A pictorial explanation by Wandering Wim and Stumbling Stu.
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A pictorial explanation by Wandering Wim and Stumbling Stu.
Read moreNo, there still is no evidence for a sustained increase in number of earthquakes in the recent past…
Read more50 years ago, in 1971, Stuart Kauffman published his initial ideas on autocatalytic sets. A look back…
Read more250 years ago this month, Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, but lived in Vienna most of his life. Here is a photographic & historical exploration of his time in Vienna.
Read moreA nice sunset over the Bodensee, as watched from Bregenz.
Read moreA formal proof that my Erdős number is equal to 3.
Read moreNow that you know why sunsets are red, here are some impressions of a gorgeous one I witnessed recently.
Read moreWhat is it that turns everything red during a sunset? Here’s the answer…
Read moreMy yearly update on global earthquake statistics.
Read moreLast August I presented a brief (12min) talk about the history of research on autocatalytic sets, a concept originally introduced by Stuart Kauffman. This talk was presented during the Stufest, a 2-day workshop held at the Santa Fe[…]
Read moreHaving a bit of a cold this weekend, and didn’t have the energy to do anything more useful. So I created this fun and colorful Mandelbrot zoom. Enjoy!
Read moreIn Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, the key phrase is “survival of the fittest”: those organisms that are best fit to carry out the tasks of living in their world are the ones that survive. But[…]
Read moreHad a cloudy afternoon to spare in Como, Italy. As it turns out, this is the home town of Alessandro Volta (1745-1827), the famous Italian scientist who invented the electric battery, and after whom the unit of electric[…]
Read moreOne of the main reasons evolution can be difficult to grasp, or even accept, is the time scales involved. Biological evolution does usually not occur right in front of our eyes (other than in laboratory experiments), but happens over[…]
Read moreKurt Gödel was one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century. He made many important contributions to mathematical logic and philosophy, but is best known for his incompleteness theorems. Loosely speaking, the theorem states that the dream[…]
Read moreA beautiful sunset (and moonrise) in Millstatt, Carinthia, Austria.
Read moreThis year we celebrate Stuart Kauffman’s 80th birthday. Kauffman was one of the early proponents of the view that the complexity we see in biological systems is not necessarily a consequence of natural selection alone, but could result[…]
Read moreMy 3-part series of popular science articles on the history of origin of life research has been published in ORBITER magazine. Part 1 presents a “pre-history” of how the origin of life became a real scientific problem in[…]
Read moreI’m staying in a little village called Lackenberg, to do some hiking in the area. After arriving, I walked around a bit in and around the village, and then watched a beautiful sunset from the balcony of my[…]
Read moreOn Tuesday 16 July, 2019, there was a partial lunar eclipse visible from most of Europe. I decided to spend the night in a hut halfway up a mountain near Vienna to watch this eclipse, and invited some[…]
Read moreA particular mathematical relationship known as a power law has been observed in many day-to-day situations, from the frequencies in which words are used in natural languages to the connectivity distribution in Facebook friendship networks. As it turns[…]
Read moreA “supermoon” happens when a full moon occurs around the same time that the moon is at its closest point to the earth (perigee) in its elliptical orbit around our planet. This means that the full moon will[…]
Read moreTwo years ago I published an article in Plus magazine debunking claims buzzing around on the internet about a supposed recent increase in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and so on. In that article I showed in detail how[…]
Read moreMy good friend Charles Tichenor has been playing the piano since he was a little kid. And he’s still going at it tirelessly at his weekly Chat Noir Cabaret show at the Los Magueyes Mexican restaurant on Burro[…]
Read moreAnother spectacular sunset viewed from the Fort Marcy Park in Santa Fe. Click each pick for a full size view!!
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