July 27, 2015
“Our knowledge of stars and interstellar matter must be based primarily on the electromagnetic radiation which reaches us. Nature has thoughtfully provided us with a universe in which radiant energy of almost all wave lengths travels in straight lines over enormous distances with usually rather…
July 26, 2015
“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery — air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, ‘This is what it is to be happy.’” -Sylvia Plath
The modern world can often make you feel like you'll never find anything good "playing by its rules" in it. This feeling is evoked, tremendously, in the…
July 25, 2015
“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small." -Neil Armstrong
This past week was the 46th anniversary of the first Moon landing for…
July 24, 2015
“As the blackness of the night recedes so does the nadir of yesterday. The child I am forgets so quickly.” -Sylvia Ashton-Warner
While the night sky is littered with thousands of points of light -- the stars visible to the naked eye -- we know that beyond what human perception can see, there are…
July 23, 2015
“You can spend too much time wondering which of identical twins is the more alike.” -Robert Brault
Earlier today, NASA announced the "most Earth-like exoplanet yet," a planet just 60% larger in radius than our own, orbiting a star of the same spectral class as our Sun and with an almost identical…
July 22, 2015
“It was quite the most incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.” -Ernest Rutherford
Over 100 years ago, Ernest Rutherford fired a stream of alpha particles at a thin…
July 21, 2015
When you think of the night sky -- of a good, dark night sky -- you probably think of going away, far into the wilderness, away from all human activity. If you're a little more clever, you'll head up, to the top of a high mountain, where the air is thin and steady.
Image credit: Mike Prokosch.…
July 20, 2015
“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.” -Edgar Allan Poe
Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, we've learned for a certainty that the black abyss of empty space isn't really so empty. Far beyond what…
July 19, 2015
“Well, this is a thing unheard of. An Elf would go underground, where a Dwarf dare not. Oh, I’d never hear the end of it.” -Gimli, Lord of the Rings
When you think about the different elements present here on Earth, I hope you think about the different ways they bind together, combine, and add…
July 18, 2015
“Just as a Chihuahua is still a dog, these ice dwarfs are still planetary bodies. The misfit becomes the average. The Pluto-like objects are more typical in our solar system than the nearby planets we first knew.” -Alan Stern
The last week here at Starts With A Bang saw some great articles that…
July 18, 2015
“What was scattered, gathers.
What was gathered, blows away.” -Heraclitus
When you're looking around in our Solar System, we've got the Sun at the center, the planets orbiting them, and then moons orbiting the planets in turn.
But why is that necessarily the limit? Couldn't we have "moonlets" or…
July 16, 2015
“Man loves company — even if it is only that of a small burning candle.” -Georg C. Lichtenberg
The Sun, like all stars initially, burns hydrogen fuel into helium through the process of nuclear fusion. But as the Sun ages, as do all stars over a certain mass, it starts burning those heavier elements…
July 15, 2015
When it comes to the fabric of our Universe, we live in four dimensions: three space and one time. At least, that's what it seems like. But it's possible that at very high energy scales -- or at very small distance scales -- not only might even more forces unify, but we might discover that the…
July 14, 2015
“Words are the source of misunderstandings.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Back in 2006, the International Astronomical Union officially defined the word "planet" for the first time, claiming that as long as something met all three of the following criteria:
It was in hydrostatic equilibrium (pulled…
July 13, 2015
“Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.” -Ernest Holmes
When you've got a gas cloud in space that emits light, it's only for one of two reasons:
Either it's at high enough temperatures that its atoms are excited and it's emitting its own light as the…
July 12, 2015
“Life is a festival only to the wise.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Last weekend, I was actually away from the blog for a few days, something that hasn't happened except for one brief trip in March. Only this time, it was 100% for fun, as I was away at the 25 annual High Sierra Music Festival.
Image…
July 11, 2015
“If somebody's going to pay money to come see you perform, then it should be something to see.” -Michael Trent
The past two weeks at Starts With A Bang have been awesome for all we've covered, even with a (brief) vacation on my part thrown in there. (Don't worry, you'll get the best of it this…
July 10, 2015
“It’s hard to build models of inflation that don’t lead to a multiverse. It’s not impossible, so I think there’s still certainly research that needs to be done. But most models of inflation do lead to a multiverse, and evidence for inflation will be pushing us in the direction of taking [the idea…
July 9, 2015
“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” –Mark Twain
You probably think you know the eight planets pretty well, don't you? Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, in order, with the four rocky inner worlds…
July 8, 2015
“Put two ships in the open sea, without wind or tide, and, at last, they will come together. Throw two planets into space, and they will fall one on the other. Place two enemies in the midst of a crowd, and they will inevitably meet; it is a fatality, a question of time; that is all.” -Jules Verne…
July 7, 2015
"Were the succession of stars endless, then the background of the sky would present us a uniform luminosity, like that displayed by the Galaxy-since there could be absolutely no point, in all that background, at which would not exist a star." -Edgar Allan Poe
The master of the macabre, little known…
July 1, 2015
“Revolutions are something you see only in retrospect.” -Alan Greenspan
If there's one thing you can be certain of when it comes to the fundamental, scientific truths of our Universe, it's this: someday, in the not too distant future, those truths will be superseded by more fundamental ones. And…
July 1, 2015
“Celebrate the independence of your nation by blowing up a small part of it.” -Summer of 4 ft. 2; The Simpsons
There are few things as closely associated with American independence as our willingness and eagerness to celebrate with fiery explosions. I refer, of course, to the unique spectacle of…
June 30, 2015
“I remember as a kid having a balloon and accidentally letting the string go and watching it just float off and into the sky until it disappeared. And there’s something about that, even, that feels very much like what life is, you know, that it’s fleeting, and it’s temporal.” -Pete Docter
So, you…
June 30, 2015
There's something puzzling about black holes, if you stop to consider it. On the one hand, they're objects so massive and dense -- compacted into such a small region of space -- that nothing can escape from it, not even light. That's the definition of a black hole, and why "black" is in the name.…
June 29, 2015
“Now, Venus is an extremely hostile environment, and as such presents a lot of challenges for a science fiction author who wants to create life there. However, as I began to research it more thoroughly, I found myself intrigued by the possibilities the world offers.” -Sarah Zettel
Of all the worlds…
June 27, 2015
“Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential.” -Bruce Lee
One of the greatest tricks that filmmakers use to enhance what can be shown in apparent…
June 27, 2015
“We are a singularity that makes music out of noise because we must hurry. We make a harvest of loneliness and desiring in the blank wasteland of the cosmos.” -Jack Gilbert
This past week at Starts With A Bang saw five new stories about the Universe, from our own home planet to topics about the…
June 26, 2015
“I soon became convinced… that all the theorizing would be empty brain exercise and therefore a waste of time unless one first ascertained what the population of the universe really consists of.” -Fritz Zwicky
When we look out at the galaxies in the Universe, watching how they rotate, we find that…
June 25, 2015
“Electricity can be dangerous. My nephew tried to stick a penny into a plug. Whoever said a penny doesn’t go far didn’t see him shoot across that floor. I told him he was grounded.” -Tim Allen
Static electricity is often the first exposure to physics beyond gravity that we encounter in our lives.…
