esiegel | June 4, 2016"Until the 1990s, there were few reliable observations about movement at the scale of the entire universe, which is the only scale dark energy effects. So dark energy could not be seen until we could measure things very, very far away." -Adam Riess
Just thirty years ago, scientists argued over the value of the Hubble expansion rate, and what it meant for the age, history and fate of the Universe. Was the Universe expanding slowly (~55 km/s/Mpc), was it very old, and would it coast to infinity? Or was it expanding rapidly (~100 km/s/Mpc), was it young, and would it eventually recollapse?…
esiegel | June 2, 2016"What's really exciting is what comes next. I think we're opening a window on the universe -- a window of gravitational wave astronomy." -Dave Reitze
On September 14, 2015, LIGO directly detected gravitational waves for the first time, from the inspiral-and-merger of two quite massive black holes. Despite the fact that no electromagnetic radiation signal was expected, the Fermi GBM instrument measured a high-energy X-ray event just 0.4 seconds after LIGO’s 200 millisecond detection occurred. According to NASA scientists working on the Fermi mission, there was just a 0.2% chance of a false…
esiegel | June 2, 2016“There is no question that climate change is happening; the only arguable point is what part humans are playing in it.” –David Attenborough
If the Earth didn't have any global warming at all, our planet's mean temperature would be 255 K, or about -1º Fahrenheit: the mean temperature of the Antarctic continent. As it stands instead, our planet is much warmer than that, owing to the warming, insulating effects of the atmosphere, which is largely transparent to (incoming) visible light, but traps a fair amount of the (outgoing) infrared radiation.
Natural color image of Venus from Mariner 10…
esiegel | June 1, 2016"The bedrock nature of space and time and the unification of cosmos and quantum are surely among science's great 'open frontiers.' These are parts of the intellectual map where we're still groping for the truth - where, in the fashion of ancient cartographers, we must still inscribe 'here be dragons.'" -Martin Rees
Inside the nuclear furnace of the Sun, protons and other atomic nuclei are compressed together into a tiny region of space, where the incredible temperatures and energies try to overcome the repulsive forces of their electric charges. At a maximum temperature of 15 million K, and…
esiegel | May 31, 2016"We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life." -James Hansen
Thanks to our position in space, the energy output of the Sun, and the right atmospheric conditions on Earth, we have temperatures conducive to liquid water on our planet. Over the past 4.5 billion years, that's led to the flourishing and evolving of life, with our present existence marking something unlike anything else our planet's ever seen.
The very cold, polar regions of the Earth have a mean temperature far below the rest of the…
esiegel | May 29, 2016"The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains; and the 'evolution' of brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed." -William James
When stars like our Sun run out of fuel, they expand into red giants, start fusing helium in their cores, blow off their outermost layers very slowly, and then their insides die. They heat up even further, contract down to white dwarfs, and the intense ultraviolet light ionizes and illuminates the blown-off…
esiegel | May 28, 2016“A long time ago people believed that the world is flat and the moon is made of green cheese. Some still do, to this day. The man on the moon is looking down and laughing.” -Vera Nazarian
When people make claims that are patently untrue -- like the Earth is flat -- perhaps your knee-jerk reaction is to ridicule them. If you dig a little deeper, however, you'll likely discover a truth about your own past: that you once held views that flew in the face of the scientific evidence, only you weren't aware of it at the time.
During the partial phases of a lunar eclipse, the shadow of Earth can be…
esiegel | May 27, 2016"Science is global. Einstein's equation, E=mc^2, has to reach everywhere. Science is a beautiful gift to humanity, we should not distort it." -A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
Over 100 years ago, Einstein shook up the physics world with a number of groundbreaking discoveries: special relativity, brownian motion, the photoelectric effect, and his most famous equation, E = mc^2. This mass-energy equivalence underlies everything from antimatter to atomic bombs to the process that powers the Sun.
