December 27, 2009
I discerned huge Orion, driving wild beasts together over the field of asphodel, the very ones that he once had killed on lonely mountains, he grasped in his hands a mace of bronze, never to be broken.
-Odysseus, in the Underworld, The Odyssey
With a reputation as the greatest hunter ever and as…
December 25, 2009
I have come not to make war on the Italians, but to aid the Italians against Rome.
-Hannibal of Carthage
Today is Christmas Day, but did you know that this holiday, in addition to being a solstice celebration, has its origins in the second Punic War? Beginning in 218 B.C., the Romans suffered a…
December 23, 2009
089:32:50 Mattingly: Apollo 8, Houston. [No answer.]
089:33:38 Mattingly: Apollo 8, Houston.
089:34:16 Lovell: Houston, Apollo 8, over.
089:34:19 Mattingly: Hello, Apollo 8. Loud and clear.
089:34:25 Lovell: Roger. Please be informed there is a Santa Claus.
089:34:31 Mattingly: That's affirmative.…
December 21, 2009
Thanks to NASA's Terra satellite for providing this image:
That tiny little white bar on the lower left, by the way? That's the scale of this image: 50 km (31 miles).
You know, as opposed to how it normally looks, when it isn't covered in snow:
Happy Holidays again! And a special thanks to…
December 21, 2009
Kenneth: These are my all inclusive holiday decorations. Here's a little Christmas tree.
Tracy: Ok.
Kenneth: A menorah.
Tracy: Dig.
Kenneth: A picture of President Obama for the Muslims.
Tracy: I'm gonna let that one slide.
Kenneth: And a bowl of meat cubes with a picture of Jimmy Connors sticking…
December 20, 2009
One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating. -Luciano Pavarotti
I'm not going to lie to you; I think Pavarotti's totally got it right. It's not only a necessity for living, it's one of the greatest…
December 18, 2009
One of the reasons I write here on ScienceBlogs is because of our associations with the New York Times, a journalistic news source that I'm proud of on most days.
Today is not one of those days.
It isn't just the Times, either, the BBC is busy botching this story, so is the Telegraph, the Daily…
December 16, 2009
Before you were conceived I wanted you
Before you were born I loved you
Before you were here an hour I would die for you
This is the miracle of love. -Maureen Hawkins
But I'm not talking about human children, I'm talking about the children of the stars. Stars burn their fuel until they no longer…
December 14, 2009
Trying to squash a rumor is like trying to unring a bell. -Shana Alexander
Around the internet, blogs are all abuzz that an experiment searching for dark matter, CDMS, has cancelled all of their upcoming announcements and will be holding a special press conference on the 18th (this Friday!) to…
December 13, 2009
And you,
of tender years,
can't know the fears
that your elders grew by... -Graham Nash, Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young
Here's CSNY's version of Teach Your Children from their third album (their second with Neil Young), 4 Way Street, although it was always the lyrics of the song that got to me…
December 11, 2009
Earlier this week, I showcased the newly-released Hubble Ultra Deep Field in the infrared, and compared it with the older image of the same region taken in visible light.
As many astute readers noticed, the newer image looks blurrier than the old one! This is true, and there's a good reason for…
December 9, 2009
They will see us waving from such great heights
"Come down now," they'll say.
But everything looks perfect from far away
"Come down now," but we'll stay. -Postal Service
We've been over this twice before, but here's a refresher on how you image the farthest galaxies in the Universe. Pick a spot in…
December 8, 2009
Have you been keeping up with The Boston Globe's Hubble Advent Calendar? Today's picture is totally worth talking about, and gives me a chance to tell you about these little guys that just hang-on to our galaxy: globular clusters. When you look out at a galaxy -- pretty much any galaxy -- you'll…
December 7, 2009
You don't understand. You can't just come to the Sea of Galilee and start walking on water. If you could, everybody would be doing it. You need to prepare yourself. -Walk on Water
As some of you may have noticed from looking at the site over the past few days, Scienceblogs has partnered with…
December 6, 2009
Earlier this week, I was reading one of Ed's posts, and I followed the link to the original post, where I found this gem of a comment (and I would link to it, but the blog owner has reconsidered what he wants to make public):
'Freedom of speech' does not mean 'freedom from mockery.'
Well, mockery…
December 3, 2009
You're making me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. -Bruce Banner
Hey, LHC, what did those protons ever do to you? You take them, accelerate them to the fastest speeds we've ever accelerated protons to on Earth, and then smash them into one another with more energy than ever before!
The…
December 1, 2009
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
Hubble didn't need a thousand words to describe how…
November 30, 2009
Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. -T.H. Huxley
We've spent a little bit of time talking about dark energy, including what we think of it, how we first discovered it, and how we knew that there wasn't just something out there blocking the light.…
November 29, 2009
Saying thanks is one of the best things we can do to appreciate the good things in our lives. This goes for our partners, friends, families, coworkers, acquaintances, and for some of us, our dear readers. (Thank you all!) There are many musicians who've said thanks over the years, too, and so here'…
November 27, 2009
If you've never been to the Galaxy Zoo website, you have been missing out. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey is a pretty impressive telescope, but the wide-field camera system on it is what's truly amazing. Have you ever seen a telescope that looks like this before?
This telescope surveys a huge area…
November 25, 2009
All that matters, in the real world, is that something is both massive and compact enough so that, within a certain radius, light cannot escape from it. That is the astrophysical definition of a black hole. -me
We've been talking about black holes a lot recently, and with good reason. They're fun…
November 23, 2009
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. -Vladimir Nabokov
Last Friday, I posed a question to you, and you kindly responded by voting as to whether, when you crossed the event horizon of a black…
November 22, 2009
He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man. -Shakespeare
Far be it from me to take advice from Shakespeare, though. I prefer my advice from bluegrass musicians. If you want beards, you can't do much better than Jerry Garcia and David Grisman. Here's…
November 20, 2009
Black holes have come up a couple of times this week, and I've always wondered something. When you fall into a black hole, all sorts of strange things happen.
The most well-known one is that nothing -- not even light -- can ever escape once it falls in. Well, my question is, if you fell in to a…
November 20, 2009
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
When you watch someone fall into a black hole, what you actually see is pretty surprising. You see, a black hole's gravity…
November 18, 2009
In the comments on one of my posts, someone pointed me towards Stephen Crothers, who gives the following argument (in a nutshell) as to why black holes cannot possibly exist:
General Relativity is our theory of gravity, which relates the curvature of space to the gravitational acceleration of…
November 17, 2009
Some meteor showers are spectacular, while most are mundane. If you sit around during a typical shower, you might see anywhere from 50 to 100 meteors an hour, if the Moon isn't out.
If you take a time-lapse photograph and look for meteors, you will, sometimes, get a great view of what's going on.…
November 16, 2009
I thought I should consult you first before I went ahead with my plan to destroy the Moon. -Greg Angelone, via The Straight Dope
Last week, scientists from LCROSS announced that they had detected "a buttload" of water on the Moon. Let's go over what happened and what it means.
The Moon is very…
November 14, 2009
But I want you to know something... you and me, it's not gonna be a one-way street. 'Cause I don't believe in one-way streets. Not between people, and not while I'm driving. So, here's some advice I wish I woulda got when I was your age: Live every week like it's Shark Week. -Tracy Jordan, 30 Rock…
November 13, 2009
Can you touch your toes? Seems like an easy thing to do for those of us who have the flexibility.
Now, here's the challenge. Stand with your back and your heels pressed up against a wall, and now try to touch your toes.
You can't do it! Not without putting your hands down on the floor, you can't…
