{"id":14216,"date":"2007-09-14T12:47:01","date_gmt":"2007-09-14T18:47:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fredbortz.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/14216\/two-flashy-events\/"},"modified":"2011-07-12T22:40:19","modified_gmt":"2011-07-12T22:40:19","slug":"two-flashy-events","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/fredbortz\/14216\/two-flashy-events\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Flashy Events!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I subscribe to updates from <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.spaceweather.com\/\">spaceweather.com<\/a>, which is where I discovered this <a HREF=\"http:\/\/spaceweather.com\/swpod2007\/14sep07\/sandia1.mov\">spectacular movie from Sandia Laboratories of what was probably a piece of space junk re-entering Earth&#8217;s atmosphere<\/a>.  At its peak, its magnitude was -14.6, about four times brighter than a full Moon.<\/p>\n<p>The second event is my upcoming book talk about 20th century physics.  To indicate that this is likely to be a lively evening, I sent the following e-mail message to my friends and neighbors:<\/p>\n<p>Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), whose work in quantum mechanics explained why the periodic table is periodic, was well known among his fellow physicists for his sharp tongue and high expectations.  In a famous quotation, he declared that a research paper was so bad that it was &#8220;not even wrong.&#8221;  Blessed with an equally sharp sense of humor, he became the object of many \u201cPauli jokes,\u201d including this one that emerged shortly after his death.<\/p>\n<p>In his first meeting with God, Pauli asked for an explanation of the significance of the value of a particular physical constant. God went to the blackboard, and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>For the rest of this story, you can read my new book about of 20th-century Physics, <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.fredbortz.com\/Physics20thCent.htm\">Physics: Decade by Decade<\/a>. But you can also hear it, plus a number of other fascinating human stories from the book as I present \u201cTen Decades, Ten Physicists: A History of Physics in the Twentieth Century\u201d on September 19, 2007 from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. at the Monroeville Public Library.  Details can be found at http:\/\/www.monroevillelibrary.org\/screens\/adultprograms.html#physics<\/p>\n<p>For fans of the \u201cArmchair Adventure\u201d series, this will be a very different but equally fascinating trip into new territory.<\/p>\n<p>Fred Bortz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All right, I admit it. The title is intended as &#8220;hype,&#8221; but neither one of these events, a fireball in the skies over New Mexico and a book talk about the history of Physics in suburban Pittsburgh, is a mere &#8220;flash in the pan.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-entry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.4 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Two Flashy Events! - Fred Bortz<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/fredbortz\/14216\/two-flashy-events\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Two Flashy Events!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"All right, I admit it. 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