esiegel

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Ethan Siegel

Ethan was born in New York City as the son of a Jewish postal worker. He did his undergrad at Northwestern, taught public school in Houston, Texas and Los Angeles, California, before moving to Florida, where he got his PhD in theoretical astrophysics at the University of Florida. After that, he moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where he taught at the University of Wisconsin, ate too much cheese, and also met his life partner, Jamie. After working in astrophysics research at the University of Arizona and starting the world-renowned science blog, Starts With A Bang, he moved from the hellish desert to rain-soaked Portland in 2008. Since then, he's been a professor at the University of Portland and Lewis & Clark College, grown a nationally renowned beard and mustache, got invited to join a circus and probably drank more beer than a healthy person should. He currently works as the head curator at Trapit, and can't wait to tell you a little bit more about the Universe.

Posts by this author

Weekend Diversion: Jewels of the World
"Glaciers are almost gone from Glacier National Park." -Donella Meadows This world is full of beautiful things that are simply awe-inspiring. Some of them are very much man-made, such as this 2007 song by Ricky Skaggs and Bruce Hornsby, Crown Of Jewels.But others took thousands of years to form.…
The Moon As You've Never Seen Her Before!
"Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god, but a great rock." -Anaxagoras The Moon, as you well know, is one of the spectacular sights of the night sky, especially when it's full. Image credit: Luc Viatour. Even those of us with imperfect vision can see differences between the…
What Newton's 3 Laws Can Teach You
"If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been due more to patient attention, than to any other talent." -Isaac Newton Born the year Galileo died, Isaac Newton is one of the most revered figures in all of physics. In addition to the work he did on optics, planetary motion and…
The Facts on Solar Storms
"Leading scientists are warning that a massive solar storm could trigger a $2 trillion 'global Katrina' that short-circuits power grids worldwide." -Lesley Taylor If you've been keeping up with your online news lately, you may have heard that, undoubtedly, an impending Solar Storm will cause…
Weekend Diversion: Stand Up, Wisconsin!
"If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." -Abraham Lincoln…
Open Wide! (What do you mean, my eyes?)
"I'll do my dreaming with my eyes wide open, and I'll do my looking back with my eyes closed." -Tony Arata Would you believe me if I told you that -- in terms of your own eyes -- you saw better at night than you did during the day? It's true! But it doesn't have much to do with the amount of light…
...Like Seeing Ourselves In A Mirror
"I don't know whether these people are going to find themselves, but as they live their lives they have no choice but to face up to the image others have of them. They're forced to look at themselves in a mirror, and they often manage to glimpse something of themselves." -Antonio Tabucchi It's one…
Who Wants to Be A Planet?
"I have announced this star as a comet, but since it is not accompanied by any nebulosity and, further, since its movement is so slow and rather uniform, it has occurred to me several times that it might be something better than a comet. But I have been careful not to advance this supposition to…
Weekend Diversion: Dark Matter Outreach for the Pros?
"Dubito ergo cogito; cogito ergo sum." (I doubt, therefore I think; I think therefore I am) -Rene Descartes I always try to give you something beautiful completely unrelated to astronomy, physics, or cosmology for the weekend. So if I'm going to talk to you about dark matter, I figured I'd better…
The Coolest Star. Literally.
"It seems like once people grow up, they have no idea what's cool." -Bill Watterson Well, at least we can all agree on what's not cool. The Sun. Image credit: NASA, from what looks like the Stereo spacecraft. With a surface temperature of around 6,000 Kelvins, the Sun is one of the hottest…
Never a Miscommunication?
Mr. Harley: Your impatience is quite understandable. Klaatu: I'm impatient with stupidity. My people have learned to live without it. Mr. Harley: I'm afraid my people haven't. I'm very sorry... I wish it were otherwise. -The Day The Earth Stood Still, 1951 People love to talk about the constancy of…
Kepler's Real Spacecraft
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -Mark Twain You've all heard of Kepler before, including the…
Weekend Diversion: A Pearl in the Rough
"We are tested academically and the only people who benefit are academics. Everyone doesn't make A's and B's in school - and those people who can't, it doesn't mean you don't have a gift. There are people who are gifted but maybe not academically. You could be an average student but exceptional in…
Science > Bill O'Reilly
