Best known to astronomical trivia buffs as the man who coined the term “black hole,” University of Texas physicist John A. Wheeler died this morning at the age of 96. Wheeler “was legendary for his way with words, coining such terms as wormholes, quantum foam, black holes, and the wave function of the universe,” writes Wheeler’s former student and current University of Chicago physicist Daniel Holz over at Cosmic Variance . Wheeler’s scientific resume...

Yesterday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a nice summary of efforts by the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee to detect gravitational waves. The article focuses on NEMO , the $1.8 million, 1,560 CPU, Beowulf-class computing cluster built and operated by the school’s gravitational-wave group. (Ah, I love that kind of talk.) NEMO was commissioned in 2006. Since then, it’s been chugging through data produced by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational...