right and wrong
esiegel | October 26, 2017“I am looking at the future with concern, but with good hope.” –Albert Schweitzer
Every so often, the argument comes up that science is expendable. That we’re simply investing too much of our resources — too much public money — into an endeavor with no short-term benefits. Meanwhile, there’s suffering of all kinds, from poverty to disease to war to natural disasters, plaguing humanity all across the country and our world. Yet even while there is suffering in the world, investing in our long-term future is indispensable. This story is nothing new.
To invest in any one thing means to not…
esiegel | October 11, 2017“Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.” -Augustine of Hippo
Science isn't the easiest endeavor you can undertake. Sure, the rewards are tremendous: you can wind up understanding any phenomenon in the Universe as well (or better) than any human has ever understood it before. But on your way there, you're going to have to do some of the most difficult work you've ever done. It isn't just mathematical and scientific work, either, but internal work on your own psyche. You'll need to learn how to be wrong.
From the distant Universe, light has…
esiegel | September 18, 2017"We are what we are, and we're doing the best we can. It is not for you to set the standards by which we should be judged!" -Capt. Picard, to Q
When you think about Star Trek, a whole variety of things might come to mind. It might conjure images of space exploration, feelings of optimism about the future of humanity, the inextricable link between prosperity and technology, or the fear of the unknown. But what has always set Star Trek apart from any other sci-fi or fantasy show has been its ability to hold a mirror up to humanity, and force us to confront our greatest moral and ethical…
esiegel | August 24, 2017“Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.” -Stanisław Lem
One of the questions that’s fascinated humanity since we first began looking up at the night sky is whether or not we’re alone in the Universe. Although we now know of other stars, other planets, and potentially inhabited worlds, we have yet to make contact with another intelligent species. Despite our curiosity, a great many people live in fear that if we did…
esiegel | August 7, 2017"I'd rather fight 100 structure fires than a wildfire. With a structure fire you know where your flames are, but in the woods it can move anywhere; it can come right up behind you." -Tom Watson
The solar eclipse we've all been waiting for is just two weeks away. Yet even though you've got your eye protection ready, your location picked out, and your plans all set, there's a wild card you need to be aware of: wildfires. The total solar eclipse in Oregon, Idaho, and Wyoming-west-of-the-rockies coincides with peak wildfire season, and with over a million people headed to a 70-mile-wide strip of…
esiegel | August 6, 2017“If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. He will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life's exciting variety, not something to fear.” ―Gene Roddenberry
Well, it happened, everyone! I flew out to the official Star Trek convention in Las Vegas, and the people I met there and the events and panels I attended (and participated in) were largely fabulous! Best of all, I got to line up a number of future podcasts about science, Star Trek, and everything in between, so stay tuned in…
esiegel | July 25, 2017"Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
The enterprise of science is one of the most misunderstood in all of society. Some view it as its own religion; others view it as a political ideology gussied up in smart-sounding clothes; still others view it as open to interpretation. But science is none of those things, and is rather the full suite of knowledge humanity has accumulated along with our process of discovery, investigation, and ongoing hard work.
Astronaut candidates Tyler N. (Nick) Hague, Andrew R. Morgan and Nicole A…
esiegel | May 2, 2017"Whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is going to be left to the scientists, but it's all of our responsibility to leave this planet in better shape for the future generations than we found it." -Mike Huckabee
It only makes sense that scientists should debate and argue over the findings in their field. Given all the suites of data available that are relevant to a particular physical phenomenon, how do we put it together in a way that is scientifically robust, allow us to understand and predict what’s happening, and justifiably attribute the causes of observed…
esiegel | April 26, 2017"You must remember, my dear lady, the most important rule of any successful illusion: First, the people must want to believe in it." -Libba Bray
There are many times throughout history that science -- and scientists -- have gotten it wrong. And there are many topics today that are quite polarized, from the Big Bang and evolution to vaccines, fluoridation, chemtrails and climate change. There are many public debates that play out, sometimes in nasty ways, surrounding all of these topics.
