esiegel | March 5, 2010Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. -Chinese Proverb
Every once in a while, we'll look out into the sky with a telescope, and see some spectacular glowing gas.
These nebulae typically come about from dead or dying stars, and are some of the most spectacular sight in the sky for astronomers, from amateur to professional.
But in the 1940s, an astronomer named Bart Bok observed these little dark "defects" in a few of these nebulae. It looked like something dark was simply sucking in all of the light around it, and refused to let any out.
In fact, looking even with modern…
esiegel | March 3, 2010What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet. -W. Shakespeare
After writing about the 80th Birthday of Pluto becoming a planet, I was asked about Pluto's planetary status, and whether I thought it deserves to be a planet or not. Let me just recap for you, very briefly, what this argument is all about.
Pluto, when it was discovered back in 1930, was the only object in the Solar System found out beyond Neptune. Although we imaged it, observed it, and surveyed the whole sky for other objects, it remained the only Solar System object out beyond Neptune until…
esiegel | March 2, 2010Yesterday, I wrote to you about part 5 of The Greatest Story Ever Told, about how the Universe came to have more matter than antimatter in it. And many of you correctly responded that I had given too much detail and not enough explanation.
So, I want to try again for all of you. Here's the explanation, starting at the beginning.
The Universe inflated first, stretching it flat and making it uniform, both everywhere in space and in all directions equally. Then inflation ended, and all the energy that was making it inflate got dumped into particles and radiation. This part, when inflation ended…
esiegel | March 1, 2010For every one billion particles of antimatter there were one billion and one particles of matter. And when the mutual annihilation was complete, one billionth remained - and that's our present universe. -Albert Einstein
Welcome back to our series, The Greatest Story Ever Told, where we're recounting the physical history of the Universe, from before the big bang up through the present day. We're currently in a hot, dense, expanding Universe, filled with equal parts matter and antimatter, bathed in radiation, and it's been only a tiny fraction of a microsecond for all of this to happen.
But…
esiegel | February 26, 2010Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.
-Anatole France
Those of you who own pets probably know that there's nothing to grab your animal's attention like rewarding them with food. A Japanese game show has taken this to a whole new level, and somehow, I can't look away.
I love the part where the first dog is just drooling and drooling with dozens of treats on its head. Enjoy your weekend!
esiegel | February 26, 2010The Truth is far more powerful than any weapon of mass destruction. -Gandhi
Last time, I spoke to you about how tides work on Earth.
In a nutshell, a nearby massive body (like the Moon or the Sun) pulls on the Earth's center due to its gravity. But the portion of the Earth that's closest to that massive body gets pulled with a slightly greater force, while the portion that's farthest gets pulled with a slightly smaller force. This differential force, known as a tidal force, causes objects to be stretched out, and causes our oceans to bulge at the points nearest and farthest from the Moon,…
esiegel | February 24, 2010When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn. -Harriet Beecher Stowe
Last week, our longtime reader Pamela asked if I could explain how the tides work. As you all know, when the tide comes in at the ocean, the water level appears to rise (and can do so significantly), while at low tide, the water level appears to drop.
This goes in a cycle twice per day, with the ocean level reaching its highest point twice daily (high tide),…
esiegel | February 22, 2010Free energy will promulgate a forward leap in human progress akin to the discovery of fire. It will bring the dawn of an entirely new civilization -- one based on freedom and abundance. -Sterling Allan
Of course, when Sterling Allan talks about free energy, he's talking about natural energy from sources like wind and solar, not the violating-the-laws-of-thermodynamics type of energy.
There is, of course, no such thing as truly free energy, or energy that we can take out of nothing and use for something, which is why perpetual motion machines not only don't work, but are physically impossible…
esiegel | February 21, 2010When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about.
-Albert Einstein
I woke up this morning with the Sun in my face, which marks the first time all year that that's happened.
(The irony, that I'm now listening to the Grateful Dead's "Looks Like Rain.")
And after a few seconds had passed (you know, it takes me a few seconds to realize that I'm not still in my dream, trying to navigate through some bizarre hotel corridor), I realized I couldn't read the numbers on my old LED alarm clock.…
esiegel | February 19, 2010We used to think Pluto was a misfit. -Alan Stern
Eighty years ago, we solidly had eight planets in the Solar System: the same eight we have now.
But in the late 1920s, a young astronomer was looking up at the sky, night after night, searching for tiny moving objects that could possibly be planets out beyond Neptune. Using this technique of looking at a patch of sky repeatedly over the course of a week, Clyde Tombaugh searched for moving objects, finding many comets and asteroids, but -- like everyone else -- found no signs of a new planet.
