September 2, 2017
"Comrades, this man has a nice smile, but he's got iron teeth." -Andrei A. Gromyko
When you have a star, perhaps its most defining characteristic is that it fuses lighter elements into heavier ones, releasing energy. While all stars fuse hydrogen into helium, the more massive ones will undergo…
September 1, 2017
"For although it is certainly true that quantitative measurements are of great importance, it is a grave error to suppose that the whole of experimental physics can be brought under this heading." -Hendrik Casimir
Ever since we first discovered that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating,…
August 31, 2017
"It’s becoming clear that in a sense the cosmos provides the only laboratory where sufficiently extreme conditions are ever achieved to test new ideas on particle physics. The energies in the Big Bang were far higher than we can ever achieve on Earth. So by looking at evidence for the Big Bang, and…
August 29, 2017
"I go to the Natural History Museum and look at the cage of stuffed starlings there. But my favourite thing is the big blue whale. The scale of it is unbelievable, and makes you feel how insignificant you are as a human being." -Arthur Darvill
How good is your sense of scale? Humans are notoriously…
August 29, 2017
"Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not." -Neil deGrasse Tyson
Last week, millions of people across the United States got to experience the awe and wonder of a total solar eclipse, many for the very first time. But in a puzzling…
August 28, 2017
"The hurricane flooded me out of a lot of memorabilia, but it can't flood out the memories." -Tom Dempsey
As I write this, the gulf coast is currently being battered by Hurricane Harvey, with a few locations already having accumulated more than three feet of rainfall. This storm shows no signs of…
August 28, 2017
"The origin and evolution of life are connected in the most intimate way with the origin and evolution of the stars." -Carl Sagan
When it comes to dying stars, supernovae get all the press. They may be the largest and most massive stars to die, but hundreds of times more common are the planetary…
August 27, 2017
“It will shine still brighter when night is about you. May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.” ―Galadriel, LOTR, J.R.R. Tolkien
Well, we've been anticipating it for months (or years), but this is our very first time meeting up since the total solar eclipse here at …
August 26, 2017
"Imagination makes us aware of limitless possibilities. How many of us haven't pondered the concept of infinity or imagined the possibility of time travel? In one of her poems, Emily Bronte likens imagination to a constant companion, but I prefer to think of it as a built-in entertainment system…
August 25, 2017
"North Korea has taught a great lesson to all the countries in the world, especially the rogue countries of dictatorships or whatever: if you don't want to be invaded by America, get some nuclear weapons." -Michael Moore
Last year, North Korea claimed to have obtained the technology to create a…
August 24, 2017
“Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.” -Stanisław Lem
One of the questions that’s fascinated humanity since we first…
August 23, 2017
"Presently thought to be the most powerful explosions in nature... their sources have only recently been localized by observations of associated afterglows in X-rays, visible light, and radio waves, delayed in that order." -Richard Matzner, on the dictionary entry for Gamma Ray Burst
It seems like…
August 22, 2017
"All that is now
All that is gone
All that's to come
and everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon." -Pink Floyd
No matter how well-prepared you were for your first total solar eclipse, no amount of reading or photograph-searching could do the experience justice. There…
August 21, 2017
"A candidate is not going to suddenly change once they get into office. Just the opposite, in fact. Because the minute that individual takes that oath, they are under the hottest, harshest light there is. And there is no way to hide who they really are." -Michelle Obama
The most massive stars in…
August 19, 2017
“It will shine still brighter when night is about you. May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.” ―Galadriel, LOTR, J.R.R. Tolkien
The scientific stories we've covered this week have been out-of-this-world here at Starts With A Bang! But the greatest show is still to…
August 19, 2017
“Maybe that is our mistake: maybe there are no particle positions and velocities, but only waves. It is just that we try to fit the waves to our preconceived ideas of positions and velocities. The resulting mismatch is the cause of the apparent unpredictability.” -Stephen Hawking
So, you’ve got a…
August 18, 2017
"We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing." -R. D. Laing
This coming Monday, tens of millions of people will gather to watch the total solar eclipse that will go coast-to-coast across the continental United…
August 17, 2017
“We [are] a species endowed with hope and perseverance, at least a little intelligence, substantial generosity and a palpable zest to make contact with the cosmos.” -Carl Sagan
When the Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft were launched, they contained a message emblazoned on them: a map of 14 pulsars,…
August 16, 2017
"Even though the reason for taking the photographs was science, the result shows the enormous beauty of nature." -Miloslav Druckmuller, eclipse photographer
During those moments of totality, the Sun is eclipsed by a new Moon, with the latter’s shadow falling onto Earth. From within that shadow, the…
August 14, 2017
"An extrapolation of the genetic complexity of organisms to earlier times suggests that life began before the Earth was formed. Life may have started from systems with single heritable elements that are functionally equivalent to a nucleotide." -Alexei A. Sharov & Richard Gordon
We talk about…
August 14, 2017
"Yes, I am well aware that nature -- or what we call nature: that totality of objects and processes that surrounds us and that alternately creates us and devours us -- is neither our accomplice nor our confidant." -Octavio Paz
For most of us heading to the path of totality, we're in for an…
August 13, 2017
"Life is not a miracle. It is a natural phenomenon, and can be expected to appear whenever there is a planet whose conditions duplicate those of the Earth." ―Harold Urey
It's been yet another fascinating week of scientific stories here at Starts With A Bang! But as of the last 48 hours, there's…
August 12, 2017
"In the future, maybe quantum mechanics will teach us something equally chilling about exactly how we exist from moment to moment of what we like to think of as time." -Richard K. Morgan
It’s absolutely true that, in quantum mechanics, there are certain pairs of properties that we simply can’t…
August 11, 2017
“Honestly, if you’re given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don’t say ‘what kind of tea?” -Neil Gaiman
Enjoying the Perseid meteor shower this year, as perhaps you do every August? As you look up, the great cosmic show might have a lot more to offer than mere streaks of light, due to…
August 10, 2017
“I'm old enough to remember when the polio vaccine was still new. Also, it hadn't been that long since most people who caught pneumonia died from it. These medical breakthroughs were practically miracles.” -Pat Cadigan
When it comes to health, safety, and how we interact with the world around us,…
August 9, 2017
"Our first priority was making sure we weren’t fooling ourselves." -Keith Riles, LIGO team member
When LIGO announced their first discovery of a black hole-black hole merger, it came as a surprise to almost everyone. The shocking part wasn’t that LIGO had seen merging black holes, but that they…
August 8, 2017
"To be on my very first spacewalk, to be outside, and to have contamination in my suit to the point that I couldn't see in either eye - that, I think, would cause some people to lose control." -Chris Hadfield
Sure, you probably laughed about it when you first heard that NASA had a Planetary…
August 7, 2017
"I'd rather fight 100 structure fires than a wildfire. With a structure fire you know where your flames are, but in the woods it can move anywhere; it can come right up behind you." -Tom Watson
The solar eclipse we've all been waiting for is just two weeks away. Yet even though you've got your eye…
August 6, 2017
“If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. He will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life's exciting variety, not something to fear.” ―Gene Roddenberry
Well, it happened, everyone! I…
August 5, 2017
"Chlorine is a deadly poison gas employed on European battlefields in World War I. Sodium is a corrosive metal which burns upon contact with water. Together they make a placid and unpoisonous material, table salt. Why each of these substances has the properties it does is a subject called chemistry…
