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What if cosmic inflation is wrong? (Synopsis)

“…an understanding of the infinite tree of universes seems to be needed in order to make statistical predictions about the properties of our own universe, which is assumed to be a typical “branch” on the tree.” -Alan Guth The Big Bang is commonly regarded as the start of it all, but that's only the birth of what we call our observable Universe. There must have been something compelling to set it up, complete with the initial conditions that our Universe began with. An idea called Cosmic Inflation fits the bill perfectly, providing those conditions and making six explicitly new predictions.…

"DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons"

The Supreme Court of the United States has truck down the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act" as unconstitutional. It was a 5-4 decision. A ruling on California Prop 8 is expected soon. From NPR: Section 3 of the law defines marriage as "a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife" and a spouse as "a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife." That provision had been struck down by eight lower courts before the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling in United States v. Windsor. This decision means that legally married same-sex couples are now entitled to the same…

An Armed Guard, or a Big Mac, in Every School....

... would not have helped at Sandy Hook ... the armed guards would have been the fist to be killed ... or at any of the other places where there have been mass shootings with armed guards present or very near by. Also, many, many schools already have a "school resource officer" on duty. In Minnesota there seems to be one at every school, and that may be good, but we've had our share of school gun play. The call by the NRA to put an armed guard in every school is little more than a marketing scheme to sell a few hundred thousand guns. MacDonalds would also like to put a Big Mac in every…

Darwin: A Graphic Biography

There is now a Graphic Book (which is apparently some kind of cartoony thing kids these days read) which is a biography of Darwin. I've not read it but I have a free chapter for you, here. That's courtesy of the NCSE. Here's the Amazon Link and from that site, a description: Darwin: A Graphic Biography is an inspiring expedition into the physical and intellectual adventures of Charles Darwin. Presenting Darwin's life in a smart and entertaining graphic novel, Darwin: A Graphic Biography attempts to not only educate the reader about Darwin but also the scientific world of the 1800s. The…

Science vs. Anti Science Updates

There is a new anti-science bill in Arizona. Go read about it here. It is interesting that these anti-science bills are sounding more and more like pro science bills except for just a few words that allow, encourage, and even require funding for the teaching of climate science denialism and creationism. Michael Zimmerman has a nice write up on how the big boys in creationism have been rather flustered by a former High School Student (now College Student) Zach Kopplin who, as I'm sure you know, has been challenging creationists in halls of government and elsewhere for a few years now. When…

It's the Heat of the Night

Global Weirdness: Severe Storms, Deadly Heat Waves, Relentless Drought, Rising Seas and the Weather of the Future is a new book on global warming produced by Climate Central which contains ... ...Sixty easy-to-read entries tackle such questions as: Is climate ever “normal”? Why and how do fossil-fuel burning and other human practices produce greenhouse gases? What natural forces have caused climate change in the past? What risks does climate change pose for human health? What accounts for the diminishment of mountain glaciers and small ice caps around the world since 1850? What are the…

Two interviews with NCSE's Eugenie Scott

In Defense of Science: An Interview with NCSE’s Eugenie Scott A few weeks ago I wrote about what happens when people respond to well-established science with disbelief or mistrust. As I noted, this is an occupational risk for researchers who work on vaccines (and journalists who write about them), which is why I told a cautionary tale about rejecting science in the face of super-bugs. The piece resonated with readers, but not in the way I’d hoped. Of nearly 220 comments, the vast majority opposed vaccination, for various reasons, rejecting the science. As I considered how to respond, I…

Idaho Department of Agriculture Needs Science

It is my understanding that brucellosis, a disease that affects humans, bison, cattle, and elk, is transmitted from Bison to other Bison or to other animals such as cattle via contact with fresh afterbirth. This makes it quite possible for Bison with the disease to infect cattle, but only under very specific conditions, but those conditions do not include an adult Bison bull wandering around on ranch land. Nonetheless, "A bull bison was shot to death on Henry’s Lake Flat today, according to Buffalo Field Campaign volunteers and the Fremont County Sheriff’s Department." The Island Park News…

Dana Hunter and the Big Blast

Are you aware of Dana Hunter's current project? The author of En Tequila es Verdad, the blog that always makes me want to take a shot, is writing detailed essays that track events connected to the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens. She's writing them as part of her blogging over at Scientific American, but she just posted an update on Freethoughtblogs that serves as an index to all of the stories so far, so you should click here to get oriented and then click through to the stories. Even though we know how the story turns out, Dana's posts make for an edge of your seat thriller. Also,…

