Scientific papers
Category archives for Scientific papers
Gravitational Waves: Inflation or not?
Posted by Ethan on April 17, 2008 Nothing gets past you, does it? A scientific paper came out earlier this week, and I took a look at it, sighed, and Jamie asked me, “What?” And I said to her, “When I see bad science, it just makes me a little bit frustrated and sad.” Of course, I had no intention to write…
A Discovery of Gravitational Waves?
Posted by Ethan on April 4, 2008 Two summers ago, I was in Les Houches, France, for a summer school that turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life. Seriously, we’d wake up every day and this was the view from the school: Well, the University/Institution that ran the school sends periodic updates to me. And they linked…
Cosmic Conspiracies!
Posted by Ethan on April 1, 2008 There are a number of parameters that we deal with in cosmology that have no dimensions; that is, they’re just numbers. And yet, there are a remarkable number of coincidences that just “happen to be that way” in our Universe. Douglas Scott, in this paper, points out some of the more puzzling ones, including: The…
The Science of the Brightest GRB
Posted by Ethan on March 26, 2008 Last week, the brightest gamma-ray burst ever was observed. (See here.) I wanted to know what it was that caused this bright explosion that, despite it being at redshift z=0.94 (or about 7.5 billion light years away), it was visible on Earth with the naked eye! Well, a scientific paper was written on the observations…
WMAP results: Cosmology from the CMB
Posted by Ethan on March 6, 2008 The cosmic microwave background is the radiation left over from the big bang. It’s very uniform, 2.725 Kelvin everywhere. We’re moving with respect to it, so there’s a doppler shift, and we see that as a dipole moment in the Temperature. When we subtract that out, we see variations on the order of 30 microKelvins!…
Carnival of Space #43: Oscar Edition
Posted by Ethan on February 27, 2008 It’s been a spectacular week for the film space industry, and here at Starts With A Bang!, we’ve got the recap of all the highlights that you may have missed while watching the countless Oscar montages. Take your time browsing and enjoying this site, and maybe even find out what the question is if 42…
Pulsars, Dark Matter, and the Size of our Galaxy
Posted by Ethan on February 20, 2008 Alright, startswithabang-ers, Ben, my most avid commenter, saw me online while I was eating breakfast this morning, and pointed me to this new press release. Now, before you get started clicking on everything, the guy who the release is about is Brian Gaensler, who’s a really nice guy, lives in Australia, whom I met at…
Faster-Than-Light II: Information?
Posted by Ethan on February 8, 2008 To follow up on the faster than light post here, let’s ask another question: If you can make a way of transferring information that doesn’t involve matter, is that information limited by the speed of light? First off, let’s go over what information is, and then we’ll talk about how transferring information without matter is…
Dark Matter: Is it right in front of us?
Posted by Ethan on January 31, 2008 Last year, I had just finished my Ph.D. studies, and had moved to Madison, WI to teach introductory physics at the University of Wisconsin. I was working on this paper, and when I submitted it, I got a phone call from New Scientist magazine’s space division. Fast-forward two weeks, and I find this article online,…
Brain-damaged arguments and Boltzmann Brains
Posted by Ethan on January 28, 2008 Okay, so I got a question from my friend Tamara, who’s a high school teacher in my hometown of New York City. It concerns a recent article she read on the front page of the New York Times about something funny that us scientists are calling Boltzmann Brains. I’ve read this article three times since…
