC will find nothing, it will have been a noble effort to test the theories articulated by the world’s greatest scientists, so even its failure will be a seismic event. I sincerely hope they find a Higgs particle, though. The idea of replicating conditions as they existed a trillionth of a second after the big bang is, well, enormous.

Meanwhile, help CERN come up with a sexier name for the LHC. Particle physics are now officially cool.

oh, and god bless the hydrogen atom.

Great webcam at the Large Hadron Collider.

You may have seen this, but if you needed any other reason to applaud the forward march of scientific progress, read the top 10 scientific breakthroughs of 2007.

“The problem for the producers is that even though diamonds are not all that rare, people believe they are, so their price is substantially inflated.”

– from a great article on the rising appeal and influence of manufactured diamonds, many of which are utterly indistinguishable from the real thing.

We’ve just got to give newly-discovered plant and animal species all the media attention they can get. Introducing the top ten new species of life discovered in 2007.

from Teach the Controversy

science is cool.