Blog Info
esiegel | September 23, 2017I know you normally look forward to the weekend as a chance for our comments of the week, but I see that a great many of you have been commenting/posting and have been encountering problems. Specifically, the problem that the system appears to eat your comments. The time I would normally spend writing our Comments of the Week has gone into trying to find-and-recover them, which is no fun for anyone.
After looking into it (because, sorry, it looks like the people who are responsible for maintaining Scienceblogs don't really care unless the system itself goes completely down), it appears that…
esiegel | October 31, 2015"As I was going up the stair I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. I wish, I wish he’d stay away." -Hughes Mearns
Although every week at Starts With A Bang is special, there's something extra special brewing here. Sure, we've got the "normal stuff" of the articles we've written:
Do galaxies die? (for Ask Ethan),
Spook-tacular science pumpkins (for our Weekend Diversion),
Lifting the cosmic veil (for Mostly Mute Monday),
Was Earth born with life on it?,
and How stable is matter? (for Throwback Thursday).
Including two bonus ones over at Forbes:
The Largest Cosmic…
esiegel | May 31, 2015“The universe is big, its vast and complicated, and ridiculous. And sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles. And that’s the theory. 900 years, never seen one yet, but this would do me.” -Steven Moffat
They say that the best things in life are free, and I'm a firm believer in that. In fact, that's part of the reason I think the stories I'm always telling -- about the Universe, how it is, how we know it, and how it came to be -- should be free as well. But I'm not going to lie: in terms of effort, time, energy, and (for my contributors) money, telling…
esiegel | September 15, 2014“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring—it was peace.” -Milan Kundera
Many of you have been along on this journey with me for years now. And one of the great joys in my life that I got to share with you -- at least a little bit -- was that of my dog, Cordelia.
Image credit: me.
You may also have noticed that I didn't do an Ask Ethan this week, I didn't write a Comments of the Week article, and I didn't give you a diversion for this…
esiegel | August 24, 2014"Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another." -G.K. Chesterton
It's been a very busy week here at Starts With A Bang! You may have noticed that our blog's main page has a new layout, some of you who follow me on social media may have noticed that I took the ice bucket challenge (and my bald head proved hydrodynamic), and we had a remarkable week of outstanding posts, including:
Why didn't the Universe become a black hole? (for Ask Ethan),
The dumbest sign in history (for our Weekend Diversion),
The butterfly cluster, M6 (for Messier Monday),
Five…
esiegel | August 1, 2014“Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves...” -William Shakespeare
It isn't every day that I pause to make an announcement, but it also isn't every day that I have news quite like this!
Image credit: John Hothersall (Brisbane Australia), of the Lagoon Nebula (M8), via http://www.orionoptics.co.uk/imagegallery.html.
Thanks to the new Starts With A Bang digs over at Medium, I finally have the resources to bring on a team of some of the best scientists who write about physics/astronomy/astrophysics/gravitation to contribute,…
esiegel | February 19, 2014“Both the solutions must be rejected, and as these are the only statical solutions of the equations… the true solution represented in nature must be a dynamical solution.” -Willem de Sitter
First off, welcome, everyone! As you well know, the main Starts With A Bang blog has moved to Medium, something that's received mixed reviews from you, my longtime and most loyal of readers. Some people love the new layout, the larger images, and the ad-free experience, while others really miss the commenting features, the community we have here, and the ability to say whatever you like without a Twitter…
esiegel | January 1, 2014"Actually, I wasn't happy or sad. I was medium. And medium is the happiest that I'll ever be." -Axe Cop
It's been an amazing journey over the years, sharing the joys and wonders of the Universe with you. From the smallest subatomic particles, the most fundamental interactions and the shortest timescales imaginable to the stars, galaxies, clusters, superclusters and beyond, we've spent the better part of the last five years together here on ScienceBlogs exploring the most interesting aspects of physical reality together.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, F. Paresce (INAF-IASF), R. O'Connell (UVa), and…
esiegel | August 31, 2013"I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That's what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act." -Orson Welles
It's like that for all forms of storytelling, including the science I write about here. Some of the best conversations happen not because I know something amazing that I want to share with you, but because there's something you want to know about, and I know something that can help you get to where you want to be.…
esiegel | October 14, 2012"History is full of people who out of fear, or ignorance, or lust for power has destroyed knowledge of immeasurable value which truly belongs to us all. We must not let it happen again." -Carl Sagan
From the streets and people of our hometown to the nations, planets, stars and galaxies (and beyond) of our Universe, there's an immensity of knowledge to be gained from a single human lifetime, if only we have the courage to let go of our preconceptions and discover it. Laura Viers might tell you that in her own way in her 2005 song,
Galaxies.
