Einstein and Feynman were both nobel prize winners and Hawkins has Sir Isaac Newton's mathematics chair - we probably shouldn't downplay their achievements!

Carl Sagan was on the slippery slope. He certainly did some good science - but he's hardly up there with the previous three. Tyson has a few decent papers to his name, and his career isn't over yet - but I don't think he's coming close to the others in terms of science achievements.

Einstein was the world's worst communicator. Feynman and Hawkins are better - Sagan was astounding and Tyson may be yet better.

I suppose we might be concerned that there is a pattern here. We're taking people who are better communicators in preference to those who really know their stuff.

But honestly, does it matter? The presenter of a show reads from a script - (s)he is basically an actor. If the author of the script sticks to an accurate portrayal of what's written by the hard-core scientists - then why not pick an engaging personality to present it to us?

The critical part of the cycle is the person who decides WHICH science gets discussed. De Grasse Tyson is often talking about tacheons, wormholes and white holes and other claptrap that's horribly speculative, wildly unusupported, and very probably untrue. As an astrophysicist, he should know better - but as a TV presenter, he does a reasonable job of reading the script.

I'd prefer to have a complete non-scientist who is a supreme communicator be given a script written by good script writers from material handed to them by the hard core scientists behind the scenes - than to rely on a lower-tier scientist (or a high-tier scientist with poor communications skills) to do the entire job.

    -- Steve

You have that a little wrong. God *can* (in principle) be proven. If the sky breaks open, choirs of angels break forth, a 10km-long arm reaches down from the skies and an 8km golden-haired, bearded face looks down upon humanity and utters words of unshakable truth...then God is proven.

God cannot, however, be DISproven. It's an unfalsifiable hypothesis. So, you're right, science cannot ever say, definitively, that god doesn't exist. It also can't disprove the hypothesis that the universe was created by an invisible pink unicorn...or any other random idea that humans might come up with that entails a literally omnipotent/omniscient being.

But that COMPLETELY misses what this is all about. The original WSJ article is a non-scientist claiming that science has indeed proven the existence of god. That's quite clearly incorrect...and I think you'd have to look very hard to find a competent scientist in the fields involved who'd agree with that claim. So WSJ (essentially) published something that's completely untrue, incorrect, misleading - just plain *WRONG*...and journalistic integrity says that they should now be working very hard to fix that...not rejecting a perfectly sensible response from someone who knows exactly what he's talking about.

So bad on WSJ...and at least we can make that badness clear by discussing it here.

When you publish something controversial (which the original article most certainly was) and take the word of someone who is self-evidently not an expert in the field about which he's writing - you really have to do one of two things:

a) Do careful fact-checking on the article and publish it as 'The Truth'...or...
b) Publish it as an op-ed piece - essentially saying "This is just the opinion of this guy".

This clearly wasn't (a) - so WSJ doesn't have to admit error or look bad in the eyes of the public. However, when accepting op-ed pieces, they need to be acutely aware of bias - and when a well-written response is provided - especially by an expert in the field - it deserves equal coverage...and that's where they failed.

I can actually understand them not wanting to publish this response as a "letter to the editor" kind of thing - but they really *should* commission an author with scientific credentials to write an opposing-view op-ed piece of more substantial weight.

I have a couple of 100 watt laser cutters. They cut 3/16" plywood really nicely - and 1/2" plywood with difficulty...providing they are properly cleaned and focussed and cutting at around 2000mm/minute. A 2 watt laser...well, draw your own conclusions. There is no magic going on. To cut wood that thick, it has to move VERY slowly and probably make multiple cut passes.

The Blu-ray laser approach *IS* great for thin materials though. 1/16" balsa, paper, cloth, that kind of thing. So this is a useful contraption - I just wish they wouldn't over-sell it...it's just not that good.

Discovery is crap for years. I remember it was OK long long ago.

Could you give some links to interesting material in 60FPS? I found just games.

Yeah - but a net twerk ?

People don't listen to that preflight announcement stuff because they've heard it a hundred times before. People who've flown even a couple of times before don't need to listen. People who are on their first flight, where it's all new and exciting are paying attention.

So, no - I know how to wear a seatbelt and that my seat cushion can be used as a floatation device and to check where the nearest exit row is...yadda yadda yadda. I can stick my nose into my phone and I won't miss anything important.

What's needed is either to make those instructions INTERESTING (like the Southwest Airlines people often do) - or to only give the routine instructions to people who need it. That way, when something truly important comes up, people will pay attention.

"leaving unsolved the mystery of why global warming appears to have slowed in recent years"

ROTFL

Will this madness ever end?

why this is on front page?

I used flickr years ago, then I switched to 500px. Yesterday I wanted to check out how flickr looks now, I did basic test - display best photos. On 500px you can just click "popular" and you can browse amazing photography. How to do it on flickr? After few minutes I resigned, because all I saw was just crap.