November 21, 2015
“Science is the one human activity that is truly progressive. The body of positive knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.” -Edwin Hubble
We really got into some wondrous stuff here at Starts With A Bang this past week, including:
Can we see our galaxy's supermassive black hole? (…
November 21, 2015
"Twinkle, twinkle quasi-star.
Biggest puzzle from afar.
How unlike the other ones.
Brighter than a billion suns.
Twinkle, twinkle, quasi-star.
How I wonder what you are." -George Gamow
One of the most interesting classes of objects in the entire sky is one that's invisible to the naked eye, yet…
November 20, 2015
"Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science." -Edwin Hubble
Back in the 1920s, Einstein's general relativity had just come out and gained acceptance, and a debate was raging over whether the spirals in the sky were within our own galaxy, or…
November 19, 2015
“Cheap little rhymes
A cheap little tune
Are sometimes as dangerous
As a sliver of the moon.” -Langston Hughes
4.5 billion years ago, a giant object collided with our proto-Earth, kicking up debris that eventually coalesced into the Moon.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
While the near side…
November 18, 2015
"There are still so many questions to answer. When you look at any part of the universe, you have to feel humbled." -Saul Perlmutter
Discovered in 1998 from the observation of distant supernovae, dark energy determines the eventual fate of the Universe, leading to a "Big Freeze" scenario, where all…
November 16, 2015
"Truth is more valuable if it takes you a few years to find it." -Jules Renard
Of all the star-forming nebulae in our galaxy, the Trifid Nebula -- Messier 20 -- is thought to be the newest and youngest. Named "Trifid" for its threefold appearance, the blue reflection nebula, the red emission nebula…
November 15, 2015
"Every great work makes the human face more admirable and richer, and that is its whole secret." -Albert Camus
It's well known that by aligning and averaging a wide variety of human faces together, an eerie "average" human face can be arrived at. But we see faces in things all the time, from…
November 14, 2015
“You are all wave particles when I close my eyes. I am no more entranced by your entanglement than a butterfly is to a bee.” -Solange nicole
This past week at Starts With A Bang saw a flurry of activity, including a wonderful variety of new stories, like:
Would a scientist bet their life on a…
November 14, 2015
"Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road." -Dag Hammarskjold
One of the great discoveries of the past few decades was that of a supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way. No longer was…
November 12, 2015
"It's not the job of the theorist to defend his model at all costs!" - Joel Primack
One of the more puzzling phenomena in our quantum Universe is that of entanglement: two particles remain in mutually indeterminate states until one is measured, and then the other — even if it's across the Universe…
November 11, 2015
"I have worn myself thin trying to find out about this comet, and I know very little now in the matter." -Maria Mitchell
Originating from the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud, comets are generally thought of as periodic objects, with their initial trajectories having been perturbed by either Neptune…
November 10, 2015
"Some kind of celestial event. No — no words. No words to describe it. Poetry! They should have sent a poet. So beautiful. So beautiful... I had no idea." -Dr. Ellie Arroway, Contact
Back in 2006, the International Astronomical Union defined the term "planet" for the first time by three criteria:…
November 9, 2015
"It is true that we are made of dust. And the world is also made of dust. But the dust has motes rising." -Muhammad Iqbal
If you want to view the Milky Way in all its true splendor, you need to go beyond visible light, as the cosmic dust that gives rise to new stars also absorbs visible light,…
November 8, 2015
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -Richard Feynman
Every few months now, the popular press goes wild with claims that there’s a new engine out there, one that produces thrust without any exhaust, violating the…
November 7, 2015
“It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.” -Henry David Thoreau
Every week at Starts With A Bang is special, but we made an amazing move, over to Forbes, which is the new home of…
November 6, 2015
"In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is." -Yogi Berra
Scientific theories are a dime a dozen, yet only the most successful have a large range of validity, hold up to many disparate lines of evidence, and stand the test of time. Inevitably, our…
November 5, 2015
"Studying whether there's life on Mars or studying how the universe began, there's something magical about pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. That's something that is almost part of being human, and I'm certain that will continue." -Sally Ride
If you came to the Solar System some 500 million…
November 5, 2015
"Based on our understanding of how galaxy clusters grow from the very beginning of our universe, this cluster should be one of the five most massive in existence at that time." -Peter Eisenhardt
While deep galaxy surveys from telescopes like Hubble are great for identifying distant individual…
November 4, 2015
"Historically, when we have better clocks, we have better navigation." -David Wineland
If you want to keep time in the Universe, you need a reference point that everyone can agree on, so that when you talk about things like "meters," "seconds," or "the speed of light," everyone else in the world is…
November 3, 2015
"This scenario implies that the giant planet instability is not the source of the Late Heavy Bombardment and that terrestrial planet formation finished with the giant planets in their modern configuration." -Nathan A. Caib & John E. Chambers
It's a common but nonetheless spectacular occurrence…
November 2, 2015
"Gravitational and electromagnetic interactions are long-range interactions, meaning they act on objects no matter how far they are separated from each other." -Francois Englert
Want a recipe for seeing as far into the distant Universe as you can? Because of how distance and brightness are…
November 1, 2015
“I have signs in my kitchen to remind me not to eat breakfast and that my job is always. Most cops work only at night or at day. I am a lucky cop because I work both. Tomorrow we do it all again, because my job is not day shift or night shift. It’s always shift.” -Axe Cop
One day, at the scene of…
October 31, 2015
"As I was going up the stair I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. I wish, I wish he’d stay away." -Hughes Mearns
Although every week at Starts With A Bang is special, there's something extra special brewing here. Sure, we've got the "normal stuff" of the articles we've written…
October 31, 2015
“End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.” -J.R.R. Tolkien
There's a realization we all face at some point in our lives: that not only are we…
October 29, 2015
“I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time.” –Robert Browning
You've heard it said often that one thing remains true no matter what we discuss: that this, too, shall pass. The stars will eventually burn out, the galaxies…
October 28, 2015
“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive — to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” -Marcus Aurelius
How old is life on Earth? If all you had to go on was the fossil record, you'd run into severe trouble once you went back more than one or two billion…
October 26, 2015
“No matter how ‘normal’ people look, living ‘ordinary’ lives, everyone has a story to tell. And may be, just like you, everyone else is a misfit too.” -Sanhita Baruah
Every century or so, possibly even more frequently, a supernova goes off somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy. While the explosion…
October 25, 2015
“It’s said that All Hallows’ Eve is one of the nights when the veil between the worlds is thin — and whether you believe in such things or not, those roaming spirits probably believe in you, or at least acknowledge your existence, considering that it used to be their own.” -Erin Morgenstern
Alas,…
October 24, 2015
“It says here that a bolt of lightning is going to strike the clock tower at precisely 10:04 p.m. next Saturday night! If... If we could somehow harness this lightning... channel it into the flux capacitor... it just might work. Next Saturday night, we're sending you back to the future! ” –Doc…
October 23, 2015
“Unless one says goodbye to what one loves, and unless one travels to completely new territories, one can expect merely a long wearing away of oneself and an eventual extinction.” -Jean Dubuffet
The Universe is in its heyday right now: hundreds of billions of galaxies are visible from any point,…
