esiegel | August 14, 2017"Yes, I am well aware that nature -- or what we call nature: that totality of objects and processes that surrounds us and that alternately creates us and devours us -- is neither our accomplice nor our confidant." -Octavio Paz
For most of us heading to the path of totality, we're in for an incredible experience. If we get clear skies, it will take roughly an hour for the Moon to pass in front of the Sun's disk completely, and after that we'll get just over two minutes of totality: an experience like no other. Yet if you're not careful -- or if you get too excited about one particular thing…
esiegel | August 13, 2017"Life is not a miracle. It is a natural phenomenon, and can be expected to appear whenever there is a planet whose conditions duplicate those of the Earth." ―Harold Urey
It's been yet another fascinating week of scientific stories here at Starts With A Bang! But as of the last 48 hours, there's something I absolutely have to talk about: the "Unite The Right" hate rally in Virginia, accompanied by violence and murder. They say that in order for evil to triumph, all that you need is for good people to stand by and do nothing. When I was a kid -- small, young, weak, inexperienced -- I saw lots…
esiegel | August 12, 2017"In the future, maybe quantum mechanics will teach us something equally chilling about exactly how we exist from moment to moment of what we like to think of as time." -Richard K. Morgan
It’s absolutely true that, in quantum mechanics, there are certain pairs of properties that we simply can’t measure simultaneously. Measure the position of an object really well, and its momentum becomes more uncertain. Measure its energy, and its time becomes more uncertain. And measure its voltage, and the free charge becomes more uncertain. Although this is disconcerting to some, it’s a fundamental part of…
esiegel | August 11, 2017“Honestly, if you’re given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don’t say ‘what kind of tea?” -Neil Gaiman
Enjoying the Perseid meteor shower this year, as perhaps you do every August? As you look up, the great cosmic show might have a lot more to offer than mere streaks of light, due to cometary debris brightly burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere. This year, Jupiter has slightly disturbed the debris stream, resulting in an increase in the number of meteors-per-hour, as the stream passes quite centrally through Earth’s location.
The comet that gives rise to the Perseid meteor shower,…
esiegel | August 10, 2017“I'm old enough to remember when the polio vaccine was still new. Also, it hadn't been that long since most people who caught pneumonia died from it. These medical breakthroughs were practically miracles.” -Pat Cadigan
When it comes to health, safety, and how we interact with the world around us, pretty much everyone recognizes the importance of making our decisions based on sound science. Yet even when presented with the same evidence, many people will draw different conclusions. Why? Because once we’ve made up our minds that something is either good or bad for us, we cherry-pick the…
esiegel | August 9, 2017"Our first priority was making sure we weren’t fooling ourselves." -Keith Riles, LIGO team member
When LIGO announced their first discovery of a black hole-black hole merger, it came as a surprise to almost everyone. The shocking part wasn’t that LIGO had seen merging black holes, but that they were discovered to be so massive. At right around ~30 solar masses each, these were black holes that were much larger than expected, forcing astronomers to confront the fact that they didn’t have a good, comprehensive model for how many black holes -- and what mass they should be -- were in the…
esiegel | August 8, 2017"To be on my very first spacewalk, to be outside, and to have contamination in my suit to the point that I couldn't see in either eye - that, I think, would cause some people to lose control." -Chris Hadfield
Sure, you probably laughed about it when you first heard that NASA had a Planetary Protection Officer, as though Earth actually needed protection from non-existent alien invasions. Perhaps, you thought, this might have been relevant back in the 1960s, before we realized how barren the Moon was, or how woefully insufficient the Solar System is for harboring some type of doomsday,…
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 | August 5, 2017"Chlorine is a deadly poison gas employed on European battlefields in World War I. Sodium is a corrosive metal which burns upon contact with water. Together they make a placid and unpoisonous material, table salt. Why each of these substances has the properties it does is a subject called chemistry." -Carl Sagan
Every beginning chemistry student learns what happens when you put a chunk of sodium metal into water: you get an extremely violent reaction out. The sodium and water bubble and fizz, and sometimes even a flame or an outright combustion reaction is produced. This isn’t exclusive to…
esiegel | August 4, 2017“Astronomers are greatly disappointed when, having traveled halfway around the world to see an eclipse, clouds prevent a sight of it; and yet a sense of relief accompanies the disappointment.” –Simon Newcomb
