May 27, 2015
“The crust, being so thin, must bend, if, over wide areas, it becomes loaded with glacial ice, ocean water or deposits of sand and mud. It must bend in the opposite sense if widely extended loads of such material be removed. This accounts for… the origin of chains of high mountains… and the rise of…
May 27, 2015
A few weeks ago, Amanda Peet gave a public lecture that we live-blogged here. In the Q&A part after the talk, she made a statement that I sort of glossed over: that the LHC was able to verify some of the predictions of String Theory. In my head, I thought, "yeah, all the predictions that the…
May 26, 2015
It's one of the cardinal laws of physics and the underlying principle of Einstein's relativity itself: the fact that there's a universal speed limit to the motion of anything through space and time, the speed of light, or c. Light itself will always move at this speed (as well as certain other…
May 24, 2015
“The world exploded into billions of atoms, and when it rearranged itself, it may have looked the same, but really, it was a Whole New World.” -Claire LaZebnik
At the center of almost every galaxy is a supermassive black hole (SMBH); at the center of almost every cluster is a supermassive galaxy…
May 24, 2015
“I have made the most important discovery of my career, the most important discovery of my life: It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reason can be found.” -John Forbes Nash, Jr.
Yet logic and reason -- when applied correctly -- can get us incredibly far. Have a listen…
May 23, 2015
"An asteroid or a supervolcano could certainly destroy us, but we also face risks the dinosaurs never saw: An engineered virus, nuclear war, inadvertent creation of a micro black hole, or some as-yet-unknown technology could spell the end of us." -Elon Musk
We've covered a ton this week on Starts…
May 22, 2015
“[I]f there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.” -C.S. Lewis
The Universe had two periods where light was abundant, separated by the cosmic dark ages. The first came at the moment of the hot Big Bang,…
May 21, 2015
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” -H. P. Lovecraft
When it comes to risk assessment, there's one type that humans are notoriously bad at: the very low-frequency but high-consequence risks and rewards. It's why so…
May 20, 2015
“Journalists often ask me when I go to the field, ‘What do you expect to find?’ And my answer always is, ‘The unexpected,’ because we’re just looking at the tip of the iceberg; we’ve just scratched the surface.” -Donald Johanson
Imagine you wanted to know what your acceleration was anywhere on…
May 19, 2015
“One of the dreariest spots on life’s road is the point of conviction that nothing will ever again happen to you.” -Faith Baldwin
Bet you thought you knew it all about the asteroid belt. These frozen, ice-and-rock worlds orbit farther out from Mars, closer in than Jupiter, and occasionally get…
May 19, 2015
If you're not a theoretical physicist yourself, you might think that physics is physics -- we ask questions about the Universe, do experiments/make observations, and get the answers -- and math is just a tool that we use to help us get there.
Image credit: © 2015 Shaper Helix — II Demo, via http…
May 18, 2015
“Without any doubt, the regularity which astronomy shows us in the movements of the comets takes place in all phenomena. The trajectory of a simple molecule of air or vapour is regulated in a manner as certain as that of the planetary orbits; the only difference between them is that which is…
May 17, 2015
“That’s what you get for being food.” -Margaret Atwood
Sure, we need food to live. But in our world of highly processed, easily-accessible foods, unless we're doing the prep and cooking ourselves, it's easy to lose touch with what the raw ingredients are actually all about. Have a listen to …
May 16, 2015
“I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.” -Charlotte Brontë
Our exploration of the Universe, near and…
May 15, 2015
“We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won’t need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don’t fire cannons to call attention to their shining- they just shine.” -Dwight L. Moody
When it comes to the farthest thing we can see in the Universe, that's the Cosmic Microwave Background,…
May 14, 2015
“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” –John Stuart Mill
If there's nothing else that science has to offer, it's this elegant notion: that anyone, anywhere, at anytime, can investigate and uncover the mysteries and workings of the…
May 14, 2015
“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” -Joseph Campbell
When you think about dark matter, you probably think of a few things: how mass and gravity don't appear to line up, how there isn't enough normal matter to account for the motions we see on scales of galaxies and up, and how it's…
May 12, 2015
“We live in a world that has narrowed into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood.” -Lyndon B. Johnson
When you think of our own cosmic backyard -- our planets, Sun, the nearby stars, and even the closest galaxies to us -- you probably don't think of them in the context of the…
May 11, 2015
“And no one showed us to the land
And no one knows the where’s or why’s
But something stirs and something tries
And starts to climb towards the light” -Pink Floyd, Echoes
It's pretty difficult to imagine, but a little over 300 years ago, a supernova -- a dying, ultramassive star -- exploded, giving…
May 10, 2015
“The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.” -Grand Moff Tarkin
Sure, the Death Star was the most fearsome battle station in the Universe, for a time. Capable of destroying a planet with a single…
May 8, 2015
“Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.” -Louis Pasteur
Well, it's been another doozy of a week here on Starts With A Bang, and we've run the gamut from the far future to the smallest theoretical scales, from Hubble to the…
May 8, 2015
“Never erase your past. It shapes who you are today and will help you to be the person you’ll be tomorrow.” -Ziad K. Abdelnour
But even moreso than the fact that we're shaped by our past, the Universe itself -- geometrically -- is shaped by its history and composition. You might imagine all sorts…
May 7, 2015
“Energy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happen.” -Bill Bryson
When it comes to the Universe, you might think that energy really is only limited by rarity: get enough particles accelerated by enough supermassive, super-energetic sources, and it's only a matter of time (and flux)…
May 6, 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.” -Ed Witten
So the cat is out of…
May 5, 2015
“No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other’s worth.” -Robert Southey
You might think that, when it comes to finding the most distant objects in the Universe, all we need is a good telescope, to leave the shutter open, and…
May 4, 2015
“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” –Joseph Campbell
Imagine you just stared into darkness, collecting every photon of light that came by. What would you wind up seeing? The Hubble Space Telescope has done this…
May 3, 2015
“When I was a kid, my world was five streets long. I never got away, except in books. I lived a thousand lives through books.” -George R.R. Martin
If you aren't enthralled by Game of Thrones (or for you bibliophiles, A Song of Fire and Ice), have I ever got an introduction for you. First, enjoy the…
May 2, 2015
“The heart can get really cold if all you've known is winter.” -Benjamin Alire Sáenz
If you didn't read everything this week on Starts With A Bang, it's hard to blame you. Each week, on practically a daily basis, we've got new pieces coming at you, sharing the wonders of the Universe in our own…
May 1, 2015
“A single tiny light creates a space where darkness cannot exist. The light vanquishes the darkness. Try as it might, the darkness cannot conquer the light.” -Donald L. Hicks
While it might seem like there are an endless supply of stars in the Universe, the process that powers each and every one…
April 30, 2015
“What a shot by Happy Gilmore! <aside> Who the hell is Happy Gilmore?” -Announcer, from Happy Gilmore
After some intense physics earlier this week, it's time to get on to the important stuff: the physics of taking a running start and trying to beat the daylights out of a golf ball.
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