From the Sneak Peek department:

From the Sneak Peek department: Although she says it doesn’t officially launch till Thursday, you can still take an early look at Mary C’s Science Fair blog over at blogspot.com. Not much there just yet, but there’s a nifty mini-interview (original blog content! Imagine!) with Jeremy Drake of Harvard talking about stars made of exotic kinds of matter. If the theory is correct, there are reasonable and consistent ways (using the appropriately-named strange quarks) to pack matter into a smaller bundle than we’re used to dealing with. Or, as Drake says, “normal matter is not the most naturally relaxed state of matter.” Are we all just time bombs waiting for the right trigger to implode down to half our current size? It reminds me of the Kurt Vonnegut book Cat’s Cradle in which ice-nine represents a solid low energy form of water. Drop a single ice-nine crystal in the ocean and the whole thing will freeze in a single whoosh. A fate best avoided.

By the way, Mary C also has good taste in books (and good taste in blogs… which is to say she likes mine). So go look.