CMB
Tag archives for CMB
The Science of the Cosmic Microwave Background
Posted by Ethan on March 27, 2013 
“The radiation left over from the Big Bang is the same as that in your microwave oven but very much less powerful. It would heat your pizza only to -271.3°C, not much good for defrosting the pizza, let alone cooking it.” -Stephen Hawking One of the most powerful predictions of the Big Bang — the…
What The Entire Universe Is Made Of, Thanks to Planck!
Posted by Ethan on March 21, 2013 
“Much later, when I discussed the problem with Einstein, he remarked that the introduction of the cosmological term was the biggest blunder he ever made in his life. But this “blunder,” rejected by Einstein, is still sometimes used by cosmologists even today, and the cosmological constant denoted by the Greek letter Λ rears its ugly…
What Everyone Should Know about the Universe on the eve of Planck
Posted by Ethan on March 20, 2013 
“Scientific discovery and scientific knowledge have been achieved only by those who have gone in pursuit of it without any practical purpose whatsoever in view.” -Max Planck Tomorrow morning, at 8 AM my time, the press conference that cosmologists have spent the past decade waiting for will finally happen, and the Planck satellite — the…
The Halloween Horror of the Dark Universe!
Posted by Ethan on October 31, 2012 
“A cosmic mystery of immense proportions, once seemingly on the verge of solution, has deepened and left astronomers and astrophysicists more baffled than ever. The crux … is that the vast majority of the mass of the universe seems to be missing.” -William J. Broad Despite the wondrous, luminous sights of the night sky, we’ve…
Why I am a liar straight from the pit of hell
Posted by Ethan on October 5, 2012 
“It took less than an hour to make the atoms, a few hundred million years to make the stars and planets, but five billion years to make man!” -George Gamow Earlier today, a video (from last month) was released where one of the members of the US House of Representative — a member who sits…
Hole in the Universe? What Hole?
Posted by Ethan on May 20, 2008 Some of you who’ve been following astronomy for awhile might remember this report, where a group of astronomers reported finding a giant “void” in the Universe. What is a void? Well, galaxies are distributed pretty randomly, but because of gravity, they cluster together. A small example is our local group which looks like this, and…
Cosmic Sound Waves… Rule?
Posted by Ethan on April 25, 2008 So as a full member of both the American Astronomical Society and the American Physical Society, I get sent issues of the magazine Physics Today. Well, I was going through the April issue, when I saw this article: Cosmic Sound Waves Rule by Daniel J. Eisenstein and Charles L. Bennett That first name sounds familiar.…
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…
Why we need Dark Matter in the Universe.
Posted by Ethan on February 19, 2008 Last week, Pamela Gay over at Star Stryder pointed me to a press release which claimed that, among other things, perhaps dark matter wasn’t necessary. So I wrote a guest post on her blog explaining why it was. Apparently, some people still aren’t convinced. So I will lay out for you all the reasons I…