Until January of 1930. I've managed to dig up Clyde…
esiegel | February 17, 2010You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat. -Albert Einstein
One of the most exciting parts of any scientific field is to imagine what the next big discovery is going to be. In the late 1800s, we thought we were almost at the end of physics. We had Newton's laws for gravity, our entire system of classical mechanics for describing force and motion, and…
esiegel | February 16, 2010It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy's edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create ''one world.'' Instead of one world, we have ''star wars,'' and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet's dead. -Gore Vidal
Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed when they wrote that, didn't you, Mr. Vidal? Because the marvelous is right in front of us. Yesterday's…
esiegel | February 14, 2010It says 'I Choo-choo-choose You,' and there's a picture of a train! -Ralph Wiggum
Ahh, Valentine's Day. What do you think of when you think of it? Do you think of a sweet sentiment about someone dear to you? (Song credit: If I Could by Storyhill.)
Do you maybe think of the vast commercialization of some very minor historical event?
While that's the part of Valentine's Day that I like the least, I'll be celebrating it anyway, and I think it's a good idea. Why?
It's pretty much the middle of winter across the U.S., Canada, Europe, and a good chunk of Asia. The days are short, the weather is…
esiegel | February 12, 2010However time may be measured at the Naval Observatory, the clock seems to tick slowly here when Congress is out of town. -Richard Corrigan
The following is the mostly true (but somewhat fictionalized) story of the first clocks in the Americas. In the 17th Century, the finest clockmakers in the world were Dutch, going back to the time of Christiaan Huygens.
Image: A Dutch Longcase clock, courtesy of The Museum of the Dutch Clock.
Huygens determined that if you allowed a pendulum to swing just a little bit, the period of its swing could be used to keep time to incredible accuracy. By the mid-…
esiegel | February 10, 2010The New Age? It's just the old age stuck in a microwave oven for fifteen seconds. -James Randi
About two weeks ago, the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) team released their seven-year results, and I'm finally ready to tell you all about it. WMAP, remember, is this guy.
By looking at two different points in the sky simultaneously, and looking at the proper frequencies of microwave light (it looks at five different frequencies every time it looks at the sky), it can measure the differences in the intensity of light left over from the big bang everywhere in the sky. Why is this so…
esiegel | February 8, 2010Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one's potential. -Bruce Lee
It isn't only our heros that expand and grow; the Universe does that, too! In the first three parts of our series, we talked about inflation, its end, and the hot big bang. But during all of this time, the Universe has been expanding.
This is probably the most confusing aspect of cosmology, so tread slowly through this. First off, it is space itself that is expanding. It doesn't make…
esiegel | February 7, 2010Here in the United States, it's Super Bowl Sunday, and the Colts play the Saints for the championship of our National Football League. We listen to music that pumps us up,
we eat lots of food (it's the second highest day for food consumption behind Thanksgiving),
and -- of course -- we watch the big game. And I'm here to see what our Starts With A Bang readership thinks -- both nationally and internationally -- about who's going to win. Then I'm going to give you my pick. (Feel free to leave your own opinions in the comments!)
Colts and Saints: two teams that looked like…
esiegel | February 4, 2010What we know about Pluto today could fit on the back of a postage stamp. -Colleen Hartman
Part of the joy of astronomy is, every once in a while, you just get an astoundingly beautiful new picture or video of a foreign planet, star, galaxy or cluster. Pluto, the most distant planet, is among the most elusive.
This picture above was snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope about a decade ago, and shows us Pluto (center) with its large moon Charon and its two smaller moons, Nix and Hydra.
It's pretty difficult to get better resolution pictures of that planet because Pluto is both so far away and…
esiegel | February 3, 2010Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending. -Maria Robinson
In parts one and two, we covered the very beginning of the Universe as we know it. Specifically, we talked about inflation, which is the process that sets up the Big Bang. Inflation -- to recap -- expands the Universe exponentially fast, driving the matter density to zero and stretching the Universe flat like a balloon getting blown up supremely fast.
But inflation ends, and when it does, all of that stored (i.e., potential) energy that was being used to expand the Universe now…
esiegel | February 1, 2010I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore! -Howard Beale
Let me tell you a little story. Nine years ago, I was living in California, and I had a car accident. The damage to my car was pretty bad; the first estimate I got said that it would take about $3800 to fix it, more than the entire value of my (then) 11-year-old Volkswagen, and about one-and-a-half months' salary for me at the time.
What I decided to do was -- I hope -- what any reasonable person would do. I had just enough repair work done so that the car was drivable, and then I took it around to different shops. Why…