May 18, 2014
“My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far today, I have finished 2 bags of M&M’s and a chocolate cake. I feel better already.” -Dave Barry
They say that the milk chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand, but the colored candy shell will…
May 17, 2014
"The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one's appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship." -Amelia Earhart
It's been another fantastic week for us here at Starts With A Bang! This past week, we've…
May 16, 2014
“There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.” -Thomas Hobbes
Well, it finally happened: someone asked me about the accuracy (or inaccuracy) of a certain…
May 15, 2014
“Is your Hot Pocket cold in the middle?”
“It’s frozen. But it can be served boiling lava hot.”
“Will it burn my mouth?”
“It’ll destroy your mouth. Everything will taste like rubber for a month.” -Jim Gaffigan
You've all had the experience: you're all excited to microwave your favorite snack. So…
May 15, 2014
“I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.” -Mohandas Gandhi
When it comes to figuring out what's going to happen in our material world -- as far as energy, particles, interactions, space and time are concerned -- science is perhaps the only real tool of knowledge we have to…
May 13, 2014
“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” -Vincent Van Gogh
Ever since the BICEP2 team reported their findings -- and evidence for B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background indicating gravitational waves from inflation -- the physics…
May 12, 2014
“It’s not what you have on the outside that glitters in light, it’s what you have on the inside that shines in the dark.” -Anthony Liccione
You might look out at a picture of a star cluster, globular cluster, or galaxy in space and think of this as mundane by this point in time. After all, how many…
May 10, 2014
“If there’s one thing that I love as an entertainer, it’s a spectacle.” -JC Chasez
I know that about half of those of you who read Starts With A Bang regularly hail from outside the United States, but I was completely unprepared for the joyous spectacle that is the Eurovision song contest when I…
May 10, 2014
"There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception." -Aldous Huxley
From tiny, laser-light wavelengths to dark skies to dark matter on the largest scales in the Universe, it's been quite a week at the main Starts With A Bang collection over at Medium.…
May 9, 2014
“Art has a way of confronting us, of reminding us, of engaging us, in what it means to be human, and what it means to be human is to be flawed, is to be contradictory, is to be often weak, and yet despite all of these what we would consider drawbacks, that we’re also quite beautiful. Spin is the…
May 8, 2014
“Science progresses best when observations force us to alter our preconceptions.” -Vera Rubin
Yesterday, we took an amazing look at a finding that looks like it rules out Dark Matter's #1 Competitor: TeVeS. But if that's true -- and the Universe must be full of dark matter -- just what exactly do…
May 7, 2014
“The discrepancy between what was expected and what has been observed has grown over the years, and we’re straining harder and harder to fill the gap.” -Jeremiah P. Ostriker
When it comes to the Universe, and the structure in it, from galaxies to groups to clusters to the grand cosmic web on the…
May 6, 2014
“He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.” -Leonardo Da Vinci
One of the great tools that theorists use in their arsenal is the reductio ad absurdum, or the notion that if you can prove that the…
May 5, 2014
“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” -John Lubbock
Each Messier Monday, we take a look at one of the 110 deep sky wonders that make…
May 3, 2014
“Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.” -Walt Whitman
To those of you who regularly enjoy clear, dark skies and the wondrous sights they bring, you have not only my envy, but the envy of a great many of us who long to have the wonders of the Universe directly accessible to our eyes. As the…
May 3, 2014
“If the world wants you, it's gonna keep on coming till it gets you. And who am I that can fix it? Who am I that can change this if the world wants it so badly? Who am I to stop the end of the world if it keeps on coming?” -Patrick Ness
It's been a wonderful and diverse week over at the main Starts…
May 2, 2014
“The atoms become like a moth, seeking out the region of higher laser intensity.” -Steven Chu
Sure, lasers are fascinating entities. By stimulating the right medium with the right conditions, you can induce the stimulated emission of radiation of the same exact wavelength in the same exact…
May 1, 2014
“Most estimates of the mortality risk posed by asteroid impacts put it at about the same risk as flying in a commercial airliner. However, you have to remember that this is like the entire human race riding the plane — it is one of the few risks that really could wipe us all out.” -Nathan Myhrvold…
April 30, 2014
“What you do is, you have your drawing board and a pencil in hand at the telescope. You look in and you make some markings on the paper and you look in again.” -Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto
We often make a big distinction between professional and amateur today, and very rarely expect to find…
April 29, 2014
“All things are poison and nothing is without poison; only the dose makes a thing not a poison.” -Theophrastus Phillipus Auroleus Bombastus von Hohenheim
Some scientific topics are so far outside my area of expertise that I need to bring in outside help to do it justice. Today, we're lucky enough…
April 28, 2014
“Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.” -Dr. Seuss
With 110 objects in the Messier catalogue, and 40 galaxies (more than any other class of object), you…
April 27, 2014
“Earth as an ecosystem stands out in the all of the universe. There’s no place that we know about that can support life as we know it, not even our sister planet, Mars, where we might set up housekeeping someday, but at great effort and trouble we have to recreate the things we take for granted…
April 26, 2014
"I'm a dreamer. I have to dream and reach for the stars, and if I miss a star then I grab a handful of clouds." -Mike Tyson
It's been another busy but fun week over at the main Starts With A Bang blog, where we've gone and looked at:
A Flight Without Stars (for Ask Ethan),
Building your own iron-…
April 25, 2014
“If the human condition were the periodic table, maybe love would be hydrogen at No. 1.” -David Mitchell
It's the end of the week, so once again it's time for Ask Ethan. You've sent in your questions and suggestions, and have I got a doozy of a question for this week about the simplest element in…
April 24, 2014
“One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds.” -Frank Zappa
I want you to think about your deep, personal convictions. Think about your values, the issues that you feel define you at your core, and…
April 23, 2014
“Don’t gain the world and lose your soul;
wisdom is better than silver or gold.” -Bob Marley
Going back to ancient times, it's hard to think of a more commonly coveted element than gold. In fact, trying to transmute other elements into it was perhaps the holy grail of the pseudoscience of alchemy,…
April 22, 2014
“It took less than an hour to make the atoms, a few hundred million years to make the stars and planets, but five billion years to make man!” -George Gamow
Whenever Earth Day comes around, I see a lot of different reactions from people. Some express their passion for the environment, others express…
April 21, 2014
“The line that describes the beautiful is elliptical. It has simplicity and constant change. It cannot be described by a compass, and it changes direction at every one of its points.” -Rudolf Arnheim
It's not every day that a nearby, well-studied galaxy turns your understanding of an entire class…
April 20, 2014
“Iron helps us play!” -The Simpsons
If you were to peel back the layers of a supermassive star, before it went supernova, what you'd find were a slew of layers abundant in the even-numbers elements up to iron, but little else. Well, this weekend, have I got a fun little find for you! First off,…
April 20, 2014
"All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer." -Robert Louis Stevenson
It's been another wonderful week in the Universe, and there's been so much to share together. New this week on the main Starts With A Bang blog over at Medium, we've talked…