On one hand, Paul Douglas. On the other, Heartland

I have two only vaguely related items for you, and the first is really two items. Paul Douglas has written a piece on climate change that you should read. Douglas is the famous Twin Cities meteorologist who worked for several years at our own WCCO. He was a regional celebrity, much loved by all, and a lot of people stopped watching television when he left that station a couple of years back. The blog post is: A Message From A Republican Meteorologist On Climate Change. Given how sensible and smart he is, one would have never thought Paul was a ... oh never mind, that, there is a second…

Tennessee, the Laughing Stock State becomes ... A Laughing Stock

Tennessee is where the famous Scopes Trial of 1925 played out, and more recently two state level state bills (one house and one senate) are in play in a move by legislatures to further enhance Tennessee's reputation as a place where people don't value education and would not know of valid scientific theory if it bit them on the ear. You'all knew that if you've been following the news from there. Yesterday, an editorial was printed by four scientists who are rather fed up with Tennessee's playing fast and loose with reality, and it is worth a look. ... Even the religious mainstream has…

Looking for stuff about birds?

All of my Bird Book Reviews are Here, and some of the reviews include broader discussions that go beyond the book, so do browse through them. Feeding Birds: Should you even be feeding the birds to begin with? Birders get annoyed at squirrels for obvious reasons. But you can be happier about the squirrels in your yard if you just change your attitude and see the gray squirrels as food! Watching Birds What makes for a good bird? The falcon eats tonight ... The Science of Birdwatching Let the Eagle Soar We Walk Among Ducks In Wolves Clothing. And Wolves. Ducks Blowing In The Wind When is a…

Are Fox News Viewers Relatively Less Intelligent?

A very humorous but fake study from the conservative "The Intelligence Institute" has been circulating around the Internet. The headline: "Intelligence Institute Study shows Fox News viewers have an IQ that is 20 points lower than the U.S. National average" The good news, the study says, "...an IQ of 80 is well above the score of 70, which is where psychiatrists diagnose mental retardation. P. Nichols says an IQ of 80 will not limit anyone's ability to lead happy, fulfilling lives." Again, that is fake. But it turns out that there is something else going on. The underlying conclusions of…

Once we all had gills (free book chapter)

Have you heard of the book "Once We All Had Gills: Growing Up Evolutionist in an Evolving World"? Here's a summary: In this book, Rudolf A. Raff reaches out to the scientifically queasy, using his life story and his growth as a scientist to illustrate why science matters, especially at a time when many Americans are both suspicious of science and hostile to scientific ways of thinking. Noting that science has too often been the object of controversy in school curriculums and debates on public policy issues ranging from energy and conservation to stem-cell research and climate change, Raff…

Time to opt out of Google?

Google will now follow you around the internet, as you use e-mail, search, YoutTube, and so on and so forth, as you use web browsers or your Android phone, and you can't opt out. This starts March 1st. I'm not sure if this is a bad thing or not. It depends on exactly what they are doing. It will certainly make the Google experience a bit creepier: As you search for YouTube videos on some topic, Google may make suggestions based on information on your Google Calendar, or if you have a business trip to a certain city on your Calendar, Google may suggest which of your circled contacts on…

Nazis in North Dakota

This story is not getting the attention it probably deserves in national press. Which would be more than zero (I've not seen any coverage at all). Rather than rehashing what has already been summarized elsewhere I'll just point you to some sources: The North Dakota Neo-Nazi Take-Over HAS ALREADY HAPPENED The small town of Leith, North Dakota recently took center stage on social networking sites, even while most media outlets barely reported on the story getting all the buzz. A network of white supremacist groups had come together to purchase properties in the small town, so as to create a…

Fukushima smokes, steams, puts self out again.