But no one is born with this knowledge; it takes hard…
esiegel | September 30, 2012“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.” -Rudyard Kipling
You might not believe it, but when I was a kid, I hated writing. Absolutely hated it. And it wasn't because I didn't have anything to write, or because I didn't enjoy communicating my thoughts, or because I didn't like the written word, because I always enjoyed reading. Perhaps because I was a lefty with bad handwriting, I felt that the entire enterprise of writing was against me.
Image credit: samarth over at MemeCenter.
Of course, that was my issue to work through, and not only do I write all…
esiegel | September 23, 2012"In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility." -Eleanor Roosevelt
I've always been a big fan of personal freedom, which includes the freedom to speak your mind, say what you think, ask questions, be wrong, and learn. This is, after all, how we've all improved ourselves over our lives, as none of us were born knowing all that we've managed to acquire over our lifetimes.
And I've never had to have an official comment policy for all the years I've been blogging; the most I've ever…
esiegel | June 6, 2012"You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right." -Randall of xkcd
In January of 2008, I began writing this blog, Starts With A Bang, both for myself and for all of you, because we all have something in common.
Image credit: © Stéphane Guisard, "Los Cielos de Chile", via astrosurf.com.
The same planet, the same heavens, the same laws of nature and the same Universe are something that we all have in common. And all of us, no matter how intrinsically smart, talented, or brilliant our instincts are, come into this world knowing absolutely nothing about it.
But…
esiegel | May 23, 2012"As always on this boulevard, the faces were young, coming annually in an endless migration from every country, every continent, to alight here once in the long journey of their lives." -Brian Moore
Even the Universe experiences a "great migration" every now and again, where giant, massive globules of interstellar gas are blown thousands of light years across the galaxy by their hot, star-forming surroundings.
(Image credit: R. Jay GaBany of cosmotography.com.)
And if I do say so myself, in the case of the Cone Nebula, it looks like the classic "V" pattern that migrating birds engage in. Of…
esiegel | February 7, 2012"If people decide they're going to deny the facts of history and the facts of science and technology, there's not much you can do with them. For most of them, I just feel sorry that we failed in their education." -Harrison Schmitt
Last year, I asked a simple question with no easy answer: Whom Do You Trust For Your Science, Health, and Education? Because unless you yourself are the expert in a given field, it's often very, very difficult to tell what's trustworthy from what's not.
Images credit: Dr. Roy Spencer (top) and American Meteorological Society (bottom).
This is especially true when…
esiegel | November 23, 2011"Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving." -Henry Ford
Here in the United States, it's American Thanksgiving, our annual harvest festival. Traditionally, it's the one day out of the year where we spend it with the people most important to us, and give genuine appreciation for the good things we have in our lives. And there is so much to be thankful for.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI / AURA).
Last year, I gave thanks to the entire Universe, from the smallest subatomic particles and the laws that govern them…
esiegel | November 15, 2011"If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance." -Abraham Lincoln
It was nearly four years ago that I started blogging back at my old site, branching out from the hardcore research of physical cosmology and the teaching of physics and astronomy, and into what I think of as science communication.
Image credit: The cover of Paul Halpern's book.
And there have been a number of very curious things I've learned, some of which I expected and some of which caught me by surprise.
The least surprising: the entirety of our experience in this world is something…
esiegel | September 17, 2011"When you roll around in the mud with a pig, you both get dirty, and the pig enjoys it." -Old Folk Wisdom
One of the things I've learned over the time I've been blogging is that, no matter what position you take on any issue, whether it's science, politics, religion, morality, or anything else, is that there will be no shortage of people willing to argue against it. Perhaps it's for the best that Jeff Tweedy didn't think of that when he wrote his most excellent song,
How to Fight Loneliness.Because while many issues really are mere differences of opinion, it stirs up intense feelings of…
esiegel | September 5, 2011"But I'm also talking about American businessmen doing what they were born to do. Make things. We've stopped making and become a country of consumers. Well, I, for one, am done consuming. And I'm ready to make." -Jack Donaghy, 30 Rock
I don't normally write about what's going on in my personal life, but this is an important development, and it affects what I do here at Starts With A Bang, so here goes.
Most of you know how a career as a physicist is supposed to go, much like any academic/science career. You're supposed to get your degree, go to graduate school and get your Ph.D., work at a…
esiegel | June 20, 2011"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." -Sylvia Plath
A few weeks ago, I told you about a science writing contest going on over at 3 Quarks Daily, open to all areas of science writing.
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that one of my posts made the finals. Well, this morning, I woke up to find that the winners were announced! Without further ado, who were they?
Top Quark (First prize): my former scibling, SciCurious, for her article, Serotonin and Sexual…