The longer a photon's wavelength is, the lower in energy it is. But all photons, regardless of wavelength/energy,…
esiegel | May 26, 2016“[The black hole] teaches us that space can be crumpled like a piece of paper into an infinitesimal dot, that time can be extinguished like a blown-out flame, and that the laws of physics that we regard as ‘sacred,’ as immutable, are anything but.” -John Wheeler
Dark matter is one of the biggest mysteries in the Universe. We can feel its gravitation, we can see its effects on galaxies, clusters and the large-scale structure of the Universe. But when it comes to very small scales, we haven't been able to detect dark matter, either directly or indirectly, leading us to wonder at what it's…
esiegel | May 25, 2016"By refocusing our space program on Mars for America's future, we can restore the sense of wonder and adventure in space exploration that we knew in the summer of 1969. We won the moon race; now it's time for us to live and work on Mars, first on its moons and then on its surface." -Buzz Aldrin
When the Curiosity Rover landed on Mars in August of 2012, it seemed that we had the ultimate successor to Opportunity in place. That older, over-engineered rover is still going after more than 12 years on the red planet, and Curiosity is leaps and bounds ahead in terms of technology: nuclear powered,…
esiegel | May 24, 2016"Reality is what kicks back when you kick it. This is just what physicists do with their particle accelerators. We kick reality and feel it kick back. From the intensity and duration of thousands of those kicks over many years, we have formed a coherent theory of matter and forces, called the standard model, that currently agrees with all observations." -Victor Stenger
The Standard Model plus General Relativity gives tremendous successes, and has so far accurately described every small-scale, quantum interaction (for the Standard Model) and every gravitational phenomenon (for General…
esiegel | May 23, 2016“Love doesn't make the world go 'round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” -Franklin P. Jones
It's been such a busy time here at Starts With A Bang that we're a day late bringing you last week's recap! And we've got to get rocking on it, because there's so much coming up to consider as well! First off, the Patreon campaign is even closer to our next goal, with a total of 128 active patrons. We did a Podcast for Science By Number talking about dark matter/dark energy and inflation and expansion:
and we had a fantastic, busy week on top of that, including:
How many atoms do you share…
esiegel | May 23, 2016"The first amazing fact about gravitation is that the ratio of inertial mass to gravitational mass is constant wherever we have checked it. The second amazing thing about gravitation is how weak it is." -Richard Feynman
One of the strangest, most novel predictions of Einstein's relativity is that mass would not only curve space, but that the curved space would act like a lens. Background light traveling past this mass would become magnified, distorted and stretched. In some cases, arc, multiple images or even perfect, 360º rings would occur.
This image illustrates a gravitational lensing…
esiegel | May 21, 2016"When you get just a complete sense of blackness or void ahead of you, that somehow the future looks an impossible place to be, and the direction you are going seems to have no purpose, there is this word despair which is a very awful thing to feel." -Stephen Fry
Perhaps the most fundamental difference between day and night is the difference between light and dark that our eyes perceive. While everything is illuminated during the day, the night sky is completely dark, with the sole exception of the stars, galaxies and objects reflecting sunlight back at our world.
The full UV-visible-IR…
esiegel | May 20, 2016"To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after you." -Isaac Newton
Perhaps the greatest, most successful scientific theory of the past century is Einstein's General Relativity, our theory of gravitation that has answered every challenge to it for the past 101 years with resounding success. Yet before that, Newton's gravity did the same thing for more than twice as long! The culprit that finally brought the universal theory of ground was incredible in its…
esiegel | May 19, 2016"We've known for a long time that the universe is expanding. But about 15 years ago, my colleagues and I discovered that it is expanding faster and faster. That is, the universe is accelerating, and that was not expected, but it is now attributed to this mysterious stuff called dark energy which seems to make up about 70 percent of the universe." -Adam Riess
The Universe has been said to be not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine. After the discovery of the expanding Universe, scientists considered that there was a great cosmic race from the moment of the Big Bang…
esiegel | May 18, 2016"I'm a fan of supersymmetry, largely because it seems to be the only route by which gravity can be brought into the scheme. It's probably not even enough, but it's a way forward to get gravity involved. If you have supersymmetry, then there are more of these particles. That would be my favourite outcome." -Peter Higgs
The “diphoton bump” at 750 GeV is perhaps the best active signal we have for the possibility of fundamental new particles beyond the Standard Model. While the upgraded LHC should collect enough data that we’ll know by the end of the year whether it looks real or goes away, there…
esiegel | May 17, 2016“When a star goes supernova, the explosion emits enough light to overshadow an entire solar system, even a galaxy. Such explosions can set off the creation of new stars. In its own way, it was not unlike being born.” -Todd Nelsen
The vast majority of elements beyond hydrogen found on Earth were created inside a massive star and blown back into the interstellar medium in a catastrophic supernova explosion. In a certain way, everything you've ever held in your hand -- including another person's hand -- is you holding a dead star.
The Cassiopeia A supernova remnant, as imaged in the visible…
esiegel | May 16, 2016"More days to come / new places to go
I've got to leave / it's time for a show
Here I am / Rock you like a hurricane!" -The Scorpions
On Earth, category 5 hurricanes cause devastation wherever they make landfall, bringing sustained winds, rain, destruction and -- in many cases -- casualties. But despite how strong and massive these storms can be, they're just peanuts compared to what happens on our Solar System's gas giants.
Jupiter's great red spot (from Cassini, imaged in 2000) and Earth (imaged from Apollo 17 in 1972), shown together for size comparison. Image credit: NASA / Brian0918 at…
esiegel | May 15, 2016“If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door - or I'll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.” -Rabindranath Tagore
Time continues marching on here at Starts With A Bang, just as it does everywhere. My Patreon supporters have stepped up their game, and we're just $21 shy of unlocking our next goal! There are two great new items this week I'd love to share with you: first, our newest Podcast on dark energy and the fate of the Universe,
and second, a video whose script I helped write (with a bonus coming up) for Kurzgesagt - In a…