There are new fires at the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plants. There was a fire on the roof of Reactor Unit 3. It burned for several hours causing workers to pull out of the area to have radiation levels tested. The radiatoi levels did not, however, change. About 6:00 PM local time fire went out (on its own) something like steam or smoke (said by TEPCO to be most likely steam but not from the fuel storage pool) started coming out of the building housing Reactor 2. There is no explanation at this time for either incident. Both reactor buildings were damaged by the same hydrogen…

A glowing irony

As I write this, I'm told that there are eleven water cannon vehicles heading to the disaster-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, to attempt to cool down nuclear material that is exposed and exuding (I dare not use the word "leaking" lest I be thought an alarmist) radiation at a rate that seems to be as alarming to the engineers and nuclear experts on the scene as it is assuaging to the arm-chair nuclear engineers in the US and elsewhere who are telling us that Fukushima is no more dangerous than eating a seedless grape. The following conversation was heard in the Japanese Police…

Sarah Palin Hates Lactation

Or is it just that she does whatever Mistress Bachmann tells her to do? My friend Aseem recently said to me that John McCain may be the USA's greatest villain for unleashing Sarah Palin. My response: Perhaps, and Michele Bachmann is a great villian for leashing Sarah Palin. I do find it interesting that Palin gets so much press for what she says and does, but the truth is, Minnesota's Michele Bachmann, not Sarah Palin, formed the Tea Party, and many of the moves we see Palin pull off are copycat acts following similar moves by Bachmann. It was Bachmann who attacked Michelle "Knows how…

A few random thoughts as I head back home

It was nothing but gray skies and intermittent rain while I was there. It was so beautiful … it felt like home. It was also good seeing my old mentors from grad school days, Chuck Kimmel and John Postlethwait. Patrick Phillips played this video on the big screen. In my presence. I thought about hiding under a table. The wackaloons of the Oregon Right to Life group were meeting in the same hotel with us. They should have snuck into our talks and seen all the pretty embryos we were looking at. Or maybe some of us should have snuck into their sessions, so there'd be at least a few people…

I generally favor the idea of teaching comparative religion…

…but there is a good argument against it: many religions are sickening. Wow, that set you guys on fire. Just to clarify: I think Wilders is a flaming nutcase; I deplore his racist angle and his desire to exclude and oppress rather than educate. However, here is the problem: when people ask me if we should keep religion away from kids, I say no: I think comparative religion classes are an excellent idea. Think about this, though. Would such a class show beheadings? How about voluntary crucifixions in the Phillipines? Jim Jones? Suicide bombings? I think we know the answer. Even here, where…

Underwater Burial Cairn In Huskvarna Bay

Archaeological sites in Lake Vättern off Huskvarna The latest inland ice was 3 km thick and its weight left a big dent in Scandinavia. Since deglaciation (which is, on the geological time scale, a current event) the dent has been straightening out. This causes land uplift. But just outside the edge of the dent, it causes the land to sink. Southernmost Scandinavia is losing land to the sea, not gaining it. The fulcrum of this see-saw crosses Lake Vättern right at its southernmost point. The lake is receding at one end and encroaching at the other. This is why there is an Early Bronze Age…

An Unfortunate Name Change

Sweden’s largest and oldest contract archaeology organisation with five units spread across the country is known as ”UV”. This is an old in-house abbreviation that means either uppdragsverksamheten or undersökningsverksamheten, “the contract section” or “the investigation section”. After more than half a century as part of the National Heritage Board, UV was recently severed from that organisation and grafted onto the Swedish History Museum’s org chart. The reason for this change is that the National Heritage Board is responsible for evaluating the quality of Swedish contract archaeology, and…

Leaking of AR4 precedented

I've just found a couple of letters in Nature (subs req) re the "leaking" of the AR4. Climate: open review may ease acceptance of report by Michael MacCracken, saying As executive director of the Office of the US Global Change Research Program from 1993 to 1997, I was responsible in 1995 for urging adoption of the national review process of the IPCC report that is questioned in your News story. And Climate: US has always made IPCC drafts available says Harlan L. Watson;In fact, US procedures, first published in the Federal Register in 1995, reflect our longstanding commitment to open IPCC…

Keep calm and do virology

There is another new bird flu. H7N9 Bird Flu Cases Reach 21 In China; Death Total Unchanged At Six  More bird flu cases reported in China  New deadly bird flu virus infects at least 20 in China The NPR article is quite good: Human Cases Of Bird Flu In China Draw Scrutiny This 'bird flu' is not that bird flu. But many of the same basic principles still apply (srsly, read that article). There is no reason to freak out about this 'new' bird flu yet. It does not appear to be transmitting human-to-human, and as I said in the previous article, 'death rates' from infection in impoverished…

