Ecosystems are complex networks of interacting and interdependent species. These could be predator-prey interactions (who eats whom), symbiotic interactions (co-habitation with mutual benefits), accommodating interactions (this tree provides nest space for that bird), and so on. Healthy ecosystems[…]
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Intro to a new article series aiming to stimulate a reconnection with our natural world.
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My yearly update on global earthquake statistics.
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Last 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[…]
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Having 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!
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In 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[…]
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Had 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[…]
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One 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[…]
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Kurt 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[…]
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What’s in a name…
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A beautiful sunset (and moonrise) in Millstatt, Carinthia, Austria.
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This 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[…]
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My 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[…]
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I’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[…]
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On 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[…]
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The unresolvable error.
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The graves of greats…
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Theresa’s Brexit dance…
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A 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[…]
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Crime alert: theft of bicycle
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A “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[…]
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Lost in translation (once more…)
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Predator publishers vs. beautiful birds.
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Two 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[…]
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My 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[…]
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