June 24, 2015
“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” -Vincent Van Gogh
When we look out into the Universe, farther back to greater distances, we're also looking back in time, farther and farther into the past. If we could look back far enough, close enough to…
June 22, 2015
“Hundreds or thousands of years from now, when people look back at our generation, they will remember us for being the first people who found the Earth-like worlds.” -Sara Seager
Just a scant 25 years ago, we had never yet found and confirmed another planet orbiting a star other than our own. Fast…
June 21, 2015
“The progress of science is strewn, like an ancient desert trail, with the bleached skeleton of discarded theories which once seemed to possess eternal life.” -Arthur Koestler
For every galaxy out there, what we typically see -- the stars -- is only representative of a tiny fraction, maybe 2%, of…
June 21, 2015
“A princess is many things, and a raptor is one of them.” -Laura Cooper
For those of us who love the movies, there are two things that are indelibly etched into our memories -- not necessarily together -- as Galactic, featuring Chali 2na, sing to us, if we
Think Back.
I'm referring, of course, to…
June 20, 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
Although you had lots to say, it came almost exclusively on two of our posts, so let's jump right in and see if we can expand…
June 19, 2015
“Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.” -Bernard Baruch
Take a common, macroscopic object -- like an apple -- and imagine what's going on inside at the level of individual particles. At a small, fundamental scale, they're just bouncing off of one another, rapidly in…
June 18, 2015
“Soon the earth will tilt on its axis and begin to dance to the reggae beat to the accompaniment of earthquake. And who can resist the dance of the earthquake, mon?” –Peter Tosh
But it isn't true that the Earth's axial tilt will change, is it? Or rather, if it did, how would you know? Believe it or…
June 17, 2015
“Scientific ideas should be simple, explanatory, predictive. The inflationary multiverse as currently understood appears to have none of those properties.” -Paul Steinhardt, 2014
Cosmic inflation is alternately talked about by serious scientists as either the definitive beginning to our Universe,…
June 14, 2015
“People get cranky when you burst their bubble. Over time, advances in astronomy have relentlessly reinforced the utter insignificance of Earth on a celestial scale.” -Nathan Myhrvold
When new stars form from a collapsing molecular cloud, the hottest, bluest, brightest stars emit high-energy …
June 14, 2015
“Laughs don’t come in barrels. They come from inside you as your body’s response to delight.” -Pinkie Pie
Every once in a while, a constraint is placed on an artist, musician or creator that results in something more powerful than you would have ever found otherwise. Have a listen to Keller…
June 13, 2015
"You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space." -Johnny Cash
This past week at Starts With A Bang saw quite a lot…
June 12, 2015
“Nothing is lost… Everything is transformed.” -Michael Ende
If you take all the kinetic motion out of a system, and have all the particles that make it up perfectly at rest, somehow even overcoming intrinsic quantum effects, you'd reach absolute zero, the theoretically lowest temperature of all. …
June 11, 2015
“Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.” –Marcus Aurelius
There are four known fundamental forces: gravitation, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear…
June 10, 2015
“When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.” -Niels Bohr
Shortly after the Big Bang, the first nuclear fusion reactions occurred in the Universe, filling it with hydrogen, helium, and…
June 10, 2015
Although physicists are well-known for their quirky personalities, the in-joke among ourselves is our extremely nerdy sense of humor, telling jokes about our field, our equations, and of course, the legends in our field. These range from the subtle (Schrodinger walks into a bar, and also he doesn't…
June 9, 2015
If we want to understand the Universe at a fundamental level -- all the forces on all scales -- the biggest obstacle facing us is to come up with a correct, consistent, testable and verifiable theory of quantum gravity. To no one's great surprise, we're not quite there yet.
Image credit: Lee…
June 7, 2015
“The wonder is, not that the field of the stars is so vast, but that man has measured it.” -Anatole France
Wherever large, dense collections of cool gas gather together under the force of their own gravity, new stars are bound to form. Every galaxy goes through peaks and lulls in star formation,…
June 7, 2015
“There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.” -Jiddu Krishnamurti
If you want to learn something -- whether it's abstract or concrete,…
June 6, 2015
"Men who wish to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details." -Heraclitus
This past week at Starts With A Bang put on quite a show, and you -- as always -- didn't disappoint. If you missed anything, here's what went on:
Learning to chill (a guest post from Paul Halpern),…
June 5, 2015
“I just think too many nice things have happened in string theory for it to be all wrong. Humans do not understand it very well, but I just don’t believe there is a big cosmic conspiracy that created this incredible thing that has nothing to do with the real world.” -Edward Witten
It's a difficult…
June 4, 2015
They say ‘A flat ocean is an ocean of trouble. And an ocean of waves… can also be trouble.’ So, it’s like, that balance. You know, it’s that great Oriental way of thinking, you know, they think they’ve tricked you, and then, they have.” -Nigel Tufnel
When you travel towards an object like a moon,…
June 3, 2015
“Movin’ right along.
You take it, you know best.
Hey, I’ve never seen the Sun come up in the West?” -The Muppet Movie
Few things in this world are as regular as sunrise and sunset. With the application of a little physics, you can predict exactly where and when the sun will rise or set from any…
June 1, 2015
“Lost — yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.” -Horace Mann
The beauty of a sunset (or sunrise) is rare and unique, happening but once a day for those of us on Earth. But aboard a…
May 31, 2015
“The universe is big, its vast and complicated, and ridiculous. And sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles. And that’s the theory. 900 years, never seen one yet, but this would do me.” -Steven Moffat
They say that the best things in life are free, and I'm a…
May 30, 2015
"Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own." -Georg C. Lichtenberg
There was so much action on Starts With A Bang this week, from darkness to the brightest lights, that it's going to be a bear choosing what to highlight from the comments. Here's what this past…
May 29, 2015
“One feels that the past stays the way you left it, whereas the present is in constant movement; it’s unstable all around you.” -Tom Stoppard
You might best know Einstein for E=mc^2, but I would argue that the far greater contribution was the development of relativity. Think about the following: if…
May 29, 2015
Does a black hole have a shape? Is there a front and back or side view? Does it look the same from all vantage points?
When you think about a black hole, you very likely think about a large amount of mass, pulled towards a central location by the tremendous force of gravity. It's not all that…
May 29, 2015
The heat death of the Universe is the idea that increasing entropy will eventually cause the Universe to arrive at a uniformly, maximally disordered state. Every piece of evidence we have points towards our unfortunate, inevitable trending towards that end, with every burning star, every…
May 28, 2015
“Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate. One thing at least is certain, light has weight. One thing is certain and the rest debate. Light rays, when near the Sun, do not go straight.” -Arthur Eddington
While we know full well today that Newtonian gravity is just an approximation to a more…
May 28, 2015
“Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. You will have opportunities beyond anything we’ve ever known.” –Ronald Reagan
Three years ago, Sally Ride -- the first American woman in space -- died of pancreatic cancer. This…