Megachurches make millions

You really should read this Senator Charles Grassley's investigation into megachurches. It's about time someone pulled down these big-time scams. Nearly 2,000 years later, some who claim to speak in Jesus' name are taking a different view. Consider Bishop Eddie Long, who pastors a megachurch in Lithonia, Ga. With a salary approaching $1 million a year and a nine-bathroom mansion situated on 20 acres, Long's choice of vehicles reflects his opulent lifestyle: He drives a $350,000 Bentley. Far from casting out money changers, Long is likely to join them. In a 2005 profile in the Atlanta Journal-…

Links for 2012-02-17

Xpress Reviews: Nonfiction | First Look at New Books, February 17, 2012 -- Library Journal Reviews Playing Gracie Allen to Orzel's George Burns is the endearing Emmy, the canine star of his previous book. No matter whether Emmy thinks she will be younger by pulling fast on her leash or that she will suddenly fit through a hole in the fence by running as fast as she can toward it, Orzel talks her (and readers) through the principles of relativity, including time dilation and length contraction. No prior mathematical knowledge is required for this book, but some basic knowledge in physics…

Some People Shouldn't Be Police Officers

Including pretty much anybody wearing a helmet in this video from UC-Davis: That's just disgraceful, all the way around (with the possible exception of the chubby hatless cop in the first part of the video, who appears to be behaving in a more reasonable manner than his armored colleagues). I feel a tiny bit bad for the fact that the pepper-spray-wielding officer now has his name and contact information splashed all over the Internet, and the resulting world of shit that will crash down upon him. After all, as Alexis Madrgial notes, he's the product of a terrible system. But then again,…

Fast Neutrinos: Still Fast

One of the more reasonable criticisms of the OPERA result showing neutrinos apparently moving faster than light was that they were claiming 20-nanosecond resolution on the timing of a neutrino pulse that was 10000 nanoseconds long. They got their timing by doing fits to the shape of the whole pulse, as described in that link, and there's always a little bit of alchemy in that sort of process, but they had big long pulses because that's what the accelerator at CERN that served as the source of the neutrino beam provided. After the original annoucnement, they got the neutrino beam reconfigured…

Thursday Terrified Parent Blogging 102711

A couple of cell-phone pictures from last weekend, on an early-evening run to one of the local playgrounds. The sun was pretty well down when SteelyKid decided she wanted to climb on the giant rope climbing structure they have. she's gone on this before, but it's never lasted long, so we figured, why not? (It's blurry because of the low light-- I brightened it massively in GIMP.) She's gotten considerably bolder and more agile since the last time she went on this. And it got even better: That's right, at one point she was over my head. And about five feet away horizontally, with a network…

PBS publishes the responses to the Nova documentary

If you're curious about the public response to PBS's Judgment Day, the PBS ombudsman has an article up on it. It had above average viewership; there were a lot of complaints that it was "one sided", but that's just too bad, since the science is decidedly one sided. The letters are the best part. Here are a couple of my favorites: It doesn't take a "Rocket Scientist" to figure out that if we, as humans, evolved from monkeys . . . THEN WHY? . . . Are there STILL Monkeys??? We were "Created" by God!!! Pull up AOL now and you'll notice the Gov. of Georgia praying for rain, (No Doubt to GOD). When…

Links for 2011-07-02

YouTube - âªSlightly less than two drinks (cut from That Mitchell and Webb Look S04E04)â¬â "You must never drink any more than slightly less than two drinks. Beyond that state of mildly intoxicated perfection lies drunken madness, 3rd pints, kebabs, and destruction." (tags: booze silly comedy video youtube culture) The Slacktiverse: Faith and Hope, 20% off! "There were three different bears, in all. Happy Bear, who was happy; Brave Bear, who wanted to be brave ("Dear God. Please make me BRAVE like a lion! RARRR!"); and Thankful Bear, who was thankful for everything that Happy Bear was…

Links for 2011-05-19

News: What They Are Really Typing - Inside Higher Ed "The authors of two recent studies of laptops and classroom learning decided that relying on student and professor testimony would not do. They decided instead to spy on students. In one study, a St. John's University law professor hired research assistants to peek over students' shoulders from the back of the lecture hall. In the other, a pair of University of Vermont business professors used computer spyware to monitor their students' browsing activities during lectures. The authors of both papers acknowledged that their respective…

