Your favorite Physics/Astrophysics blogs?

Question

What are the Physics/Astrophysics blogs you regularly read? I'm looking to beef up my RSS feeds to catch up with during my long commutes. I'd like to discover lesser-known gems (e.g. not well known blogs such as Cosmic Variance), possibly that are updated regularly and recently.

Since this is a list, give one entry per answer please. Feel free to post more than one answer.

Answer 1

The Reference Frame

it is the only one that is challenging.

Answer 2

John Baez's Stuff

It is more mathematics, but a lot of physics/mathematical physics related "stuff" also.

Answer 3

Cosmic Variance

Science, Technology, and The Future

NOTE It would be great if someone who knows the blog well would write a few words about it. Just give a little more detail of what it's about. 3 sentences is more than enough. This is community wiki, so most people can edit it freely.

Answer 4

Resonances

Another best place for detailed reports on new particle physics discoveries (and rumours)

Answer 5

My personal blog is

Arcsecond

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It's not exclusively physics. Since it's a personal blog, it's about whatever interests me at the moment. When I do write about physics, the level is usually undergraduate (since that's my education level). I usually update in irregular bursts.

Some example posts:

Physics

Viete's Formula and Spinning Pizza

Uses simple physics to derive Viete's Formula

$$\frac{2}{\pi} = \frac{\sqrt{2}}{2}\cdot\frac{\sqrt{2+\sqrt{2}}}{2}\cdot\frac{\sqrt{2+\sqrt{2+\sqrt{2}}}}{2}\cdots$$

Fucking Geomagnetism, How Does That Work?

Response to Cosmic Variance's essay on Insane Clown Posse's "Miracles" video.

Bounce, part 2

Why won't a ball bounce higher than it's dropped?

Math

The Power Tower

What is $\sqrt{2}$ taken to the power of itself, over and over?

Answer, Lemming

A very cute puzzle from Ravi Vakil's "A Mathematical Mosaic".

Memoir

Why I Rode a Bicycle 200 Miles The Other Day

Pulse

Essay

'Simple' Isn't 'Easy'

Humor

Have You Ever Noticed A Panda Is Just a Fat, Slow Zebra?

Why I Don't Drink Soda

A Review of Reviews of Racism and a Very Sexy Reimagining

Comic

Sine Error: Spare Me

Sine Error: Tricked You!

Answer 6

US LHC Blogs

A number of US scientists who work on the LHC explain various topics in physics. One particularly good series of posts is titled "Let's Draw Feynman diagrams!"

Answer 7

Uncertain Principles

Chad Orzel is awesome. Good stuff on AMO and sci-fi.

Answer 8

A Quantum Diaries Survivor

The best place for detailed reports on new particle physics discoveries (and rumours)

Answer 9

Ellipsix Informatics

Since a few other people have posted their own blogs, I thought it wouldn't be inappropriate for me to do the same. This is my personal website, not a dedicated physics blog, but the posts I make about physics and/or information technology are the current "main attraction." The posts are based on whatever I happen to be thinking about when I have time to write something. Mostly I like to focus on applications of physics to everyday life (i.e. situations that would arise outside a lab).

Probably the best posts are the ones about Mythbusters episodes, e.g.

• http://www.ellipsix.net/blog/2010/12/death-rays-and-thermal-radiation.html
• http://www.ellipsix.net/blog/2010/04/calculating-terminal-speed.html
• http://www.ellipsix.net/blog/2010/01/bouncing-bullets.html

I also have an associated Twitter account where I post assorted physics/astronomy-related links.

https://twitter.com/ellipsix

Answer 10

Dot Physics

This deals with popular topics from the perspective of an actual physicist (so, a lot of rants about instances when non-specialists get things wrong, and occasionally praise for when they get it right). It won't strain your brain, but I always find the posts to be fun to read, and pretty insightful.

Answer 11

Starts With a Bang

Similar in tone and style to Cosmic Variance with entertaining in-depth posts on various subjects in astrophysics and cosmology, including an excellent 8 part series on the history of the universe called "The Greatest Story Ever Told"

Answer 12

Ars Physica

Although mostly in brazilian portuguese (pt_BR — even though in the days of Google Translate i don't know how big a problem this actually represents ;-), it's a collective effort including high energy theorists and experimentalists, condensed matter theorists, and neuroscientists.

So, the topic selection is quite varied, and so is the level of presentation: from popularization pieces all the way to full fledged research.

Answer 13

The Hammock Physicist

Ok, time for some shameless self-promotion:

Like most science blogs, this blog focuses on an interested lay audience. I try to explain common misunderstandings, often by elucidating the physics with simple models and (animated) visuals. See for instance 'Fibonacci Chaos', 'God, Godel, Gravity' and 'Less Is More'.

