esiegel | November 29, 2016"Most of these experiments required the reduction of the cosmic ray muon flux in order to be successful, and the group necessarily became expert in the operation of deep underground laboratories." -Frederick Reines
High-energy particles from space, generated from stars, white dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes, active galaxies and more, can far exceed the energies achievable by accelerators like the LHC. Even if you take into account the severe difference in available energy for producing new particles, cosmic rays still have the edge. But because there are so many interactions for them to…
esiegel | November 28, 2016"Science doesn't always go forwards. It's a bit like doing a Rubik's cube. You sometimes have to make more of a mess with a Rubik's cube before you can get it to go right." -Jocelyn Bell-Burnell
Observations that surprise us, of a phenomenon we weren’t expecting and don’t have an explanation for, are some of the most exciting things we can encounter in astronomy. In 1967, regularly pulsing radio sources, discovered without any expectation, provided exactly that. It wasn’t noise; it was definitely a robust, repeatable observation; so what was it?
The data from the first pulsar ever found…
esiegel | November 27, 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
With everything going on in the world, it's always a wonderful reminder that here at Starts With A Bang! we're eternally focused on the cosmic story of what we know and how we know it. Regardless of what direction you want to push society, increasing our knowledge and understanding ought to be one thing we all agree on. This past week, here's a look back at what we've covered:
What's…
esiegel | November 26, 2016"It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time." -Simone de Beauvoir
If you want to describe your location here on Earth, only two values are usually sufficient: one for your latitude and one for your longitude. This is because the surface of the Earth is two dimensional, and you’re generally not either underground or airborne; if you are, a third value, representing your altitude, is also necessary.
On the…
esiegel | November 25, 2016"I just think too many nice things have happened in string theory for it to be all wrong. Humans do not understand it very well, but I just don't believe there is a big cosmic conspiracy that created this incredible thing that has nothing to do with the real world." -Edward Witten
You don't have to be a fan of string theory to understand why it's such a promising area of scientific research. One of the holy grails of physics is for a quantum theory of gravitation: that describes gravity on the same footing as the other three forces, in very strong fields and at very tiny distances.…
esiegel | November 24, 2016"If a fellow isn't thankful for what he's got, he isn't likely to be thankful for what he's going to get." -Frank A. Clark
There’s a lot to be thankful for, and some of those things are truly universal. The world we share, the Sun we orbit, the galaxy we reside in and the Universe itself plus the laws that govern it are cosmic stories we all share. And if you think about it really hard, you’ll realize that there are a whole slew of cosmic steps that needed to happen that are worth giving thanks to.
An infrared view from ESA’s Herschel observatory of a new star-forming region. Image credit:…
esiegel | November 23, 2016"The law of the conservation of momentum is the basis of the static thrust equation, the law of the conservation of energy is the basis of the dynamic thrust equation. Provided these two fundamental laws of physics are satisfied, there is no reason why the forces inside the resonator should sum to zero." -Roger Shawyer, clearly misunderstanding the theory of forces
So it’s official: the NASA Eagleworks test of the EMdrive, an engine that claims to produce thrust with no reaction to correspond to its action, has passed peer review and is now published. If there’s truly no reaction at all, then…
esiegel | November 22, 2016Just as a Chihuahua is still a dog, these ice dwarfs are still planetary bodies. The misfit becomes the average. The Pluto-like objects are more typical in our solar system than the nearby planets we first knew.” -Alan Stern
The Pluto story just gets better and better. Although the flyby of July 2015 lasted only a few hours, the full suite of data taken took 16 months to transmit back to Earth. That finally completed a few weeks ago, and we not only have a complete high-resolution map of Pluto's surface, we also have topological, chemical/molecular and gravitational data covering the surface…
esiegel | November 21, 2016"The new ALMA images show the disk in unprecedented detail, revealing a series of concentric dusty bright rings and dark gaps, including intriguing features that suggest a planet with an Earth-like orbit is forming there." -Sean Andrews
It takes a lot of work to make a solar system from the raw materials of an interstellar molecular cloud, but the Universe is up to the challenge. We had a theoretical picture that held for a long time, but thanks to the array of modern telescopes that humanity has constructed, we've finally been able to put that picture to the test.
