January 3, 2011
"Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right." -Oprah Winfrey
We've just completed another trip around the Sun, both in terms of the calendar year, and also the way astronomers measure it, by returning once again to perihelion, the closest point in our orbit to the Sun.
If you…
January 1, 2011
"They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?" -Jeanette Winterson
Here in Portland, it's just cold for now. But much of the world has been blanketed in those…
December 30, 2010
"There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self." -Aldous Huxley
Earlier this week, I told you the story of how we went from a Universe that was -- at one time -- almost perfectly smooth, full of tiny, random fluctuations in density,
to the…
December 28, 2010
You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
You may find yourself in another part of the world
You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
You may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
You may ask yourself: well... how did I get here? -Talking Heads…
December 25, 2010
"Appreciation is a wonderful thing: it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well." -Voltaire
All over the world, there are celebrations going on today. Yes, it's Christmas, but there's a much older reason to celebrate. I'm not talking about Roman festivals, Ancient Greek celebrations,…
December 23, 2010
"When I had satisfied myself that no star of that kind had ever shone before, I was led into such perplexity by the unbelievability of the thing that I began to doubt the faith of my own eyes." -Tycho Brahe
Supernovae are the most spectacular death-knells of the largest stars in our Universe.…
December 21, 2010
"Equipped with his five senses, man explores the Universe around him and calls the adventure Science." -Edwin Hubble
I promised you, this week, we'd be taking a look at the power of the Hubble Space Telescope. Yesterday, we looked at Eta Carinae, but today, I decided to look a little farther. Have…
December 20, 2010
"We find them smaller and fainter, in constantly increasing numbers, and we know that we are reaching into space, farther and farther, until, with the faintest nebulae that can be detected with the greatest telescopes, we arrive at the frontier of the known Universe." -Edwin Hubble
There's really…
December 18, 2010
"You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back."
-Steve Prefontaine
But there are lots of amazing ways to propel yourself forward, indeed. Listen to one of the greatest musical groups of our times, Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, as they perform Victor Wooten's song,
Sex In A…
December 17, 2010
"The moon is eclipsed through the interposition of the earth... Anaxagoras was the first to set out distinctly the facts about eclipses and illuminations."
-Euripides, in Hippolytus, 431 B.C.
As we all know, the Earth revolves around the Sun while it rotates on its axis. The rotation causes day-and…
December 16, 2010
"The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos." -Stephen Jay Gould
Tuesday, I talked about an alternative theory to cosmic inflation…
December 14, 2010
"Nullius in Verba.
(Take nobody's word for it.)" -Motto of the Royal Society
You know the drill. New ideas come out all the time. Sometimes they're new theories, sometimes they're old theories with a new twist, but regardless, we need to ask the question: How good is your theory?
For whatever it's…
December 10, 2010
"I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it." -Harry Truman
It's the end of the term here at my college, as well as most colleges across the nation. And while the students are freaking out about finals, grades, and other…
December 9, 2010
"Black holes are where God divided by zero." -Stephen Wright
Yesterday, I told you about all the evidence for the Black Hole at the center of our galaxy. In particular, we see multiple stars orbiting a single point that emits no light of any type at all.
And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the comments…
December 8, 2010
"Why it is that of all the billions and billions of strange objects in the Cosmos -- novas, quasars, pulsars, black holes -- you are beyond doubt the strangest?" -Walker Percy
Black holes. You've all heard them before, and you can visualize them pretty easily. How so? Start by thinking about the…
December 5, 2010
"If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."
-Gus Grissom, who perished in the Apollo 1 fire.
Every once in a while, I try to look past the amazing…
December 3, 2010
"The image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy." -Ezra Pound
Back in the 1800s, observational astronomy was already entering its heyday. We had already discovered Uranus, the first planet not visible to the naked eye, knew of a number of comets…
December 1, 2010
"Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy." -Wislawa Szymborska
You all know about shooting stars.
Seen from Earth, mostly during meteor showers, these aren't stars at all, but are tiny fragments of rock that hit the Earth's atmosphere, and streak…
November 30, 2010
"It is all a matter of time scale. An event that would be unthinkable in a hundred years may be inevitable in a hundred million." -Carl Sagan
There's some speculation that NASA, later this week, might announce evidence for life on Saturn's moon Titan.
I'm not going to comment on the speculation,…
November 27, 2010
"Sounds of laughter shades of life
Are ringing through my open ears
Exciting and inviting me
Limitless undying love which
Shines around me like a million suns
It calls me on and on across the Universe" -The Beatles
Now that you've all given thanks for all the great things you've got, it's time to…
November 24, 2010
"The Sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do." -Galileo
So tomorrow is American Thanksgiving, and it's one of our traditions that I'm most happy to take part in. So without any ado, let me…
November 22, 2010
"Surely something is wanting in our conception of the universe. We know positive and negative electricity, north and south magnetism, and why not some extra terrestrial matter related to terrestrial matter, as the source is to the sink. ... Worlds may have formed of this stuff, with element and…
November 21, 2010
"Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art." -Ambrose Bierce
The most common emails I get about this blog are questions about physics, astronomy, and some very speculative theories. But second most common are questions asking where I get my pictures.
Well, except in rare…
November 19, 2010
"I came at exactly the right time... I was 26 years old, and all the monks and priests down here were ready to retire. So I overlapped enough that I got to know them all." -Allan Sandage
As many of you have heard, Allan Sandage passed away last Saturday. Let me tell you a little bit about this man…
November 17, 2010
"I've been noticing gravity since I was very young." -Cameron Diaz
Yesterday, I told you about one of the simplest arguments for dark matter. We look out at the fluctuations in the microwave background on all the different angular scales we can measure -- from about 0.2 degrees all the way up to…
November 16, 2010
"What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing to compare it with." -Anonymous
If I were brand new to theoretical cosmology, I might be skeptical of a whole bunch of "dark" things that I'd heard of. "Dark matter?" "Dark energy?" Come on; you've got to be kidding me! You're…
November 15, 2010
"Victory is sweetest when you've known defeat." -Malcolm Forbes
It is official; you voted and the world has listened. I am proud to welcome you to the best physics blog in the world!
We not only won physics.org's best blog, we were also the people's choice award winner!
Thanks to the judges,…
November 14, 2010
"No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous." -Henry Brooks Adams
There are plenty of advocates out there for letting go of the great, descriptive, but outdated words of our language. And I simply can't get on board with that. As…
November 12, 2010
"A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with." -Tennessee Williams
Matter -- everything you know, love, hate, see, taste, and feel -- takes up space.
Even air must take up space. Not just wind, but still, stationary air takes up space. We've known this…
November 10, 2010
"Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life." -Hal Lewis
The most valuable natural resources we have at our disposal during our brief lives are the following.
That's right, the Earth and the Sun. And if we want life on Earth to continue as…
