April 29, 2015
“Those who know that the consensus of many centuries has sanctioned the conception that the earth remains at rest in the middle of the heavens as its center, would, I reflected, regard it as an insane pronouncement if I made the opposite assertion that the earth moves.” -Nicolaus Copernicus
There…
April 28, 2015
“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.” -Carl Sagan
For thousands of years, humanity has looked up at the night sky and wondered at what might be out there. For the first time in all of our history, we not only have the answers to what's present in…
April 28, 2015
Over at Starts With A Bang, Jillian Scudder of Astroquizzical takes on a doozy of a question:
If a photon of light escapes from a star, when it hits another star, does it get absorbed and have to complete another cycle before it can escape again?
After all, it takes (on average) over 100,000 years…
April 27, 2015
“But I see it differently now. There has to be a middle. Without it, nothing can truly be whole. Because it is not just the space between, but also what holds everything together.” -Sarah Dessen
Sure, the Hubble Space Telescope gives us unparalleled views of our Universe. We can even use it -- with…
April 26, 2015
“People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.” -Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Humans are part of the natural world, and yet although the natural world is hard and…
April 25, 2015
“The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” -Marcel Proust
As another fine week comes to a close at Starts With A Bang, let's take a look back at all the topics we've taken on:
Where did light first come from? (for Ask Ethan),
Zooming into a fractal (for our…
April 24, 2015
“Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.” -Longfellow
The cosmic microwave background is a thing of beauty, as not only does its uniform, cold temperature reveal a hot, dense past that began with the hot Big Bang, but…
April 24, 2015
When you think of the Hubble Space Telescope, perhaps you think of what's touted as its most major feat of all: peering off into deep, dark space, collecting light, and discovering the plethora of distant galaxies laying billions of light years beyond our own.
The Hubble Space Telescope’s Ultra…
April 23, 2015
“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way — things I had no words for.” -Georgia O’Keeffe
We thought -- back in the time after Maxwell -- that if we understood gravitation and electromagnetism, we'd understand all the forces in the Universe. But once we…
April 22, 2015
“We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.” -Bill Anders, Apollo 8, 1968
We've come an incredible distance in exploring the Universe. In the span of just a single human lifetime, we've gone from speculations about what other worlds in…
April 21, 2015
The biggest, most surprising revolution that came along with the development of quantum theory, quantum mechanics and later, quantum field theory, was the overthrowing of the idea of a deterministic Universe, replacing it with a Universe where only a probability distribution of outcomes could be…
April 21, 2015
When you look out at the nebulae in the night sky -- especially if you're seeing them with your eye through a telescope for the first time -- you might be in for a big surprise.
Image credit: Chris Spratt of http://www.islandnet.com/.
These faint, fuzzy, extended objects are far dimmer, sparser…
April 19, 2015
“The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.” -Carl Sagan
The Universe is filled with a wide variety of stars,…
April 19, 2015
“Exploring this set I certainly never had the feeling of invention. I never had the feeling that my imagination was rich enough to invent all those extraordinary things on discovering them. They were there, even though nobody had seen them before. It’s marvelous, a very simple formula explains all…
April 18, 2015
“Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.” -Laurence J. Peter
This past week was a super busy one on Starts With A Bang, from dark energy to stars to a fabulous book review and more! Just in the last seven days, we’ve looked at:
What if dark…
April 17, 2015
“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.” -Terry Pratchett
If you want, you can imagine back in the Universe to a time before it looked anything like ours did. Before…
April 16, 2015
“There is a voice inside of you
That whispers all day long,
‘I feel this is right for me,
I know that this is wrong.’” -Shel Silverstein
It's pretty obvious that the Universe exists in such a way that it admits the possibility of intelligent life arising. After all, we're here, we're intelligent…
April 15, 2015
“If you think this Universe is bad, you should see some of the others.” -Philip K. Dick
When it comes to measuring the expansion history of the Universe, the concept is simple enough: take something you know about an object, like a mass, a size, or a brightness, then measure what the mass, size or…
April 14, 2015
“I don’t like it, and I’m sorry I ever had anything to do with it.” -Schrödinger
Ever think that if we just pitted enough intelligence at a particular problem, we'd be bound to solve it? That was certainly the approach that two of the greatest minds in history -- Einstein and Schrödinger -- took,…
April 13, 2015
“Since man, fragment of the universe, is governed by the same laws that preside over the heavens, it is by no means absurd to search there above for the themes of our lives, for those frigid sympathies that participate in our achievements as well as our blunderings.” -Marguerite Yourcenar
Galaxies…
April 12, 2015
“My love for you would blot out the sun like a cloud made out of yogurt. I hope you brought a spoon.” -Jarod Kintz
There's so much we take for granted in the world, that often we don't appreciate how important sticking together is. Let Robert Plant and Alison Krauss remind you, with their joint…
April 11, 2015
“The simple fact of existence, of being aware that you are aware; this to me is the most astounding fact.” -William Hurt
There was so much that happened this past week on Starts With A Bang, from eruptions to bad science reporting to black holes and more, that we couldn't help but share so much…
April 11, 2015
“Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.” -Robert Frost
We've come to believe that we know…
April 9, 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
When we look at the centers of galaxies, it's no surprise that there are large black holes there, millions or even billions of times the mass of the Sun.
Image…
April 9, 2015
“The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it’s scientific truth or historical truth or personal truth! It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based. And if you can’t find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened, you don’t deserve to…
April 8, 2015
“Let them see that their words can cut you and you’ll never be free of the mockery. If they want to give you a name, take it, make it your own. Then they can’t hurt you with it anymore.” -George R.R. Martin
Well, it's finally happened! After a two year upgrade, the LHC is back in business, running…
April 6, 2015
“The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.” -Lao Tzu
With hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way, you'd think the largest star we've ever discovered would be in the most intense star-forming regions here, perhaps towards the galactic center. It's a good thought, as we've…
April 5, 2015
“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” -Pablo Picasso
When you think about representing something physical in an artistic medium, you usually think of starting with a blank canvas and adding to it. Such is the case with musicians, who start with silence and add to it, like Tony…
April 4, 2015
“It’s tempting to go to the throat of the volcano to get the data, because if you do you’re a hero … It’s a battle between your mind and your emotions. If your emotions win out, you can get yourself in a lot of trouble.” -Ken Wohletz
Back on Monday, I shared with you the incomparable story of…
April 4, 2015
"The simple fact of existence, of being aware that you are aware; this to me is the most astounding fact." -William Hurt
It's amazing how quickly a week can go by, yet equally amazing how much a week can contain. First the first time since we've begun having contributor posts here at Starts With A…
