Famous Scientists

Perfect Numbers and our Tiny Universe

The Doc — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 14:16:51 +0000

The orders of magnitude spanned by perfect numbers reveal how few orders were required to build the observable universe from the Planck length upwards.

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What Happens when the Universe chooses its own Units?

The Doc — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 14:56:45 +0000

In 1874, George Johnstone Stoney dreamed of a new universal measuring system based on Nature itself. Further Reading Stephen Hawking Gravitationally collapsed objects of very low mass Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 152, p. 75. 1971 John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler The Anthropic Cosmological Principle Oxford University Press. March 1986 […]

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Hipparchus and the 2000 Year-Old Clue

The Doc — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 09:17:37 +0000

In 1870, Ernst Schroeder revealed the concept of Schröder numbers – his latest discovery. Nobody realized that two thousand years earlier, the greatest of ancient astronomers, Hipparchus, was already using these numbers. It took more than another century until a puzzling declaration by Plutarch was explained by David Hough, revealing an undreamed-of development in Ancient […]

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Darwin Pleaded for Cheaper Origin of Species

The Doc — Sun, 19 Apr 2020 04:14:23 +0000

In an age of desperately low wages for many working people, Charles Darwin pushed his publisher hard to cut the selling price of Origin of Species. Darwin had been moved by letters from workers who could not afford the book or who needed to pool their money to buy and share a single copy between […]

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You Will Die For Showing I’m Wrong!

The Doc — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 05:23:34 +0000

The wife of a leading scientist opened her mail one morning. She was shocked to find a threatening message saying that her husband wouldn’t live long enough to die in his bed: If your infernal thief of a husband is brought home… with every bone in his head smashed to a pulp, you will know […]

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