September 17, 2014
“What’s that star?
It’s the Death Star.
What does it do?
It does Death. It does Death, buddy. Get out of my way!” -Eddie Izzard
It's said -- at least by Darth Vader -- that the power to destroy a planet is nothing compared to the power of the force. But how much energy is that, really?
Image…
September 15, 2014
“I told my father that someday when I grow up and become an astronomer ‘I’m going to discover something.’” -Thomas Bopp
But who ever would have imagined that a kid with an armchair interest in astronomy, one who as an adult didn't even own a telescope, would stare into a friend's one fateful night…
September 15, 2014
“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring—it was peace.” -Milan Kundera
Many of you have been along on this journey with me for years now. And one…
September 11, 2014
“It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.” -Carl Sagan
Although I often hear people utter sentiments that knowledge somehow undermines the beauty of the natural world -- quoting some farcical poem about bad teachers like When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer -- I…
September 10, 2014
“I was confided to your loyalty and accepted by your treason; you offer my death to those to whom you had promised my life. Do you know who it is you are destroying here? It is yourself.” -Victor Hugo
So those of you who've been paying attention may have just heard that we've mapped out our…
September 9, 2014
In 1992, scientists discovered the first planets orbiting a star other than our Sun. The pulsar PSR B1257+12 was discovered to have its own planetary system, and since then, exoplanet discoveries have exploded!
Artist’s conception of worlds around PSR 1257+12, the first system (discovered 1992)…
September 8, 2014
“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.” -Amelia Earhart
While the summer may be coming to an end…
September 8, 2014
“O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.” -Romeo & Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2
Tonight holds a full Moon in store for skywatchers everywhere. Not just any old full Moon, mind you, but a Supermoon, the last…
September 7, 2014
“You ain’t supposed to get salmon when they’re swimming upstream to spawn. But if you’re hungry, you do.” -Loretta Lynn
One of the most remarkable stories in the natural world is the end-of-life story of the salmon. After being born in a stream, tributary, or other small spawning ground, baby…
September 7, 2014
"All you touch and all you see,
is all your life will ever be." -Pink Floyd
It's been another great week exploring the Universe over at the main Starts With A Bang blog, as we've taken on the following topics since our last week:
How long has the Universe been accelerating? (for Ask Ethan),…
September 5, 2014
“Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?” -Haruki Murakami
Of all the ways our Universe can…
September 4, 2014
“I’m hungry for knowledge. The whole thing is to learn every day, to get brighter and brighter. That’s what this world is about.” -Jay-Z
Of all the stars in the night sky, it's the brightest ones that capture our attentions the most. Prominent even under incredibly light-polluted conditions, their…
September 3, 2014
“Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.” -Thomas Jefferson
If you could magically make the world a better place, what is it that you'd get rid of?
Image credit: Starving Ibos in Biafra (Nigeria) — 1967/8, via…
September 1, 2014
“Ancients knew that you need guidance, patronage and protection as you move from one place or state to another, whenever you cross a bridge.” -Richard Rohr
When you think about the stars in the sky, it takes some study to realize that the bluest, brightest stars are also the shortest lived. So when…
August 31, 2014
“If you can’t share, we’ll have to take it away.” -Myla Hendricks, age 4
One of the most difficult things for any creative person to do is to let someone else into their creative space, into their projects and into the work that they're most passionate about. But sometimes, that's really the best…
August 30, 2014
"There is no dark side in the moon, really. Matter of fact, it's all dark." -Pink Floyd / Gerry O'Driscoll
It's been another fantastic week here at Starts With A Bang, where we've taken on a huge diversity of topics and run two fantastic posts from our contributing writers: Brian Koberlein and…
August 29, 2014
“After all the ‘Universe’ is a hypothesis, like the atom, & must be allowed the freedom to have properties & to do things which would be contradictory & impossible for a finite material structure.” -Willem de Sitter
Dark energy was one of the biggest surprises to come along in the past…
August 28, 2014
“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught.” -Oscar Wilde
So Labor Day is this coming Monday, and that means the new school year is about to start. Whether you are or whether you know a young person, say in middle-or-high…
August 28, 2014
“When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.” -Corrie Ten Boom
When you look out into the Universe at distant galaxies, at clusters of galaxies or at the Universe on the largest scales, what you see is the…
August 26, 2014
When you look out at the Universe, it comes as no surprise that it's full of galaxies, each one with a dense, central collection of brilliant stars and an intricate structure all their own. They come in all sorts of structural varieties, with some in isolation, others in small groups, and still…
August 26, 2014
If you've ever heard someone dismiss evolution, the Big Bang or climate change as "just a theory" and wanted to pull your hair out, you're not alone. In science, after all, theories are the most powerful ideas we have to explain the mechanism behind the most intricate observable phenomena in the…
August 25, 2014
“If I take dust in my hand and ask you if that is all the dust there is, you will answer that dust is everywhere on earth. More specks than can ever be numbered. So I can give you a handful of truth only. Besides this there are other truths. More than can ever be numbered.” -Nadeem Aslam
Some…
August 24, 2014
“I’m coming back in… and it’s the saddest moment of my life.” -Ed White, at the conclusion of the first American spacewalk, June 3, 1965
Adventures are funny things: we look forward to them, we enjoy them to the fullest while we're on them, and then we revel in the experience of having had them…
August 24, 2014
"Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another." -G.K. Chesterton
It's been a very busy week here at Starts With A Bang! You may have noticed that our blog's main page has a new layout, some of you who follow me on social media may have noticed that I took…
August 23, 2014
“When I was ten all I knew was that I hated the weird words used to describe whatever it was that was wrong with my brother — to this day I think it all happened because he was overtaken by evil spirits that got loose in that haunted house ride at the carnival that summer. It’s easier for me to…
August 21, 2014
“We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.” -Bill Anders, Apollo 8 astronaut
When you think about the most amazing sights available to humanity here on Earth, you probably don't think about leaving Earth in order to capture them. But…
August 20, 2014
“You suddenly realize that you and your colleagues know something that no one else does… and that it is important. You’re lucky if it happens once in a lifetime. I’ve been super-lucky.” -Leon Lederman
It's the holy grail of modern particle physics: discovering the first smoking-gun, direct evidence…
August 19, 2014
Whether you've been coming around to Starts With A Bang for years or whether you just discovered us a few weeks ago, chances are you've heard us take on the issue of dark matter -- whether it exists and, if so, what its properties are -- and how we think we know that.
Image credit: CMB pattern for…
August 18, 2014
“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” -Nathaniel Hawthorne
It's hard to believe that we've almost reached the end of Messier Monday, but with a finite number (110) objects in the catalogue, we…
August 17, 2014
“I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said, ‘Hey, the sign says you’re open 24 hours.’ He said, ‘Yes, but not in a row.’” -Stephen Wright
It seems like there's a sign for everything, from warnings to advisories to just plain good…
