ResearchBlogging.org News

Sarah Kendrew selects interesting and notable ResearchBlogging.org posts in the physical sciences, chemistry, engineering, computer science, geosciences and mathematics. She blogs about astronomy at One Small Step.

As I missed another Monday posting because of travels, here are some great posts from the last couple of weeks in the physical sciences.

The Herschel Space Observatory, launched in 2009, continues to produce exciting new results in astronomy. Kelly Oakes discusses the paper reporting the first detection of molecular oxygen in space. The signature of the elusive O2 molecule was at last detected in one of the most amazing nearby star forming complexes in Orion.

Natural disasters have a way of setting the world in motion in surprising ways. The earthquake that shook Northern Japan earlier this year was no exception. On Science as Culture, Greg Laden describes the processes that led to the calving of giant sheets of ice from an Antarctic ice shelf, thousands of miles away, as a result of the tsunami that swept across the Pacific Ocean after the quake.

Are we all addicted to our browsers? In a recent post, Dr Shock makes a good case against the phenomenon of internet addiction. With the aid of a recent systematic review looking at treatments of the supposed condition, he raises some good questions on the way it is discussed in the literature.

The stellar potential of graphene is rarely out of the news these days, and graphene research seems to have a quirky streak.  A couple of weeks ago, physicists reported that they can now create graphene from cookies and dog poo (amongst other things). On Electron Cafe, Paul Vallett talks about this new work with nice illustrations and video.

Thanks for the great posts, and I’ll be back next week with more selections.