By James Dacey
These days, pretty much every major newspaper, science magazine or broadcaster has an associated website and these sites almost always provide the breaking news stories before their printed counterparts. In addition, the Internet is awash with blogs, podcasts and social-media sites, where it is often the scientists themselves who are first break new developments to the outside world.
When it comes to slightly longer news and analysis articles, just a few years ago printed media was still the first choice for most people, as reading at length from an antiquated screen could leave you with serious eyesore. What’s more, busy people on the go didn’t always have immediate access to a computer or an Internet connection to access their chosen news websites. Today the situation is different. Screens have improved and the proliferation of Internet connectivity, combined with the advent of smartphones and tablets, means that many people can access many forms of news, at any time, nearly anywhere.
We want to know where you get most of your updates when it comes to physics news. Let us know via this week’s Facebook poll.
What is your primary source of online physics news?
General news sites
Specialist media sites
Blogs
Social media
Internet radio/podcasts
To share your online habits, please visit our Facebook page. And, if you get the majority of your physics news from a different source, then please let us know what that is by posting a comment on the Facebook poll.
In last week’s poll we were interested to know how you see astronomy in relation to physics. We asked “Do you consider astronomy to be a distinct academic discipline from physics?”
The results are in and 70% of you think that astronomy is not a distinct academic discipline from physics.
Michael Danielides voted with the majority and commented that an astrophysics lecturer once told him that astronomy and astrophysics were both branches of theoretical physics, “because you can’t interfere with the ongoing experiment”.
Thank you for all your participation and we look forward to hearing from you in this week’s poll.
