June 26, 2009
Or, to put it as one of my readers/questioners did,
Why doesn't the Space Needle, a top-heavy skyscraper, ever tip over and fall?
This is reasonable, and there's precedent for this. After all, the Leaning Tower of Pisa was falling over, and needed significant foundation-work just to keep it upright…
June 25, 2009
Earlier this week, I wrote about how the heavier elements in the Universe were made. Specifically, that they are made in stars. These stars then explode in a variety of ways, enriching the Universe with these heavy elements, and allowing us to form glorious things, like our planet!
By contrast,…
June 24, 2009
There is a long history of oppression of women on many fronts in our society. Socially, politically, economically, and legally, among others. There are a number of very good bloggers here who often address gender issues, and I'm not typically one of them.
But two things happened to me yesterday…
June 23, 2009
In the 1940s, the Big Bang theory was first conceived and detailed. But, to quote Niels Bohr,
We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.
One of the…
June 22, 2009
We have a treat for you this week: Starts With A Bang gets to host this week's Carnival of Space! We take the best space and astronomy posts from around the internet and pull them together in one great extravaganza! I've gotten to host twice before, and this is a very special edition for…
June 21, 2009
Somewhere in my mind, I like to try and construct a timeline of all of human history. Yes, there's the obvious stuff, like the discovery of fire, the learning of what foods will and won't kill you, the domestication of the dog, and all the similar things that led us to become successful hunter/…
June 19, 2009
First light is one of the most important tests of any new telescope. It allows you to look at a well-known object, see if there are any problems with your telescope, and to get a small glimpse of how good your telescope is going to be.
Almost 20 years ago, we launched the Hubble Space Telescope.…
June 17, 2009
By 1948, our view of the Universe had changed drastically from 1909. Instead of space being run by Newton's Gravity, where our Milky Way comprised the entire Universe, we had learned that space and time are governed by Einstein's General Relativity, that our Universe contained at least many…
June 15, 2009
There are many great discoveries that happened in the 1930s that changed our view of the Universe. From tiny discoveries (the neutron) to huge ones (Pluto), from theoretical explanations of antimatter to the neutrino to the start of quantum field theory, the 1930s were a great time for making new…
June 13, 2009
We've got a lot going on here in America these days, with towering unemployment, a dying manufacturing industry, huge environmental problems, and the tense fight for all sorts of rights and freedoms, such as GLBT equality and abortion rights. But there are two things that I'd like to remind you of…
June 12, 2009
Amazing is an understatement when it comes to how much we've learned about our Universe in the last century. 90 years ago we confirmed general relativity, and got a whole new theory of gravity as a result. But, we still thought our Milky Way was the only galaxy in the Universe.
There were a few…
June 11, 2009
100 years ago, the way we viewed our Universe was vastly different than the way we view it now. The night sky, with stars, planets, comets, asteroids, nebulae, and the Milky Way, was viewed to make up the entire contents of the Universe.
The Universe was static, governed by two laws only: Newton's…
June 10, 2009
This week at work, we're interviewing candidates for the job that I'm leaving. And one of the questions that came up was so simple and so fundamental to all that we do here that I thought I would ask it to you:
With all the problems in the world -- economic, political, social, and military -- what'…
June 9, 2009
One of the toughest things to do in science is to figure out -- of all the things that exist in the world -- is which ones are relevant to your problem. Take the Leaning Tower of Pisa, for instance.
Specifically, I wrote about Galileo's famous problem, where you take two cannonballs, one that's 10…
June 8, 2009
One of the simplest tricks you can use physics for is to figure out how high up you are. Either using a stopwatch or just by counting seconds, drop a dense object (e.g., not paper, a tissue, etc.) and figure out how long (in seconds) it takes from when you release the object to when it hits the…
June 5, 2009
Nothing too crazy this weekend, folks. Why not? Believe it or not, because for the past 7 days, I've been on a road trip! We've been through Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and we're now headed back through Iowa, South Dakota, and possibly Wyoming. The…
June 4, 2009
Ever wonder how much daylight you can gain or lose just by getting in your car and driving either West or East?
Here's how to figure it out. The Earth's circumference is about 25,000 miles (40,000 km) at the equator. So if you start out at sunrise and drive 1,000 miles (1,600 km) Westward during…
June 2, 2009
Sometimes, it isn't just what's broken or how badly it's broken, but location can turn a trivial job into a virtually impossible one. Take the last shuttle repair mission to Hubble, for example.
This mission caused all sorts of records to be set, including the longest spacewalk ever! What caused…
May 31, 2009
(It's just good, clean physics, I swear!) Last week, my buddy Lucas was watching a BBC documentary about petulant musician Mark Oliver Everett (of the Eels), and his quest to understand his father, the late physicist Hugh Everett.
Hugh Everett is famous as the discoverer of the many-worlds…
May 29, 2009
Looking back on this week, I had a post about astronomy with a wide-angle lens and about the Tunguska blast. For this weekend's music, I'm going to rob South Park and show you South Park Elementary's #1 TV show of all time:
And for your weekend amusement, I'll refer you back to my story on…
May 29, 2009
Just a short while ago, I showed you how the most powerful telescopes were able to gather incredible amounts of light from a tiny part of the sky, and peer deeper into the darkest regions of the Universe than ever before. But there's another way to do astronomy that's just as majestic: view the…
May 28, 2009
The website 3 quarks daily is having a contest for best blog post of the past year! The only rules? It must have been written since May 24, 2008. Check out the full contest rules here. You're here at scienceblogs, and you've got a chance to help pick the winner!
The best science blog post of…
May 27, 2009
One of the scariest things that could happen to Earth is to be bombarded with an asteroid or comet, as the potential for damage is incredible.
Well, it turns out that we get hit by tiny "space pebbles" all the time. Every time you see a shooting star, like the one below, it's actually a very small…
May 26, 2009
There are very few sources of truly clean energy out there. Coal, oil, natural gas, etc. all expel tremendous amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, something we know we need to stop doing very soon if we want our planet to be habitable to humans for very much longer. Biofuels, while not as…
May 22, 2009
One of the great things that comes along with warm weather is outdoor concerts! Click "play" below to hear one of the greatest live performances of All Along The Watchtower ever recorded.
Any idea who that is, rocking out on the guitar? Sounds a bit like Carlos Santana, doesn't it? Sounds…
May 22, 2009
It's Memorial Day weekend, and I won't be blogging over it, as I'm going to be enjoying my long weekend! (And I hope you are, too.) But I'd like to leave you with some reflections on our history of Space Exploration in this country. (This was originally posted last year.)
There are wonderful things…
May 21, 2009
Regardless of where you work, one of the most nerve-wracking experiences can be your performance evaluations. Why is this nerve-wracking? Because no matter how talented and capable you are, and regardless of how good of a job you actually do, there are factors that you have absolutely no control…
May 20, 2009
When I was a teenager, my choice of food was basically determined by three criteria:
It needed to be ready in under 10 minutes.
It needed to have enough calories to make me not hungry anymore.
And it needed to be (marginally) edible.
That was really it. And so it won't surprise you to know that a…
May 19, 2009
One of the greatest challenges in all of evolutionary science is to figure out which species evolved into which over time. From our perspective, we would love to know how humans came to be, who our ancestors were, and what simpler animals gave rise to us.
Well, we don't know this right now. We…
May 18, 2009
Every once in awhile, I'll get an email from someone curious about getting into amateur astronomy, but with no idea where to begin. More often than not, it's from someone with a crappy telescope who's trying to salvage some utility out of a bad purchase/gift.
The truth of the matter is that most…
