July 19, 2014
“You can observe a lot by just watching.” -Yogi Berra
Sure, the quantum Universe is a little bit spooky. Things that we're used to being "determined" here in the macroscopic world, like where a particle will end up if you throw it, aren't so simple if we head on down to subatomic scales.
Image…
July 17, 2014
“Geologists have a saying: rocks remember.” -Neil Armstrong
45 years ago, the Apollo 11 mission was on its way away from planet Earth and headed towards the Moon, where the first human beings would set foot on the surface just a few days later.
Image credit: NASA / Apollo 11, photo by Neil…
July 17, 2014
Today’s article comes courtesy of Sabine Hossenfelder. Sabine is an assistant professor for high energy physics at Nordita, Stockholm. She writes a blog called Backreaction and tweets as @skdh.
Dark matter is one of the most elusive and puzzling entities in our Universe today. We have plenty of…
July 16, 2014
“Two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.” -Carl von Clausewitz
You've been hanging around here long enough that you…
July 14, 2014
“[T]his all fades to black, and it’s gone. It’s dust. Choose carefully what you obsess about.” -Meshell Ndegeocello
It's been a long time since we've had a new open cluster to look at, since the plane of the Milky Way (and the region towards the galactic center) has been obscured by the Earth and…
July 13, 2014
“I’ve learned what ‘classical’ means. It means something that sings and dances through sheer joy of existence.” -Gustav Holst
There are some great, creative works out there that take their inspiration from the amazing natural phenomena of this Universe. While perhaps Gustav Holst's suite, The…
July 12, 2014
"Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time." -Albert Camus
After a week at Starts With A Bang filled with a huge variety of topics, from Ninja Warrior to the Moon to the far future of our…
July 12, 2014
“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!” -Dr. Seuss
For almost a year now, you've all been sending in your questions and suggestions to me, and I've been picking my favorite one of the week for Ask Ethan, our weekly Q&A series.…
July 11, 2014
“It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.” -Winston Churchill
There's plenty to learn about, to see and to discover when we look out at the Universe today. From the leftover glow from the Big Bang in the microwave to the hundreds of billions of galaxies and…
July 9, 2014
“Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.” -Golda Meir
If you've never seen the glorious, athletic spectacle that is Sasuke (Ninja Warrior), you…
July 8, 2014
“When you’re finally up at the moon looking back on earth, all those differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend, and you’re going to get a concept that maybe this really is one world and why the hell can’t we learn to live together like decent people.” -Frank Borman, Apollo…
July 7, 2014
“When someone demands blind obedience, you’d be a fool not to peek.” -Jim Fiebig
But sometimes, it's the wonders of the Universe that peek out at us from behind the intervening gas and dust that would block the light from them otherwise.
Image credit: © Copyright 1970 — 2014 by Fred Espenak, via…
July 6, 2014
“Hard times don’t create heroes. It is during the hard times when the ‘hero’ within us is revealed.” -Bob Riley
But we all have our heroes, for a myriad of reasons. Perhaps it will serve you to think of them as you listen to Dropkick Murphys singing about the
Heroes From Our Past.
But heroes exist…
July 5, 2014
“I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active -- not more happy -- nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.” -Edgar Allan Poe
It's been quite a fun-filled week for thinking about science and the…
July 4, 2014
“One has to be an optimist; one has to hope that somewhere there’ll be new measurements to be made and that they will open up new vistas for us theorists to play with.” -Jim Peebles
It was one of the most hotly contested questions for decades: we first expected and then found supermassive black…
July 3, 2014
“Some prophecies are self-fulfilling
But I’ve had to work for all of mine
Better times will come to me, God willing
Cause I can’t leave this world behind” -Josh Ritter
Sure, many of us have dreams of leaving this world at one time or another. How wonderful it would be to leap from one giant rock to…
July 2, 2014
“What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” -Werner Heisenberg
You might think there are few sacred quantities when it comes to matter: properties that are so fundamentally inherent that even the weirdness of quantum mechanics can't touch them.
Image…
July 1, 2014
“Since stars appear to be suns, and suns, according to the common opinion, are bodies that serve to enlighten, warm, and sustain a system of planets, we may have an idea of the numberless globes that serve for the habitation of living creatures.” -William Herschel
When you look up at the stars in…
June 30, 2014
“In a word, in the eyes of a giant, to whom our Suns were what our atoms are to us, the Milky Way would only look like a bubble of gas.” -Henri Poincaré
When it comes to the wonders of the night sky, it seems like no matter what direction you look in, if you peer far enough, you're bound to see…
June 29, 2014
“Catch on fire and people will come for miles to see you burn.” -John Wesley
There's nothing quite like a fire on a temperate summer's night, as John Fahey will play for you in his rendition of a Mississippi Fred McDowell classic,
Keep Your Lamps Trimmed & Burning.
But I bet you never thought…
June 28, 2014
"We converse as we live by repeating, by combining and recombining a few elements over and over again just as nature does when of elementary particles it builds a world." -William H. Gass
Only here, when you repeat, combine and recombine your letters and words, the thoughts, questions and comments…
June 28, 2014
“If everything was perfect, you would never learn and you would never grow.” -Beyoncé
As human beings, we may be far from perfect. Even our mathematical celebrations, like Pi Day, are mere approximations. But there are a few mathematical quantities out there that really are perfect. And today, June…
June 27, 2014
“I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.” -Johannes Kepler, 1601
It's easy to think of some things as eternal, even though nothing truly is. The Sun is long lived, and it has another 7 billion years (or so) to go before it runs out…
June 26, 2014
“Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties.” -James Jeans
When you think of carbon, you very likely think of materials from diamonds to nanotubes to graphite to all organic matter, which -- as far as we know -- requires carbon as a central…
June 25, 2014
“They had discovered one could grow as hungry for light as for food.” -Stephen King
Black holes are an endlessly fascinating topic to learn and speculate about. We've talked about the largest ones in the Universe, but have you ever wondered about the other side of that coin: what about the smallest…
June 23, 2014
“When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.” -William Shakespeare
When I started Messier Monday nearly two years ago, I wanted to highlight two halves of…
June 22, 2014
“I call myself the Amusement Park. That’s because I’m funny and scary at the same time.” -Terry Crews
There's something to be said for the power of unique talents, or for combining a set of rare skills in a unique way. This weekend, have a listen to Murder By Death's interesting song,
You Are the…
June 21, 2014
"And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer." -F. Scott Fitzgerald
The moment of Solstice has passed, and we've officially entered Summer (in the…
June 20, 2014
“The brighter you are, the more you have to learn.” -Don Herold
There's a big difference between the Summer Sun and the Winter Sun, and I'm not talking about anything to do with the Sun itself.
Image credit: SOHO-EIT Consortium, ESA, NASA.
No, I'm talking about what you feel here on Earth due to…
June 19, 2014
“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.” -James A. Baldwin
But each day is a chance for hope, learning something new and experiencing something wonderful. In fact, in just a…