Answer 14

AstroBetter

Tips and Tricks for Professional Astronomers

Answer 15

Symmetry Breaking

an excellent general physics blog created by Fermilab and SLAC.

Answer 16

The Big Blog Theory

This is the blog of UCLA physicist David Saltzberg, who is the scientific advisor to the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory. The science (derived from the episodes) is simple. But you still can find some interesting stuff.

Answer 17

Skulls in the Stars

Exceptional for its extremely clear, basic-level introductions to phenomena in optics I would otherwise never have heard of, and for interesting historical posts resulting from digging around in the archives of old journals and scientists' personal letters.

Answer 18

Astronomy Cast

this is actually a podcast, not a blog, but it is still fantastic. Two hosts, one a blogger, one an astrophysics go over various topics in astronomy, physics and cosmology. I particularly liked the "History of Astronomy" series, but the posts on current discoveries are just as good.

Answer 19

Cocktail Party Physics

Jennifer Ouellette, spousal unit of Sean Carroll, organized this and has some of her female friends writing guest blogs on rotation. The topics are mostly physics with a discursive and historical slant, and are at popular level. Jennifer is an intelligent English major who writes science well. I threw this in both because the writing is good, but also hopefully to attract more females to physics stack. Now that I have disclosed my motivation, my real favorite blog has to be The Reference Frame for its virtuoso physics improvisations by Lubos.

Answer 20

Condensed Concepts is a great blog, and the only one I've found that deals with Condensed Matter Physics directly. I would be interested to hear if there are others.

Answer 21

Of Particular Significance

Matt Strassler's blog on particle physics. This is aimed at being accessible to the public, but he incorporates a lot of graphs and a decent amount of technical detail. The site gets updated almost daily with either general articles about particle physics, or news of recent developments.

Answer 22

Why I hate physics
Congratulations Marty Green.
Give me (us) more, pls.

Answer 23

Technology Review, arXiv blog

The newest and most interesting posting from arXiv with summary and figures.

Answer 24

Phys.org

It's specific but easy to read.

Answer 25

OUTRA FISICA

It is the end of the Dark Era of Cosmology. The author’s model is awesome and presents a challenge to our presumed knowledge. Using ‘Plain Old physics’ ;-) he reveals a complete different History of the Universe.

Space expansion? Big Bang? Dark Energy? Dark Matter? No thanks.

I read it in chronological order with google chrome, and reader, directly from Portuguese language (Chrome can translate to you).

To ease the entry I present here an ad-hoc translation of the first and the last posts (Creative Commons BY-NC Attribution-NonCommercial).

First post (Presentation):

Another Physics

Relativity and beyond. . ., unheard theories, fantastic ideas ,give birth to a new understanding of the Universe. Light rays of dawn will shine reflections of Future in the reborn eyes of four friends.

Presentation

Mainly using the format of a conversation between four characters, I will try to present in language accessible to people without scientific training the essentials of the Theoryof Special Relativity and continue the line of thought of a specific group of scientists,including Poincaré, Einstein, Lorentz and Fitzgerald.

This path is different from that initiated by Minkowsky that led to the current Physics. The seemingly small initial differences lead to concepts as diverse as the universe of Copernicus was different from that of Ptolemy.

There is also a profound difference in the methodological process. While the actual physics follows the simple methodology of Ptolemy (developing mathematical models on top of the observed data as obtained) here follow the methodology of Galileo (creating logically related models).

Let me introduce you the characters:

George and Ann are two characters in mystery, because George has the knowledge of the Another Physics, Anna has a role that transcends this blog. Mario is a scientist with broad range of knowledge and open-minded to examine the ideas of George. Louise represents people whose education does not belong to science and technology.

last post (abstract of a foundational paper to be ;-)

Generalizing Relativity Principle to Comoving Coordinates allows the fitting of cosmic data with no dark matter or dark energy The standard space expansion model considers two kinds of coordinates: the atomic coordinates, where the validity of the Relativity Principle is established, having the length unit defined from atomic properties, and the comoving coordinates, where space expansion is null. In atomic coordinates Space expands, in comoving ones Matter decreases, evanesces. In this work, as there is no observational evidence indicating that one of these coordinate systems should be any better at supporting physical laws, we postulate that Relativity Principle must hold in both systems. From this postulate we derive a model that fits both cosmic and local data with the same physical laws, needing no new parameters besides Hubble constant, namely no dark matter or dark energy. We also extend the generalization of the Relativity Principle to a more general, new kind of coordinates - the Field coordinates – of which the atomic and the comoving systems are just two particular cases. The generalization of the Relativity Principle presented here does not conflict with established theories, namely Special or General Relativity. It is presented a prediction that can be experimentally tested: an acceleration component in the rotation of isolated bodies. New results are obtained, such as the long-term evolution of Earth temperature.