April 9, 2010
Those of you who've been reading Starts With A Bang since this last summer may have seen this article I wrote -- The Math of the Fastest Human Alive -- about Usain Bolt's world record in the 100 meter dash.
Little did I know what type of interest this would generate. A few weeks after I wrote it,…
April 7, 2010
"By early 2011, [Fermilab's Tevatron] will have recorded enough data to either find the Higgs or rule it out. -New Scientist, August 2009
Sure, there's a whole lot of well-deserved hoopla about the LHC, the world's #1 particle accelerator in terms of energy! But don't forget about #2, Fermilab's…
April 5, 2010
The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall. -Thomas Paine
I've been telling you the history of the Universe over the past few months in serial. Parts 1 through 8 are currently up, and have taken us from Inflation up…
April 3, 2010
"But with dogs, we do have 'bad dog.' Bad dog exists. 'Bad dog! Bad dog! Stole a biscuit, bad dog!' The dog is saying, 'Who are you to judge me? You human beings who've had genocide, war against people of different creeds, colors, religions, and I stole a biscuit?! Is that a crime? People of the…
April 2, 2010
Why must I feel like that?
Why must I chase the cat?
Nothin' but the dog in me. -George Clinton
(And I'll get it stuck in your head, too, if you like. Have a go at the extended 10-minute version.)
Welcome back to the next installment of The Greatest Story Ever Told: the history of the Universe! We…
March 31, 2010
The stakes are high, and win or lose, worth playing for. -Fred Hoyle
Yesterday was a record-setting day for humanity. Over at CERN, the Large Hadron Collider achieved a new record for the most energy ever created in a laboratory collision in the history of humanity: 7,000,000,000,000 electron Volts…
March 29, 2010
In mathematics, you don't understand things. You just get used to them. -Johann von Neumann
Sometimes, I have to deal with series: lots of numbers all added together. Some series clearly approach a limit, like the following:
1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + ...
I can visualize this in terms of…
March 27, 2010
The humor of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival as huge chunks of whale blubber fell everywhere. Pieces of meat passed high over our heads while others were falling at our feet. The dunes were rapidly evacuated as spectators escaped both the falling debris and the…
March 26, 2010
"No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see the possibilites -- always see them -- for they are always there. -Norman Vincent Peale
Dark matter. I talk about it a lot here for a number of reasons. These include:
the fact that it makes up about 85% of the mass of…
March 23, 2010
Note: I'm on vacation this week, so here's one from the vault. This article first appeared on my old website, back in February of 2009.
Some days the questions I get are easy, and some days I get questions from our longtime reader, Ben. This past week, there have been reports all over the news that…
March 22, 2010
Welcome back to The Greatest Story Ever Told, where we're bringing you the story of the Universe. We're going to go from the very beginning -- before the big bang -- up through the present day, and tell you how we got here. This is part seven, and you can always go back for parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and…
March 21, 2010
Beauty is a form of genius - is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon. -Oscar Wilde
Yesterday was the spring equinox for the Northern…
March 19, 2010
It's a question of whether we're going to go forward into the future, or past to the back. -Dan Quayle
This is my last day writing before my spring break begins, and I'm hoping for some great weather as I prepare to head to the Oregon coast. Warm weather, clear skies... I can picture it now. In my…
March 17, 2010
I have this one little saying. When things get too heavy just call me helium, the lightest known gas to man. -Jimi Hendrix
Hendrix is almost right: helium is the second lightest gas known to man, behind hydrogen. But there are many applications for helium -- both scientific and non-scientific --…
March 15, 2010
Bart: Go, Dad, go!
Lisa: How doth the hero, strong and brave, a celestial path to the heavens paved!
(The family stares at her.)
Lisa (dejected): Go, Dad, go. -The Simpsons
Last week, I got a question from one of my online friends, cmgraves. His question was straightforward:
How do thrusters work…
March 14, 2010
So here we have pi squared, which an engineer would call "10." -Frank King
It's Pi Day today in the United States: March 14th, or as we write it, 3/14. (Don't know how you do it in Europe, where there is no 31st of April.) So, let's start things off with a song for the day: Cab Calloway's "…
March 12, 2010
Earlier this week, I wrote about an inclined treadmill, and talked about physical work. Physically, the amount of work that you do is equal to the amount of force that you exert in a certain direction multiplied by the distance you move in that direction.
If you walk up an incline, as opposed to…
March 10, 2010
A bad day for your ego is a great day for your soul. -Jillian Michaels
One of the most popular exercises at the gym is the treadmill. And why wouldn't it be? Whether you're running or walking, it's a great way to get your heart rate up, get your body moving, and for many people, a great way to burn…
March 8, 2010
Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles called electrons that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking. -Dave Barry
Welcome back to our series on The Greatest Story Every Told, where we start from before the big bang and come forward in time to get the…
March 7, 2010
Find something that you're really interested in doing in your life. Pursue it, set goals and commit yourself to excellence. Do the best you can. -Chris Evert
The Olympics have recently ended, and there were a trio of athletes who left me awestruck at their level of mastery of their sport as…
March 5, 2010
Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. -Chinese Proverb
Every once in a while, we'll look out into the sky with a telescope, and see some spectacular glowing gas.
These nebulae typically come about from dead or dying stars, and are some of the most spectacular sight in the sky for…
March 3, 2010
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet. -W. Shakespeare
After writing about the 80th Birthday of Pluto becoming a planet, I was asked about Pluto's planetary status, and whether I thought it deserves to be a planet or not. Let me just recap for you, very…
March 2, 2010
Yesterday, I wrote to you about part 5 of The Greatest Story Ever Told, about how the Universe came to have more matter than antimatter in it. And many of you correctly responded that I had given too much detail and not enough explanation.
So, I want to try again for all of you. Here's the…
March 1, 2010
For every one billion particles of antimatter there were one billion and one particles of matter. And when the mutual annihilation was complete, one billionth remained - and that's our present universe. -Albert Einstein
Welcome back to our series, The Greatest Story Ever Told, where we're…
February 26, 2010
Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.-Anatole France
Those of you who own pets probably know that there's nothing to grab your animal's attention like rewarding them with food. A Japanese game show has taken this to a whole new level, and somehow, I can't look away…
February 26, 2010
The Truth is far more powerful than any weapon of mass destruction. -Gandhi
Last time, I spoke to you about how tides work on Earth.
In a nutshell, a nearby massive body (like the Moon or the Sun) pulls on the Earth's center due to its gravity. But the portion of the Earth that's closest to that…
February 24, 2010
When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn. -Harriet Beecher Stowe
Last week, our longtime reader Pamela asked if I could explain how…
February 22, 2010
Free energy will promulgate a forward leap in human progress akin to the discovery of fire. It will bring the dawn of an entirely new civilization -- one based on freedom and abundance. -Sterling Allan
Of course, when Sterling Allan talks about free energy, he's talking about natural energy from…
February 21, 2010
When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about.-Albert Einstein
I woke up this morning with the Sun in my face, which marks the first time all year that that's happened.
(The irony, that I…
February 19, 2010
We used to think Pluto was a misfit. -Alan Stern
Eighty years ago, we solidly had eight planets in the Solar System: the same eight we have now.
But in the late 1920s, a young astronomer was looking up at the sky, night after night, searching for tiny moving objects that could possibly be planets…
