big bang
Category archives for big bang
Found: The First Atoms In The Universe!!!
Posted by Ethan on November 14, 2011 “We don’t understand how a single star forms, yet we want to understand how 10 billion stars form.” -Carlos Frenck When we look out into the distant Universe, we’re also looking back into the Universe’s past. The farther away an object is, the longer it’s taken its light to travel from it to our eyes.…
I am a Scientist
Posted by Ethan on October 24, 2011 “Science is facts; just as houses are made of stone, so is science made of facts. But a pile of stones is not a house, and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.” -Jules Henri Poincaré The higher you fall from, the faster you’ll be moving when you hit the ground. Seems like the…
The Physics of Nothing; The Philosophy of Everything
Posted by Ethan on August 16, 2011 “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” -Winston Churchill It’s often said that you can’t get something from nothing. And while this may be true for most practical applications of your life, it isn’t true for our physical Universe. And I…
What the WMAP image means
Posted by Ethan on July 29, 2011 “It has been rightly said that nothing is unimportant, nothing powerless in the universe; a single atom can dissolve everything, and save everything! What terror! There lies the eternal distinction between good and evil.” -Gerard De Nerval (For Rich C. and Sili, for their questions on this post.) The humble hydrogen atom — one proton…
Was the Universe born with Black Holes?
Posted by Ethan on July 26, 2011 “Birth and death; we all move between these two unknowns.” -Bryant H. McGill One of the most remarkable consequences of the Big Bang is that the Universe as we know it — full of planets, stars, galaxies and life — hasn’t been around forever! Because the Universe is expanding and cooling, it was hotter, denser,…
Is this where the matter in the Universe comes from?!
Posted by Ethan on July 6, 2011 Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? -Richard Feynman Ahh, the stars that make up our galaxy, and the galaxies that make up our Universe.…
“Through space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought I comprehend the world.” -Blaise Pascal Whether you have or haven’t seen the xkcd webcomic, height (or my old post referencing it), one of the things that I can’t imagine not fascinating you is what you see the farther “up” you…
Dark Matter Candidates: Running for 23% of your Universe!
Posted by Ethan on June 22, 2011 “[I]f there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.” -C.S. Lewis (For readers Mu and Bjoern.) I’ve told you the entire history of the Universe, from before the Big Bang into the far distant future, and yet many…
Defining the Big Bang
Posted by Ethan on June 6, 2011 “As far as I see, such a theory [of the Big Bang] remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question. It leaves the materialist free to deny any transcendental Being. He may keep, for the bottom of space-time, the same attitude of mind he has been able to adopt for events occurring in non-singular places…
The History of Pretty Much Everything
Posted by Ethan on April 28, 2011 “Listen; there’s a hell of a good universe next door: let’s go.” -e. e. cummings Sometimes, you just need to take stock of what we know, and appreciate how far we’ve come. A hundred years ago, we thought the Universe consisted of the stars and nebulae in our Milky Way. We thought Newton’s Law of…
