June 13, 2016
“It surprises me how disinterested we are today about things like physics, space, the universe and philosophy of our existence, our purpose, our final destination. It’s a crazy world out there. Be curious.” –Stephen Hawking
In the beginning, before even the Big Bang, all that we had was space and…
June 13, 2016
“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.” -Muhammad Ali
It's been a very busy week here at Starts With A Bang — as most full weeks after vacation often are — but there's a whole lot to look forward to and look back on this past week. Not only did we…
June 11, 2016
"The new claim now is [a] boson with a mass of 16.7 MeV. But they don’t say anything about what went wrong in their previous claims and why we should not take those claims seriously." -Oscar Naviliat Cuncic
Everyone knows that the Standard Model of particle physics cannot be all there is. It does a…
June 10, 2016
“If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.” -Mario Andretti
One of the toughest things to wrap your mind around in the natural world is the idea of special relativity: the faster you move, the closer you get to the speed of light, the more difficult it becomes to increase…
June 9, 2016
"That what wrong with the media today. All they have is questions, questions, questions. They never have cookies." -Cookie Monster
There are lots of things to worry about in this Universe, including falling into a black hole. But unless you happen to fall directly into the event horizon, an…
June 8, 2016
"The Universe is made mostly of dark matter and dark energy, and we don't know what either of them is." -Saul Perlmutter
When we look out at the Solar System, the Sun dominates in terms of both light and mass. Responsible for nearly 100% of the light and for 99.8% of the mass, it stands to reason…
June 7, 2016
"Not only does God play dice, but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen." -Stephen Hawking
The New York Times ran an article on Stephen Hawking promising there was a possible escape route from a black hole, after all. In the text, Hawking asserts,
"They are not the eternal prisons…
June 6, 2016
"The cosmic game changed forever in 1992. Before then, logic told us that there had to be other planets besides the nine (if you still count poor Pluto) in our solar system, but until that year, when two astronomers detected faint, telltale radio signals in the constellation Virgo, we had no hard…
June 5, 2016
"The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life." -Muhammad Ali
You might not think that boxing, the sweet science, and physics, the most fundamental of all the sciences, have much in common on the surface. But look a little deeper and you'll find…
June 5, 2016
“It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe.” -Muhammad Ali
After a week of travel here at Starts With A Bang -- where we appeared at Balticon 50 and had a fantastic time -- it's time to catch up on all the news that the Universe had to offer. That…
June 4, 2016
"Until the 1990s, there were few reliable observations about movement at the scale of the entire universe, which is the only scale dark energy effects. So dark energy could not be seen until we could measure things very, very far away." -Adam Riess
Just thirty years ago, scientists argued over the…
June 2, 2016
"What's really exciting is what comes next. I think we're opening a window on the universe -- a window of gravitational wave astronomy." -Dave Reitze
On September 14, 2015, LIGO directly detected gravitational waves for the first time, from the inspiral-and-merger of two quite massive black holes.…
June 2, 2016
“There is no question that climate change is happening; the only arguable point is what part humans are playing in it.” –David Attenborough
If the Earth didn't have any global warming at all, our planet's mean temperature would be 255 K, or about -1º Fahrenheit: the mean temperature of the…
June 1, 2016
"The bedrock nature of space and time and the unification of cosmos and quantum are surely among science's great 'open frontiers.' These are parts of the intellectual map where we're still groping for the truth - where, in the fashion of ancient cartographers, we must still inscribe 'here be…
May 31, 2016
"We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life." -James Hansen
Thanks to our position in space, the energy output of the Sun, and the right atmospheric conditions on Earth, we have temperatures conducive to…
May 29, 2016
"The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains; and the 'evolution' of brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed." -William James
When stars like…
May 28, 2016
“A long time ago people believed that the world is flat and the moon is made of green cheese. Some still do, to this day. The man on the moon is looking down and laughing.” -Vera Nazarian
When people make claims that are patently untrue -- like the Earth is flat -- perhaps your knee-jerk reaction…
May 27, 2016
"Science is global. Einstein's equation, E=mc^2, has to reach everywhere. Science is a beautiful gift to humanity, we should not distort it." -A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
Over 100 years ago, Einstein shook up the physics world with a number of groundbreaking discoveries: special relativity, brownian motion…
May 26, 2016
“[The black hole] teaches us that space can be crumpled like a piece of paper into an infinitesimal dot, that time can be extinguished like a blown-out flame, and that the laws of physics that we regard as ‘sacred,’ as immutable, are anything but.” -John Wheeler
Dark matter is one of the biggest…
May 25, 2016
"By refocusing our space program on Mars for America's future, we can restore the sense of wonder and adventure in space exploration that we knew in the summer of 1969. We won the moon race; now it's time for us to live and work on Mars, first on its moons and then on its surface." -Buzz Aldrin…
May 24, 2016
"Reality is what kicks back when you kick it. This is just what physicists do with their particle accelerators. We kick reality and feel it kick back. From the intensity and duration of thousands of those kicks over many years, we have formed a coherent theory of matter and forces, called the…
May 23, 2016
“Love doesn't make the world go 'round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” -Franklin P. Jones
It's been such a busy time here at Starts With A Bang that we're a day late bringing you last week's recap! And we've got to get rocking on it, because there's so much coming up to consider as well!…
May 23, 2016
"The first amazing fact about gravitation is that the ratio of inertial mass to gravitational mass is constant wherever we have checked it. The second amazing thing about gravitation is how weak it is." -Richard Feynman
One of the strangest, most novel predictions of Einstein's relativity is that…
May 21, 2016
"When you get just a complete sense of blackness or void ahead of you, that somehow the future looks an impossible place to be, and the direction you are going seems to have no purpose, there is this word despair which is a very awful thing to feel." -Stephen Fry
Perhaps the most fundamental…
May 20, 2016
"To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after you." -Isaac Newton
Perhaps the greatest, most successful scientific theory of the past century is Einstein's…
May 19, 2016
"We've known for a long time that the universe is expanding. But about 15 years ago, my colleagues and I discovered that it is expanding faster and faster. That is, the universe is accelerating, and that was not expected, but it is now attributed to this mysterious stuff called dark energy which…
May 18, 2016
"I'm a fan of supersymmetry, largely because it seems to be the only route by which gravity can be brought into the scheme. It's probably not even enough, but it's a way forward to get gravity involved. If you have supersymmetry, then there are more of these particles. That would be my favourite…
May 17, 2016
“When a star goes supernova, the explosion emits enough light to overshadow an entire solar system, even a galaxy. Such explosions can set off the creation of new stars. In its own way, it was not unlike being born.” -Todd Nelsen
The vast majority of elements beyond hydrogen found on Earth were…
May 16, 2016
"More days to come / new places to go
I've got to leave / it's time for a show
Here I am / Rock you like a hurricane!" -The Scorpions
On Earth, category 5 hurricanes cause devastation wherever they make landfall, bringing sustained winds, rain, destruction and -- in many cases -- casualties. But…
May 15, 2016
“If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door - or I'll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.” -Rabindranath Tagore
Time continues marching on here at Starts With A Bang, just as it does everywhere. My Patreon supporters have stepped up their…
