Q & A
Category archives for Q & A
Celebrating 50 years of humans in space!
Posted by Ethan on April 12, 2011 “I could have gone on flying through space forever.” -Yuri Gagarin It was April 12th, 1961, or fifty years ago today, that Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to leave Earth — the ground, the atmosphere, the stratosphere — and to soar into outer space. What was unimaginable just half-a-century ago has become an…
Science > Bill O’Reilly
Posted by Ethan on February 4, 2011 “How’d the moon get here? Look, you pinheads who attacked me for this, you guys are just desperate. How’d the moon get here? How’d the sun get there? How’d it get there? Can you explain that to me? How come we have that and Mars doesn’t have it?” -Bill O’Reilly Once upon a time, humans…
Can You Get Something For Nothing?
Posted by Ethan on February 2, 2011 “One creates from nothing. If you try to create from something you’re just changing something. So in order to create something you first have to be able to create nothing.” -Werner Erhard One of the oldest adages in existence is you can’t get something for nothing, as over a million websites will tell you, including…
Q & A: How is the Universe so big, given its age?
Posted by Ethan on January 5, 2011 “The size of the universe is no more depressing than the size of a cow.” -David Deutsch But it is bizarre, I’ll give you that. The most common scientific question I get asked is how, if the Universe is 13.7 billion years old, and the speed limit of the Universe is the speed of light,…
What is Science? What is Hype?
Posted by Ethan on December 16, 2010 “The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.” -Stephen Jay Gould Tuesday, I talked about an alternative theory to cosmic inflation. Whereas cosmic inflation gives you a uniform, flat Universe, that’s the…
Black Hole Q&A
Posted by Ethan on December 9, 2010 “Black holes are where God divided by zero.” -Stephen Wright Yesterday, I told you about all the evidence for the Black Hole at the center of our galaxy. In particular, we see multiple stars orbiting a single point that emits no light of any type at all. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the comments became very active.…
Advice for Young Aspiring Scientists
Posted by Ethan on August 2, 2010 “The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.” -Antisthenes As many of you know, in addition to news about cosmology, space, astronomy, and physics, I’m also heavily involved in education. This includes, in various stages, teaching, curriculum design, and mentoring students. But I got the following…
How Good is Your Theory? Open Thread I
Posted by Ethan on July 21, 2010 He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher… or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. -Douglas Adams When I started writing about science online in January of 2008, I put the word out that I would accept questions from my readers. After all, I knew that there was a lot of misinformation…
Q & A: How long would we have if the Sun went out?
Posted by Ethan on July 12, 2010 Yo ho! It’s hot, the sun is not a place where we could live. But here on earth there’d be no life without the light it gives. We need its light. We need its heat. We need its energy. Without the sun without a doubt there’d be no you and me. -They Might Be Giants…
The Last Great Prediction of the Big Bang!
Posted by Ethan on July 2, 2010 “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” -Neils Bohr As many of you know, the Big Bang is one of the most powerful scientific theories we have. It’s also one of the most unsettling. The idea that our entire Universe — filled with practically a trillion galaxies — is only three times…
