Not bad this evening.

It's no reflection on the book, which I'm enjoying, but I can't believe I just read 'I took a different tact'. Editors & copy editors: where were you? Publishing today, grumble grumble.

Award Jeremy Vine On 5 an IgNobel prize for the absolute worst item on the Higgs boson. All based on falsehood that HB creats our MASS. It does not! Bulk mass is due to kinetic energy of quarks trapped in the nucleus; the HB gives mass to the puny electron. It gives SIZE to atoms.

Material Witness: Special delivery Philip Ball go.nature.com/4aMMcAK

What happens when quantum physics and fluid dynamics collide? Philip Ball investigates the slippery behaviour of 'quantum friction' at the nanoscale
ow.ly/PyYA50Rbxo5

Review of ‘Quantum Drama’ by Philip Ball : ‘I have never read a better account: balanced, authoritative, and spiced with elegant wit’. physicsworld.com/a/entangled-en…

There were of course others who also solved the mass mystery but only Higgs drew attention to the massive boson, but for which we would be hard pressed (unable?) to have confirmed the theory.

My obituary of Peter Higgs in his favourite newspaper theguardian.com/science/2024/a…

RIP to a shy, brilliant man who shunned publicity. Read Frank Close's biography of him (amazon.com/Elusive-Peter-…) for an intimate view of what made him tick. bbc.co.uk/news/science-e…

What is quantum friction, and what can we do with it? My latest article for Physics World
physicsworld.com/a/meet-the-qua…

Great jumping chiral crystals!
My latest column for Chemistry World
chemistryworld.com/opinion/heated…

Yay! This'll be good.

Tim posed some tough questions - which is precisely why this interview was so rewarding, for me anyway.

This is merciless Tim. But I'm happy to say that I did find an answer that I felt OK with, after some reflection. And when I posted the question here, I got various answers, mostly confidently, and with no consensus at all between them.

#OTD 1913: Niels Bohr's groundbreaking 'On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules' was submitted. Modern atomic physics could be said to have begun with this paper when Bohr proposed that Planck's constant and quantization are a necessary component of the structure of matter.

This book is really very good and I recommend that you do as Tom suggests.

This is very kind, but naturally I'd be inclined to agree.

💭At what levels does causation happen in biology? Are metaphors are useful for understanding biology?💭

📖 In this episode, we talk with Phil Ball, a science writer who was also an editor for the journal Nature for over 20 years. …(1/3)