Jim Al-Khalili

Este archivo solo abarca los artículos del autor incorporados a este sitio a partir del 1 de diciembre de 2006. Para fechas anteriores realice una búsqueda entrecomillando su nombre.

ReflexionesIslam y Mundo Árabe,

Los gobiernos musulmanes saben que los avances tecnológicos son muy favorables para el crecimiento económico, el poder militar y la seguridad nacional. Estos últimos años, muchos han incrementado en gran medida la financiación para ciencia y educación. Aun así, está muy difundida la opinión (especialmente en Occidente) de que el mundo musulmán prefiere seguir desconectado de la ciencia moderna.

Los escépticos tienen algo de razón. Los países de mayoría musulmana invierten, en promedio, menos del 0,5% de su PIB en investigación y desarrollo, mientras que las economías avanzadas invierten cinco veces esa cifra. También tienen menos de diez científicos, ingenieros y técnicos por cada mil habitantes, contra un promedio mundial de 40, que asciende a 140 en los países desarrollados.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

The Nobel prizes are announced this week, with medicine and physics leading the pack. As the week continues, more brilliant scientists will be honing their skills at modesty, incredulity and shock in the event of that all-important phone call from Sweden.

Sorry, that is grossly unfair. Most Nobel prizewinners will have carried out their breakthrough work for many years before they are recognised with the prize, and probably long after they had given up hope of that ultimate accolade – these are not the Oscars, after all, where an actor at least knows that he or she has made it to a shortlist and on the night will be well aware of the cameras focused on the tiniest twitch in facial expression.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

Threats to eat one's boxer shorts on live television if one is proved wrong should not be made lightly by scientists, however confident they might be in their pronouncements. Not because of the health risks, the potential for public humiliation, or because it somehow trivialises the scientific process, but because it leads the public to think that science is about vested interest or a closed-minded reluctance to embrace new discoveries.

Nevertheless, my recent light-hearted remark concerning a sartorial diet did hit the headlines, and I am more than happy to use the opportunity to discuss both the thrill and the process of scientific research.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

I have come to the conclusion I don't like the phrase "science communicator". You would think that it goes without saying that all scientists must communicate their work, for what is the point of learning new things about how the world works if you don't tell anyone about them?

But, alas, the term seems to be reserved only for that small minority of scientists - increasing though its numbers have been in recent years - who recognise the importance of sharing their theories and observations with more than just the dozen researchers around the world who bother to read their highly specialised journal papers.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesIslam y Mundo Árabe

Watching the daily news stories of never-ending troubles, hardship, misery and violence across the Arab world and central Asia, it is not surprising that many in the west view the culture of these countries as backward, and their religion as at best conservative and often as violent and extremist.I am on a mission to dismiss a crude and inaccurate historical hegemony and present the positive face of Islam. It has never been more timely or more resonant to explore the extent to which western cultural and scientific thought is indebted to the work, a thousand years ago, of Arab and Muslim thinkers.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

Yet another of my pens has just disappeared from where I swear I just left it and is probably already with my smug doppelganger in a parallel universe. We all have our favourite take on the existence of parallel worlds; it's a subject that has been fodder for science-fiction writers for quite a while now. The question is whether the idea has a place in serious scientific discourse.Well, it seems the only known recordings of a physicist who predicted the existence of parallel universes have been found in his rockstar son's basement. The tapes document how quantum physicist, Hugh Everett III, developed a remarkable idea at the age of 24 while a graduate student at Princeton in 1957.…  Seguir leyendo »