On August 21st, a total solar eclipse will travel coast-to-coast across the United States, bringing darkness during the day to portions of 14 separate states. The last time such an event occurred was 99 years ago, back in 1918. Back then, Einstein’s General Relativity still had not been proven, and this eclipse not only provided that opportunity, but held an opportunity for America to…
esiegel | August 2, 2017"The years of searching in the dark for a truth that one feels but cannot express, the intense desire and the alternations of confidence and misgiving until one breaks through to clarity and understanding, are only known to him who has himself experienced them." -Albert Einstein
In 2015, for the very first time, gravitational waves were directly detected from the merger of two massive black holes. These ripples in space traveled over a billion light years before they were finally detected. When they were, it validated Einstein’s theory of General Relativity in an entirely new fashion, and…
esiegel | August 1, 2017"My dad took me out to see a meteor shower when I was a little kid, and it was scary for me because he woke me up in the middle of the night. My heart was beating; I didn't know what he wanted to do. He wouldn't tell me, and he put me in the car and we went off, and I saw all these people lying on blankets, looking up at the sky." -Steven Spielberg
The full or almost-full Moon might be one of the most familiar sights in the night sky to those of us here on Earth, but it’s also the largest natural source of light pollution we have to contend with. The peak of this year’s Perseid meteor shower…
esiegel | August 1, 2017"I think it's rarely about what you actually learn in class. It's mostly about things that you stay motivated to go and continue to do on your own." -Maryam Mirzakhani, on success in mathematics
Only a few weeks ago, pioneering mathematician and the first (and only) woman to win the Fields Medal, Maryam Mirzakhani, tragically died of cancer at the young age of 40. Her brilliant work had applications to a huge variety of problems, from the periodic and/or chaotic motions of billiard balls to the question of designing a room that, even if completely covered by mirrors, could never be…
esiegel | July 31, 2017"Ultramassive black holes — that is, black holes with masses exceeding 10 billion solar masses — are probably not rare; several and even dozens of these colossal black holes may exist." -Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo
The largest black hole in the Universe was a shocker when it was first discovered. At 40 billion solar masses, it certainly is impressively large. Like other quasars and active galaxies, it has a luminous accretion disk that can be seen from a great distance. Like only a few, one of its two incredibly energetic, polar jets is pointed directly at Earth, creating a blazar, the brightest…
esiegel | July 30, 2017“Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived.” -Brannon Braga, Ronald D. Moore, and Rick Berman
After being away for last weekend, it's time to take a look back at the past two weeks on Starts With A Bang! There's been no shortage of stories, of news, or of scientific matters of interest, so let's see what we've got:
Is it foolishness to dream of…
esiegel | July 29, 2017"There was a young lady named Bright,
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
In a relative way,
And returned on the previous night." -A.H. Reginald Butler
Throughout the entire Universe, there’s a fundamental law that governs the motions of all particles: Einstein’s relativity. It states that all particles with mass can never attain the speed of light, no matter how much energy you put into it. Additionally, all massless particles only move at the speed of light, no matter what you do to either them or to the device/person observing them. No matter what reference frame you…
esiegel | July 28, 2017"In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis." -Quentin Crisp
The Universe is expanding. The farther away a galaxy is, the faster it appears to be receding from us. The standard story tells us that space itself is expanding, and that’s the cause, but it’s only natural to wonder if perhaps space is static, and everything else within it isn’t shrinking instead? Many laypersons choose to go this route, and question the entire field of cosmology…
esiegel | July 27, 2017"...and the Sun has perished out of heaven, and an evil mist hovers over all." -Homer's Odyssey
The great american eclipse is coming, and you're in luck! This astronomical sight is unlike anything else that occurs on Earth (or any rocky planet in the Solar System), and there are three incredible stories that it teaches us about the world. First, there's the incredible story about the Moon, Earth, and Sun in orbit, teaching us about our solar system, alignments, and even the curvature of the Earth.
An illustration of the Sun-Moon-Earth configuration setting up a total solar eclipse. The Earth…
esiegel | July 25, 2017"Climate change does not respect border; it does not respect who you are - rich and poor, small and big. Therefore, this is what we call 'global challenges,' which require global solidarity." -Ban Ki-moon
Earlier this week, the executive editor of the Heartland Institute published a declaration that he was a climate change skeptic, and put forth the six major reasons why this was so. These reasons were well-thought-out, specific, and best of all, subject to analysis. So, what better way to test the science than to do that analysis, and to see where the chips fell?
Correctly calibrated…