February 27, 2011
"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.…
February 25, 2011
"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…
February 24, 2011
"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…
February 23, 2011
"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…
February 20, 2011
"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…
February 18, 2011
"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…
February 17, 2011
"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…
February 15, 2011
"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…
February 13, 2011
"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…
February 11, 2011
"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…
February 10, 2011
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…
February 7, 2011
"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…
February 6, 2011
"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…
February 4, 2011
"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…
February 3, 2011
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…
February 2, 2011
"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…
February 1, 2011
"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…
January 29, 2011
"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…
January 28, 2011
"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…
January 27, 2011
"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…
January 24, 2011
"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…
January 23, 2011
"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…
January 21, 2011
"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…
January 20, 2011
"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…
January 18, 2011
"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…
January 16, 2011
"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…
January 14, 2011
"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." -…
January 13, 2011
"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,…
January 5, 2011
"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…
January 5, 2011
"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…