"How'd the moon get here? Look, you pinheads who attacked me for this, you guys are just desperate. How'd the moon get here? How'd the sun get there? How'd it get there? Can you explain that to me? How come we have that and Mars doesn't have it?" -Bill O'Reilly Once upon a time, humans looked at…
Your First Year in Physics Grad School
Teacher Writes on Blackboard: "The Method of Guessing" Student: "What! There's a method???????" Teacher: "Yeah, there's even a proof!" -overheard in a physics grad school As a physics professor, one of the challenges I face is how to advise young students nearing the end of their undergraduate…
Can You Get Something For Nothing?
"One creates from nothing. If you try to create from something you're just changing something. So in order to create something you first have to be able to create nothing." -Werner Erhard One of the oldest adages in existence is you can't get something for nothing, as over a million websites will…
Why the Moon Turns Red During an Eclipse!
"With hue like that when some great painter dips His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse." -Percy Bysshe Shelley There may be no greater sight for the naked-eye astronomer than a total lunar eclipse. Normally, we get one or two of these a year, and the same wonderful thing happens at each…
Weekend Diversion: Watching the Planets Go By
"I think it's one of the scars in our culture that we have too high an opinion of ourselves. We align ourselves with the angels instead of the higher primates." -Angela Carter When I'm getting clear nights, sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of them, and just go and look outside; the allure of…
25 Years After Challenger
"We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of Earth' to 'touch the face of God.'" -John Gillespie Magee, Jr.; spoken by Ronald Reagan after the Challenger tragedy Twenty-five years ago…
Big News from the Distant Universe!
"It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the riotous blood of youth. I bless the rising sun each day, and, as before, my heart sings to meet it, but now I love even more its setting, its long slanting…
Different Views of our Closest Neighbor
"The distance is nothing; it is only the first step that is difficult." -Madame Marie du Deffand If you've got some solidly dark skies, you might notice -- in addition to the great field of thousands of stars -- a few faint, fuzzy objects. Visible with the naked eye (and captured with only a…
Weekend Diversion: Sunday Funday, for Beardos and Fans!
"There was an old man with a beard, Who said: 'It is just as I feared! Two owls and a hen, Four larks and a wren Have all built their nests in my beard!" -Edward Lear No better song for this week than an early, live version of Jeff Tweedy's Bob Dylan's 49th Beard.Some of you have weighed in on my…
Is College A Waste?
"You can lead a boy to college, but you cannot make him to think." -Elbert Hubbard If you listened to some of the headlines accompanying a recent news story, you might conclude that College is a waste of time, money, and resources for practically everyone involved. The three links above have, as…
The Telescope's Best Friend? Gravity!
"What do we mean by setting a man free? You cannot free a man who dwells in a desert and is an unfeeling brute. There is no liberty except the liberty of some one making his way towards something. Such a man can be set free if you will teach him the meaning of thirst, and how to trace a path to a…
The Stingray Nebula and XKCD
"There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end…
Weekend Diversion: Never Give a Physicist Your Data!
"Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree." -Terry Pratchett With a high unemployment rate and many people having stopped looking for work, it's pretty hard to live in the United States and not be aware of the struggles many people are facing. Here's a song by Loudon…
The Search for Dark Satellites
"This is the first time in my work that I've really gone out on a limb and made a very specific prediction - I didn't give myself any elbow room... If we're right, then it's a huge success and you can find very dim or effectively dark galaxies simply by analysing disturbances in the gas disk." -…
Some Surprises about Big Black Holes
"Einstein was wrong when he said, 'God does not play dice.' Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen." -Stephen Hawking Welcome back to Starts With A Bang after a brief vacation! Apparently,…
While I'm away for a few days...
"If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks' vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days." -Dorothy Canfield Fisher Everyone…
Q & A: How is the Universe so big, given its age?
"The size of the universe is no more depressing than the size of a cow." -David Deutsch But it is bizarre, I'll give you that. The most common scientific question I get asked is how, if the Universe is 13.7 billion years old, and the speed limit of the Universe is the speed of light, why do I say…