30 protoplanetary disks,…
esiegel | November 20, 2016“The universe is asymmetric and I am persuaded that life, as it is known to us, is a direct result of the asymmetry of the universe or of its indirect consequences. The universe is asymmetric.” -Louis Pasteur
Time keeps barreling forward for all of us, but I'm so pleased that Starts With A Bang! still keeps on taking on some of the biggest and smallest questions about physics, astronomy and the Universe as it related to humanity. There were a number of grandiose, challenging topics we took on this week, including:
What if gravity isn't really fundamental? (for Ask Ethan),
Top five features…
esiegel | November 19, 2016“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” -Albert Einstein
If you create an entangled pair of particles, and stretch them apart as far as you want, the entanglement remains. If you make a measurement of one particle’s quantum state, you immediately -- and this is truly instantaneous -- learn the quantum state of the other. This is true whether the other particle is meters, kilometers, astronomical units or light years away.
Schematic of the third Aspect experiment testing quantum non-locality.…
esiegel | November 18, 2016"We are actually living in a million parallel realities every single minute." -Marina Abramovic
Ever since quantum mechanics first came along, we’ve recognized how tenuous our perception of reality is, and how — in many ways — what we perceive is just a very small subset of what’s going on at the quantum level in our Universe. Then, along came cosmic inflation, teaching us that our observable Universe is just a tiny, tiny fraction of the matter-and-radiation filled space out there.
The observable Universe might be 46 billion light years in all directions from our point of view, but there's…
esiegel | November 17, 2016"We only have one planet that serves as an example and in science it's not good to derive information from a sample size of one." -David Grinspoon
Although there will never be a shortage of doubters, the scientific evidence is overwhelming that humans have impacted the planet, particularly over the last few millennia, like no other species ever has. It’s not only the climate that’s changed, but the oceans, atmosphere, freshwater, land use and even the plants and animals that can survive and thrive in the environment. We might be averse to thinking of it as such, but we’re already conducting a…
esiegel | November 16, 2016“If you want your boomerang to come back, first you've got to throw it.” -Steven Hall
If you take all the matter out of the Universe, all you’d have left to warm you would be the radiation from the Big Bang’s leftover glow: the cosmic microwave background. At just 2.7º C above absolute zero, there’s no way of escaping this omnidirectional heat bath, as weak and ineffectual as it might be. Yet right here in our own galaxy, we’ve got an example of something even colder: the Boomerang Nebula.
A millimeter-wavelength view of the Boomerang Nebula. Image credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF/NASA/STScI/JPL-Caltech…
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…
esiegel | November 14, 2016"From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, 'Look at that, you son of a bitch.'" -Edgar Mitchell, Apollo astronaut
The full Moon of November 14th may be special for being the closest, brightest full Moon in over 60 years, but every full Moon is full of delightful sights. There’s science behind it, too; much of what you can see even with the naked eye is evidence of our nearest neighboring world’s unique geological history.
The maria -- or seas -- of the Moon's…
esiegel | November 13, 2016"For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity." -Jean Dubuffet
It's been a week unlike any other I've seen since I started Starts With A Bang! all those years ago. There are a lot of people looking for a lot of explanations -- some are excited, many are terrified, most are disappointed -- about the direction the USA and the world are headed. I might not have the answers, but perhaps taking a look at the Universe will help put some things in perspective. Have a look back at what we've discussed and thought about this past week…
esiegel | November 12, 2016"The whole edifice of modern physics is built up on the fundamental hypothesis of the atomic or molecular constitution of matter." -C. V. Raman
As far as humans have figured out, there are four fundamental forces in the Universe: the three of the Standard Model (electromagnetism, the weak and strong nuclear forces) and General Relativity, our theory of gravitation. It’s the great hope of many that a quantum theory of gravitation will someday emerge, and that all four forces could be unified into a single framework. Among others, this is the dream of string theory.
The four forces (or…
esiegel | November 11, 2016"For most people, we often marvel at the beauty of a sunrise or the magnificence of a full moon, but it is impossible to fathom the magnitude of the universe that surrounds us." -Richard H. Baker
This coming Monday, November 14th, 2016, a full Moon will occur extremely close -- within 90 minutes -- of a very, very close lunar perigee. The Moon will come within 356,509 km of Earth while 99.9% full, making this the most “super” Supermoon Earth has seen in 68 years. No matter where you are on Earth, if you have clear skies, it’s worth a look, particularly right before dawn, where it’s at its…
esiegel | November 10, 2016"The evidence at present available points strongly to the conclusion that the spirals are individual galaxies, or island universes, comparable with our own galaxy in dimension and in number of component units." -Heber Curtis, 1920
In many different areas of life, we settle disagreements by popular vote. But in science, we know better; regardless of whether people accept the conclusions or not, the Universe simply is the way it is, and it’s up to us to listen to the evidence to uncover scientific truths. It often happens, however, that everyone can agree on the pieces of evidence, yet disagree…