A Question of Ethics

If I get a review copy of a book that sounded interesting from a publicist, but it turns out I kind of hate the book, am I still obliged to read it and write it up for the blog? I'm not talking about the totally unsolicited review copies that turn up unannounced in my mail-- I feel no obligation to read those at all-- but a book where I replied to an email to specifically request a copy. On the one hand, they did send me something free, expecting some publicity in return. On the other, I suspect they'd be just as happy having me not post a review saying "The first three pages of this made me…

Links for 2011-03-28

Crankitude: A Quick Glossary. In the Pipeline: "I get probably more than my share of come-ons for various wonder-healing potions. For some reason, people see that I talk about drug discovery and think that I'm sure to be interested in homeopathic wonder water, magnetic healotronic belt buckles, or what have you. I am not. Well, at least not in the usual way that they're presented, as Great New Discoveries that I can order right now, first month's supply is free, and so on." (tags: science medicine kooks in-the-pipeline chemistry blogs) The fraudulent invention debunkifier "Debunking…

Seed, It's High Time to Kick Watson Out

Co-discoverer of DNA and Nobel laureate James Watson is the Seed Media Group's board of directors' scientific advisor. Not a member of some advisory group: the board's single advisor. He has remained so despite a highly publicised racist utterance four months ago. In October last year Watson was quoted as being "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" as "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really." This is not the first time that Watson lets slip a really bisarre prejudice: he's slurred women,…

Suicide-Inducing Florida Retirement Community

Took a walk around the local geocaches, ended up trapped for half an hour in a nightmarish retirement community. Endless identical white single-story houses with garages and immaculate lawns, the streets deserted in the baking January afternoon. I was half-expecting octogenarian Stepford wives to come hobbling after me with trays of synthetic cookies. Many of the houses appeared to belong to retired military men, there were a lot of star-spangled banners (not many people know that it actually got its name from a Jimi Hendrix tune!), and a memorial garden at one end of the grizzled ghetto…

The Antiquity Photography Prize

Like myself, Martin Carver at Antiquity wants good archaeopix. Unlike me, he's offering a cash prize and publication in a top-tier print journal. Antiquity would like to announce the Antiquity Photography Prize. This will be a cash prize awarded for the best archaeological photograph published in the journal in that year. The first prize will be announced for the year 2008. As well as photographs published as part of articles in the journal, consideration for the prize will also include frontispiece photographs published in the editorial. We would be very grateful if you could spread the word…

New Study on Cannabis as Gateway Drug

A new Swedish study on rats suggests that there is a physiological reality behind the idea that relatively innocuous cannabis may act like a gateway drug, leading on to heavier drugs. Soon-to-be-graduating doctoral candidate Maria Ellgren of Karolinska Institutitet has documented a significantly greater interest in self-administered heroin among adult rats that were dosed with cannabis in the womb or during adolescence. Their brains exhibited changes in parts linked to pleasure and rewards. However, they were not more interested than non-stoner rats in central stimulants such as amphetamine.…

2006 Enlightener & Obscurantist Awards

The Swedish Skeptic Society's annual awards for 2006 were announced yesterday. (See also the 2005 awards.) Professor of international healthcare Hans Rosling receives the Enlightener of the Year award, "... for his enlightening efforts to spread a fact-based picture of the state and development of the world, particularly as regards the link between popular health and global economy. Hans Rosling is co-founder of the non-profit foundation Gapminder, that has produced software to visualise and compare statistics from various countries, making it comprehensible and available to anyone."…

Sunday Morning, Chateau Steelypips

The Pip is getting really into books these days, and SteelyKid has been into them for a good while now (she's four-and-a-half, after all...). At some point last week, she asked about my writing, so I got down a copy of How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog and showed her her name in the dedication, which she was tickled by (she now refers to it as "my book"). Encouraged by this, I read a bit to them both-- the dog dialogue from the first chapter, which started life as this old blog post-- doing the silly dog voice. SteelyKid giggled in the right places, more or less, and The Pip listened very…

Science Communication: The Audience Exists

In the twelve years I've been at Union, there are only two times I've tried to go to an evening speaker and been turned away. Once was 4-5 years ago, when Maya Angelou spoke on campus, the second time was last night, when Bill Nye the Science Guy spoke. I managed to make it to the foot of the steps of Memorial Chapel before they hit the fire code (939, I think they said the number was) and turned everybody away. There were probably 20-30 students behind me in the line, so even if I had made it all the way to the front, I might've stepped aside and let one of them in instead. It's worth…

