August 10, 2011
"Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently."
-Henry Ford
Back in 2003, a twin pair of rovers -- Spirit and Opportunity -- were launched from Earth to Mars. For no good reason at all, Opportunity has long been my favorite of the two.
Image Credit: NASA / JPL, as…
August 9, 2011
"Magnetism, as you recall from physics class, is a powerful force that causes certain items to be attracted to refrigerators." -Dave Barry
One of the first "invisible forces" people encounter in this world is when they're first exposed to the humble magnet.
As the image above shows, you're most…
August 7, 2011
"Dang it, I am sick and tired of everyone's asinine ideas about me. I'm not a redneck, and I'm not some Hollywood jerk. I'm something else entirely. I'm... I'm complicated!" -Hank Hill
One of the most common questions I get from writing all I do about the Universe is whether or not I believe in a…
August 5, 2011
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." -Max Planck
(For Alan L., from the comments on this post.)
When you look out at the night sky…
August 4, 2011
"You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the Moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag…
August 2, 2011
"A birthday is just the first day of another 365-day journey around the sun. Enjoy the trip." -Author Unknown
Each of us has a birthday; mine is tomorrow, August 3rd. And while we're mucking around here on the ground, the Earth relentlessly orbits the Sun.
And while a sidereal year, or the time it…
August 1, 2011
"Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy." -Wislawa Szymborska
Our Milky Way Galaxy is home to not only our Earth and our Solar System, but hundreds of billions of other stars.
Image credit: Aarne Bielefeldt.
Held together by not only the incredible…
July 30, 2011
"And all your future lies beneath your hat." -John Oldham
Yes, with all the space, astronomy and astrophysics I do here, I can still recognize that there are things of great beauty and importance happening here on the lower 50% of our gaze. For this weekend, I've got a sweet song by Railroad Earth…
July 29, 2011
"It has been rightly said that nothing is unimportant, nothing powerless in the universe; a single atom can dissolve everything, and save everything! What terror! There lies the eternal distinction between good and evil." -Gerard De Nerval
(For Rich C. and Sili, for their questions on this post.)…
July 28, 2011
"To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn't everything." -Albert Camus
Our Sun has been shining brightly for over four billion years now, giving light,…
July 26, 2011
"Birth and death; we all move between these two unknowns." -Bryant H. McGill
One of the most remarkable consequences of the Big Bang is that the Universe as we know it -- full of planets, stars, galaxies and life -- hasn't been around forever! Because the Universe is expanding and cooling, it was…
July 24, 2011
"Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you." -Oscar Wilde
For those of you who don't typically listen to soul singers, you may want to have a listen to this. There's always something about live performances that…
July 21, 2011
"A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective." -Edward Teller
The idea of black holes has gone from a curious thought experiment to a theoretical…
July 20, 2011
"Almost every way we make electricity today, except for the emerging renewables and nuclear, puts out CO2. And so, what we're going to have to do at a global scale, is create a new system. And so, we need energy miracles." -Bill Gates
Energy is one of the most important topics facing our modern,…
July 18, 2011
"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive." -C. S. Lewis
Many of you are a little bit skeptical that I talk about things like the History of the…
July 17, 2011
"A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long." -e. e. cummings
While the rest of the United States gets swept over by a heat wave, the weekend here in Portland, OR gives us an all-too-familiar sight…
July 14, 2011
"At the last dim horizon, we search among ghostly errors of observations for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial. The search will continue. The urge is older than history. It is not satisfied and it will not be oppressed." -Edwin Hubble
It still boggles my mind that a scant 100 years ago,…
July 13, 2011
"Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune." -Noam Chomsky
Except back before it was discovered, the very idea of Neptune... well... sounded like it was from Neptune!
Image credit: Voyager 2, NASA…
July 12, 2011
"Sometimes I don't want to see the puppeteers,
sometimes I just want to see the magic therein,
and sometimes I just want to pry open the atoms
and know why they spin." -Glen Sutton
But it isn't just the atoms -- the minuscule building blocks of matter -- that spin. It's also the individual galaxies…
July 10, 2011
"In the United States today, there is a pervasive tendency to treat children as adults, and adults as children. The options of children are thus steadily expanded, while those of adults are progressively constricted. The result is unruly children and childish adults." -Thomas Szasz
Some of the…
July 8, 2011
"Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once." -Henry David Thoreau
The night sky is our greatest glimpse of what lies out there, beyond our own world, in the expanse of space we know as our Universe.
Image credit: European Southern…
July 6, 2011
Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars -- mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? -Richard Feynman
Ahh, the stars that make up our galaxy, and the galaxies that make up our Universe. It's the simple power of…
July 5, 2011
"Through space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought I comprehend the world." -Blaise Pascal
Whether you have or haven't seen the xkcd webcomic, height (or my old post referencing it), one of the things that I can't imagine not fascinating you is what you see the…
July 3, 2011
"Celebrate the independence of your nation by blowing up a small part of it." -The Simpsons
For those of you who aren't from the U.S. or U.K., this coming Monday is the day that my nation celebrates the birth of its independence. This date, of course, as Aimee Mann will sing to you, is the
4th Of…
July 1, 2011
"We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough." -Niels Bohr
You know who Einstein is, I'm sure. The E=mc2 guy, the speed of light guy, and -- perhaps most…
June 29, 2011
"Electricity can be dangerous. My nephew tried to stick a penny into a plug. Whoever said a penny doesn't go far didn't see him shoot across that floor. I told him he was grounded." -Tim Allen
I know what you're thinking. "Of course I know what static electricity is!" Oh, really? Let's go through…
June 27, 2011
"Doubt, indulged and cherished, is in danger of becoming denial; but if honest, and bent on thorough investigation, it may soon lead to full establishment of the truth." -Ambrose Bierce
About a week and a half ago, I wrote an article called The Power of Theory In Science, where I mentioned the Big…
June 26, 2011
"Everything that's realistic has some sort of ugliness in it. Even a flower is ugly when it wilts, a bird when it seeks its prey, the ocean when it becomes violent." -Sharon Tate
For those of you who miss the folksy songs of summer I so often post (but not lately), I have you covered this week. If…
June 22, 2011
"[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
(For readers Mu and Bjoern.)
I've told you the entire history of the Universe, from before the Big Bang into the far distant future, and yet…
June 20, 2011
"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." -Sylvia Plath
A few weeks ago, I told you about a science writing contest going on over at 3 Quarks Daily, open to all areas…
