A Brand Spanking New Blog

As promised on Friday, I have exciting news to announce. Today sees the launch of a new group blog - Cosmic Variance.

My esteemed new co-contributors are; Sean Carroll (of the widely-read Preposterous Universe) - another particle cosmologist; Risa Wechsler, who is a cosmologist from the University of Chicago, Clifford Johnson - a string theorist from the University of Southern California, and JoAnne Hewett - a particle phenomenologist from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

We've been planning for the last month or so, discussing in secret and designing the site in a restricted test area protected by the highest security (well, Risa's excellent computer skills at any rate). We were going to have Karl Rove leak the blog's existence to create a buzz, but he was busy with other, more treasonous leaks.

If you have read Orange Quark more than once, you'll already have a reaasonable idea of the kinds of issues I will be addressing on the new blog - science, science and society, science and politics, what it's like to be a scientist, plus smaller amounts of whatever takes my fancy. The other authors will all have their own voices and interests, although I fully expect the fact that we are all physicists will provide a central theme for the blog.

For now, I'm going to leave open the possibility that I will continue to post here also. However, realistically, I can imagine that time constraints will mean that pretty soon I will focus exclusively on Cosmic Variance. Even if I do cease active posting here, I'll still leave this site up so that, if needed, I can link to previous posts.

I'm excited about the new blog and the cosmo-particle-stringy rabble with whom I'm consorting. If you take a look, please let us know what you think.