Links for 2012-04-24

Fire - Flint & Steel - Some Clarifications "I started a fire with flint and steel." Often heard, at least in some circles. But, what does this really mean? Well, there are two very different processes that might be being talked about: Traditional Flint and Steel: Striking a hardened piece of carbon steel with a very hard rock, often flint, to generate sparks. Ferrocerium: Scraping a "magic" stick (trade names: Fire Steel, Blastmatch, Metal- Match) with something "sharp" to generate sparks. Why do we care about making a distinction? Facts, 360 B.C.-A.D. 2012 - Chicago Tribune Over the…

Ireland and Lithuania Pass Old Testament Laws

In the West we shake our heads, and very rightly so in my opinion, at sharia, Islamic law rooted in the culture of 7th century AD Arabia. This is the body of thought that leads to judicial stonings and mutilations to this day. The legislative assemblies of Ireland and Lithuania, each just a short boat ride from Swedish shores, have recently shown that the mindset they cultivate is certainly not that of AD 700. They are aiming for Old Testament times, 700 BC or earlier. In Ireland, blasphemous speech is now illegal. "Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will…

The Secrets Behind Names

I have become increasingly fascinated with place names. The other day I bought my second copy of Svenskt ortnamnslexikon, "Swedish place-name encyclopedia" (ed. Mats Wahlberg 2003). One often-consulted copy is in my office, and I've missed it many times -- at home while reading or conversing, and particularly in the car when passing intriguing signposts. Names are hardly ever nonsensical collections of sounds. We may not know what they mean any more, or if we know we don't give it much thought. (In my family, we're named He of the War God, Senior Imperial Concubine from Space, Name of God and…

Will we see shorter, more focused IPCC reports from now on? The short answer is no

...says carbonbrief. In turn, I think that's based on IPCC PRESS RELEASE / 27 February 2015 / IPCC takes decisions on future work. The very second bullet point of that is: Request the Secretariat and Technical Support Units to command a respectful workplace, emphasizing policies and practices that promote diversity, fairness, collaboration and inclusiveness. Mmmm... I wonder where that has come from? Most of the rest is meh. The encouraging the Third World stuff is dodgy; that's what got us the Himalayan stuff in the first place. The two bits that matter are Continue to produce assessment…

Betting on sea ice with Crandles

Crandles kindly reminded me that I had three £100 bets with him; they're formalised here (an earlier version at £67 each is here), as: Crandles offers 3 separate bets on the average of [2012, 2013 and 2014] (to be above/below 4.294, I take the high side), of [2013, 2014 and 2015] (4.119, ditto) and of [2014, 2015 and 2016] (3.94, ditto). In the event of anything that clearly throws things out like a VEI6 volcanic eruption bets are voidable. Those are NSIDC extent not area. CR kindly reminded me of the 2012 and 13 values as 3.63 and 5.35 respectively. 2014 is pretty clearly going to be higher…

Calif. Judge Strikes Down Ban on Gay Marriage

A California Superior Court judge has ruled that a ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional in that state. I know nothing about the California state constitution, so I have no idea if the ruling is legally justified or not, but this part certainly nails the crux of the whole issue: "It appears that no rational purpose exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners," Kramer wrote. The judge wrote that the state's historical definition of marriage, by itself, cannot justify the denial of equal protection for gays and lesbians. "The state's protracted denial of equal…

Mostly Mute Monday: 50,000 Evolving Galaxies (Synopsis)

“From our home on the Earth, we look out into the distances are strive to imagine the sort of world into which we are born.. But with increasing distance our knowledge fades, and fades rapidly, until at the last dim horizon we search among ghostly errors of observations for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial. The search will continue. The urge is older than history. It is not satisfied and it will not be suppressed.” -Edwin Hubble The deeper we look out into the Universe, the farther back in time we look. Our largest, deepest surveys have shown us not only galaxies in the very…

How fast are we moving through space? (Synopsis)

“The slow philosophy is not about doing everything in tortoise mode. It’s less about the speed and more about investing the right amount of time and attention in the problem so you solve it.” -Carl Honore If you wanted to know how fast you were moving through space, you'd need to measure it all: the Earth's rotation, our motion around the Sun, the Sun's motion through the galaxy, the Milky Way's speed within the local group, and finally how the local group moved relative to the Universe. All in all, it's a daunting, virtually impossible task without literally measuring everything in the…