Cosmic Variance was a collaborative

weblog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

discussing

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which rel ...

astrophysics Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline said, Astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the he ...

, and other topics, written by JoAnne Hewett,

Mark Trodden Mark Trodden (born 1968) is a theoretical cosmologist and particle physicist. He is the Fay R. and Eugene L. Langberg Professor of Physics and Co-Director of the Center for Particle Cosmology at the University of Pennsylvania. Education and car ...

, Sean Carroll,

Risa Wechsler Risa H. Wechsler is an American physicist and Professor of Physics at Stanford University and of Particle Physics and Astrophysics at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. She is the director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and ...

Julianne Dalcanton Julianne Dalcanton (born 1968) is an American astronomer, professor of astronomy, researcher and comet discoverer. Since September 2021 she is the director of the Simons Foundation Center for Computational Astrophysics. Career Julianne Dalcan ...

, John Conway, and Daniel Holz. It was the successor to Carroll's earlier blog Preposterous Universe, which began in early 2004 and ran through much of 2005. The blog's name came from the

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosophe ...

concept of cosmic variance. Cosmic Variance rapidly become "undoubtedly the most popular blog written by physicists." In 2006, Nature reported that it was the fourth most popular science blog and one of only five blogs by scientists in the 3500 most popular blogs. As of July 26, 2007, Cosmic Variance had a

Technorati Technorati was a search engine and a publisher advertising platform that served as an advertising solution for the thousands of websites in its network. Technorati launched its ad network in 2008, and at one time was one of the largest ad network ...

authority of 1001 and rank of 2277. In 2008, the blog became part of the

Discover magazine ''Discover'' is an American general audience science magazine launched in October 1980 by Time Inc. It has been owned by Kalmbach Publishing since 2010. History Founding ''Discover'' was created primarily through the efforts of ''Time'' mag ...

website. Most writing on Cosmic Variance focused on modern physics, astrophysics, and cosmology, at a level accessible to the interested non-scientist. However, topics of discussion ranged widely, including science and religion, science journalism, higher education, and politics. Several discussions on Cosmic Variance gained attention in the print media, including a discussion on women in science that compared physicist

Lisa Randall Lisa Randall (born June 18, 1962) is an American theoretical physicist working in particle physics and cosmology. She is the Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science on the physics faculty of Harvard University. Her research includes the funda ...

Jodie Foster Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster (born November 19, 1962) is an American actress and filmmaker. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and the hon ...

and a post by John Conway about his discovery of a "bump" in

particle accelerator A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel electric charge, charged particles to very high speeds and energies, and to contain them in well-defined particle beam, beams. Large accelerators are used for fun ...

data that turned out not to be caused by the

Higgs boson The Higgs boson, sometimes called the Higgs particle, is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, one of the fields in particle physics theory. In the St ...

. When the engagement of Carroll to science writer

Jennifer Ouellette Jennifer Ouellette (born May 17, 1964) is a science writer based in Los Angeles, California. Life and career Ouellette is the former director of the Science & Entertainment Exchange, an initiative of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) des ...

was first announced on his blog, the story was picked up by both the New York Times and the prominent scientific journal

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans ar ...

.Nature 444, 526 (30 November 2006) Cosmic Variance hosted a number of guest bloggers, including

string theorist In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and inter ...

Joseph Polchinski Joseph Gerard Polchinski Jr. (; May 16, 1954 – February 2, 2018) was an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. Biography Polchinski was born in White Plains, New York, the elder of two children to Joseph Gerard Polchinski Sr. (1929 ...

reviewing

Lee Smolin Lee Smolin (; born June 6, 1955) is an American theoretical physicist, a faculty member at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo and a member of the graduate faculty of th ...

's book ''

The Trouble With Physics ''The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next'' is a 2006 book by the theoretical physicist Lee Smolin about the problems with string theory. The book strongly criticizes string theory and it ...

.''

References

External links

Cosmic VarianceBlogiefy Website
Science blogs {{internet-publish-stub