About Me

Welcome to my About Me page! My name is Thomas Wikman. I am originally from Sweden, but I’ve lived in the United States for more than 30 years. I am a retired software / robotics engineer with a background in physics. I have a master’s degree in engineering physics and a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics with a specialty in Robotics. I am married with three children, and I love dogs, swimming, science, learning French, traveling, craft beer, and reading. I’ve also written a book about our amazing Leonberger dog. You can read about it on my other blog, my Leonberger blog. To visit my Leonberger blog click on the puppy in the right sidebar, or at the bottom of the page if you are using a mobile. However, this blog is focused on something I refer to as super-facts.

Throughout my life I have held many beliefs which I later found out were wrong. Sometimes I was forced to discard beliefs that were important to my view of the world. Through life experiences, traveling, reading, and studying, I’ve also come across many highly surprising facts and insights which forced me to update my view of the world. Having to give up cherished beliefs can be painful, and some people feel very threatened by unwelcome knowledge. That’s true for me too. At the same time, I am also very curious, and I have learned to value evidence and to respect the expertise of scientists and other experts, within their fields. That’s one reason I love to read so many non-fiction books, especially on scientific topics. I want my mind to keep growing.

why This Blog?

The goal of this blog is to create a list of facts or insights that are important and not trivia, known to be true, and yet highly surprising, shocking, amazing, or widely disputed amongst the public but not disputed among the scientists or experts in the relevant fields. Even though I have some expertise in a few fields I am certainly not an expert in hundreds of fields, so I am relying on the experts in the relevant fields and the evidence they provide to determine whether a fact is true. Also, the facts should be possible to state simply. They are not scientific theories but may be part of scientific theories. In lack of a better moniker, I am referring to these shocking or controversial but true facts as super-facts.

My blog posts will focus on one super-fact at a time. I will state the fact, explain it, and provide some evidence if needed. The posts are not deep dives, but I will provide links or book suggestions for deeper study. You are certainly welcome to help me with suggestions for super-facts as well as insightful and friendly rebuttals to my posts (after reading and understanding them). I should say I’ll try to avoid politics.

I should also add that not all posts will be super-fact posts. Sometimes I will post about factual matters and information that does not qualify as a super-fact but that I find interesting. I will also post book reviews of non-fiction books I find interesting, or of fiction books that touches on some interesting facts.

Thanks for stopping by and enjoy!