Q & A
Category archives for Q & A
The Secret to Writing Your Dissertation
Posted by Ethan on October 20, 2012 
“I spent every night until four in the morning on my dissertation, until I came to the point when I could not write another word, not even the next letter. I went to bed. Eight o’clock the next morning I was up writing again.” -Abraham Pais, physicist You’ve been in graduate school for many years…
What Happened Before The Big Bang?
Posted by Ethan on October 15, 2012 
“The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.” -Bertolt Brecht One of the most frequent questions I get about the Universe — as a cosmologist — isn’t quite about the Big Bang in and of itself. The Big Bang is a remarkable…
How many colors are really in a rainbow?
Posted by Ethan on August 14, 2012 
“The colors of a rainbow so pretty in the sky. Are also on the faces of people going by.” -Louis Armstrong It’s no secret that white light is the light that we see when all the colors shine together and are seen at once. This has been known for over 400 years, when Isaac Newton…
Where do Supermassive Black Holes Come From?
Posted by Ethan on July 30, 2012 
“Black holes, which have no memory, are said to contain the earliest memories of the universe, and the most recent, too, while at the same time obliterating all memory by obliterating all its embodiments. Such paradoxes characterize these strange galactic monsters, for whom creation is destruction, death life, chaos order.” -Robert Coover Our Milky Way,…
Empty space has more energy than everything in the Universe, combined
Posted by Ethan on July 26, 2012 
“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is just opinion.” -Democritus of Abdera When you take a look out at the Universe, past the objects in our own solar system, beyond the stars, dust and nebulae within our own galaxy, and out into the void of intergalactic space, what is it that you see? What…
How the Higgs gives Mass to the Universe
Posted by Ethan on July 4, 2012 
“This is evidently a discovery of a new particle. If anybody claims otherwise you can tell them they have lost connection with reality.” -Tommaso Dorigo You’ve probably heard the news by now: the Higgs boson — the last undiscovered fundamental particle of nature — has been found. Indeed the news reports just keep rolling in;…
So, you’ve learned that the Sun is going to explode…
Posted by Ethan on April 26, 2012 “Through that last dark cloud is a dying star… And when it explodes, it will be reborn. You will bloom… and I will live.” -The Fountain I want to start off by letting you all know that I, myself, do not have any children of my own. I have taught children, adolescents and adults for…
Our Galaxy’s Next Supernova
Posted by Ethan on January 26, 2012 “The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.” -Johannes Kepler So said the man who, in 1604, discovered the supernova that was the last to be seen, visually, within our…
Giving Thanks, and Giving Back
Posted by Ethan on November 24, 2011 “Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.” -Henry Ford Here in the United States, it’s American Thanksgiving, our annual harvest festival. Traditionally, it’s the one day out of the year where we spend it with the people most important to us, and give genuine…
Do more planets, gas and stars mean less dark matter?
Posted by Ethan on May 25, 2011 “We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.” -Stephen Hawking You’re probably familiar with the standard picture of our Universe. You’ve heard it all before: that the Universe we know of — stars, planets,…
