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schliz writes "Professor Stephen Hawking has revealed that he turned down the offer of a knighthood over 10 years ago. The scientist has released correspondence showing that he was approached with the offer of a knighthood but refused it on principle. Professor Hawking has also revealed correspondence showing harsh criticism of what he sees as the UK government's mismanagement of science funding. He is particularly critical of the merger of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council and the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils."

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Fantastic Lad, among many others, points out another in a long series of claimed "powered by water" cars, this one by a Japanese company called "Genepax," which interestingly enough does not have so much as a Wikipedia entry. What's scary is the uncritical, even serious-sounding, presentation by Reuters of such extraordinary claims quite unbacked by extraordinary evidence. "Almost sounds too good to be true" isn't the half of it; if cars could be made which would run as "long as you have a bottle of water inside" to pour into the fuel tank ("even tea," repeats this report), not only would you know about the car, but you'd notice the long lines of people buying generators, laptops, and power tools that run on the same technology. The snippet Reuters is carrying says "Jun. 13 — Japanese company Genepax presents its eco-friendly car that runs on nothing but water. The car has an energy generator that extracts hydrogen from water that is poured into the car's tank. The generator then releases electrons that produce electric power to run the car. Genepax, the company that invented the technology, aims to collaborate with Japanese manufacturers to mass produce it." Fantastic Lad, deadpan, goes on: "Check out the Reuter's story and accompanying video. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there some sort of conservation of energy thing happening in the whole 'separating hydrogen from water' game? I wonder what the real story is on this. Investment fraud? Magic?" Show your work; bonus points if you use Haiku.

A snake gets iced in Cippi's latest adventure.

KentuckyFC writes "There are enough loopholes in the general theory of relativity to allow antimatter to fall up rather than down in a gravitational field. We've never been able to make enough of the stuff to do the experiment. But at the European particle physics laboratory at CERN, where scientists have been refining the technique for making antihydrogen, researchers are designing an experiment called AEGIS that will finally settle the matter. The idea is simple — fire a beam of antihydrogen atoms and watch which way they fall — but the details are fiendish (abstract). The answer should help solve a number of important conundrums such as why there is so little antimatter in our part of the universe and what the value of the cosmological constant is."

Awesome action sequence from Legend of the Seeker.

An anonymous reader writes "Havok has released the free version of its widely-used physics and animation engine (but without source code), including tools that integrate with Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya. Developers may use Havok for free for non-commercial games, middleware, and academic projects. Here are the SDK and tools."

An anonymous reader writes "I'm a fairly new physics professor at a well-ranked undergraduate university. When I arrived, I was surprised to discover there were no computer programming requirements for our majors. This has led to a series of fairly animated faculty curriculum conversations, driven by the question: to what extent should computer programming be a part of an undergraduate science education (in particular, physics)? This is a surprising line of questioning to me because in my career (dominated by research), I've never seriously even questioned the need. If you are a physics major, you learn to program. The exact language isn't so important as is flow control, file handling, basic methods/technique, basic resource management, and troubleshooting. The methods learned in any language can then be ported over to just about any numerical or scientific computational problem. Read on for the rest of the reader's questions and his experiences dealing with faculty who have their own ideas.

sciencehabit writes "In what has to be an embarrasment for the U.S. Department of Energy, an anonymous donor has ponied up $5 million to keep the country's only remaining particle physics laboratory operating efficiently."

bughunter writes "Internet consultant firm Gartner claims that only 1 in 10 commercial virtual worlds succeeds, and most fail within 18 months: 'Businesses have learned some hard lessons," Gartner analyst Steve Prentice said in a statement released Thursday. "They need to realize that virtual worlds mark the transition from Web pages to Web places and a successful virtual presence starts with people, not physics. Realistic graphics and physical behavior count for little unless the presence is valued by and engaging to a large audience."'" Hard to believe it's even as high as one in ten -- most "virtual worlds" with obvious commercial trappings certainly don't inspire much besides mockery.

sciencehabit writes "New calculations suggest that black holes are not a one-way street. Anything that falls into them may eventually come out. The findings lend important support to quantum gravity, but fly in the face of Einsteinian relativity. They also support Stephen Hawking's reluctant admission that information couldn't be destroyed by black holes. Penn State researcher Ahbay Ashtekar was quoted saying, 'Once we realized that the notion of space-time as a continuum is only an approximation of reality, it became clear to us that singularities are merely artifacts of our insistence that space-time should be described as a continuum.' Let the physics infighting begin."

nuke-alwin writes "Stephen Hawking has traveled to South Africa in search of Africa's Einsteins. The project will create Africa's first post-graduate center for math and physics. The British government has unfortunately decided not to back the project, which is hoping to fight poverty by identifying the kind of talent that can create wealth." Neil Turok is deeply involved as well; he was recently named to head the Perimeter Institute in Canada, whose server we brought to its knees this morning.

modernphysics writes "The Outreach Department at Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics offers a wide array of online lecture playbacks examining hot topics in modern physics and beyond. Presentations include Neil Turok's 'What Banged?,' John Ellis with 'The Large Hadron Collider,' Nima Arkani-Hamed with 'Fundamental Physics in 2010,' Paul Steinhardt with 'Impossible Crystals,' Edward Witten with 'The Quest for Supersymmetry,' Seth Lloyd with 'Programming the Universe,' Anton Zeilinger with 'From Einstein to Quantum Information,' Raymond Laflamme with 'Harnessing the Quantum World,' and many other talks. The presentations feature a split-screen presentation with the guest speaker in one frame and their full-frame graphics in the other."

Welcome to the Physics section of the free New York State High School Regents Exam Prep Center! ... DISCLAIMER: : This review site is not affiliated with the New York State ...

E: Vectors & Scalars This lesson takes you to understand the meaning vector and scalar quantities. It also looks at the process know as vector addition. [Shockwave] Steve Wirt

Preparing for the Physics Regents is easy with Barrons. BarronsRegents.com has everything you need to prepare for the Physics Regents exam - and all other NYS Regents exams ...

Quick Links: Regents exam dates. The Physical Setting / Physics . Teacher: Ray Kaschalk, Haverling High School, Bath. Meet Mr. Kaschalk (a.k.a.

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iv Physics ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The State Education Department acknowledges the assistance of teachers and school administrators from across New York State and the Physics Mentor ...

From: Tom DeBrita 07/05/2002 ... Try this one: http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/edocs/education/exams/physics.htm ----- Original Message ----- From: "chuck britton" To ...

From: chuck britton 07/05/2002 ... At 1:31 PM -0700 7/5/02, Herbert H Gottlieb wrote: Is there a more current url?

All the questions listed below are taken from past New York State Regents Exams in Physics... You will need to login to see the rest of the lesson.