A Nigerian health worker tries to immunise a child during vaccination campaign against polio. The…
esiegel | April 17, 2017"We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces." -Carl Sagan
On Saturday, April 22nd, scientists, science teachers, science enthusiasts and science fans will all come together for a variety of reasons, all over the world, to March for Science. While there are…
esiegel | March 10, 2017“He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.” -Leonardo Da Vinci
For centuries, Newton’s theoretical predictions were as unassailable as physics got. His ideas about mechanics, gravitation and optics passed test after test after test. Yet around the dawn of the 19th century, one class of observations appeared to run counter to his assertions: light appeared to exhibit a wave-like nature. The phenomena of diffraction and interference could not be well-explained by a corpuscular theory of light.
The…
esiegel | January 31, 2017"If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment." -Ernest Rutherford
It’s a difficult thing to do, to go against your gut instinct. It’s even more difficult when your gut is backed up by the facts you’ve found doing your own independent research. But the greatest hallmark of science isn’t digging into your conclusions and finding all the evidence you can to support them; it’s to constantly challenge them, to attempt to knock them down, and to see where your present knowledge can be superseded or improved.
Whether through libraries, archives, traditional media…
esiegel | January 29, 2017“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.” -Neil Gaiman
Another week, another slew of fantastic stories down here at Starts With A Bang! If you've been wondering about what the Starts With A Bang Podcast is going to be about this month, wonder no longer! It's on the expanding Universe, and what's still so controversial about all…
esiegel | January 26, 2017“There is a voice inside of you
That whispers all day long,
‘I feel this is right for me,
I know that this is wrong.’” -Shel Silverstein
When it was first proposed in 1973 by Brandon Carter, there were only two simple statements that one could hardly disagree with concerning the anthropic principle:
1.) We must be prepared to take account of the fact that our location in the Universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers.
2.) The Universe (and hence the fundamental parameters on which it depends) must be as to admit the creation of…
esiegel | January 22, 2017“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something.” -Neil Gaiman
Here we are, at the end of a momentous week here at Starts With A Bang! The world is changing; the president of the world's most powerful nation has changed; but the quest to learn ever more about the Universe still continues unabated. There's so much coming down the pipeline…
esiegel | January 20, 2017“It's so easy to become a grumbler, someone who condemns and carps at everything on principle and sees an ulterior motive behind it.” -Eric Metaxas
If we find out that we truly are alone in the Universe, whether there’s no other life, intelligent life, or spacefaring life, there’s no doubt that makes us special. But does that make us divinely chosen? Or, even more to the point, does that mean that the Universe was designed to give rise to human beings; with us in mind as the end goal? That isn’t necessarily a question we can know the answer to, but it’s something we can approach with science…
esiegel | January 11, 2017"Through basic science literacy, people can understand the policy choices we need to be making. Scientists are not necessarily the greatest communicators, but science and communication is one of the fundamentals we need to address. People are interested." -James Murdoch
Are you scientifically literate? Do you even know what that means? You'll periodically see quizzes designed to assess some measure of science literacy, and they'll usually focus on a slew of general knowledge questions, inevitably decrying what a large fraction of people don't know. But is that a fair assessment of scientific…
esiegel | December 4, 2016“A thing may be of deeper impossibility than another, in the sense that you can be more deeply underwater–but whether you are five feet or five fathoms from the surface you are still all wet.” -Brian McGreevy
It's been a spectacular week of investigating the Universe and our knowledge about it here at Starts With A Bang! There were a great many of you wondering about parallel Universes over the past month, and that's exactly -- in the context of quantum physics and cosmic inflation -- what this past month's Starts With A Bang podcast was on. Check it out!
This past week also saw a fantastic…
esiegel | December 1, 2016"When a scientist says something, his colleagues must ask themselves only whether it is true. When a politician says something, his colleagues must first of all ask, 'Why does he say it?'" -Leo Szilard
There are claims flying around all the time that science is corrupt, politicized, and that the robust scientific conclusions reached about a number of issues are unreliable. Whether it's about vaccines, HIV/AIDS, fluoride, climate change or the genetics of sexuality (or a host of other issues), you will often see the rare scientist who dissents from the mainstream highlighted along with the…
esiegel | November 15, 2016"Whenever I found out anything remarkable, I have thought it my duty to put down my discovery on paper, so that all ingenious people might be informed thereof." -Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
We all have our biases, even if we ourselves are scientists. Yet if we want to make quality decisions about the world as we navigate through it, we need to be accurately informed. Without that as the foundation for our decision-making, we’re no better than an ideologue, going with our gut in spite of what the facts might actually indicate.
Many enthusiasts have proposed using an “impossible space engine” for…