esiegel | January 2, 2015“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” -Jack Kerouac
But how do you say goodbye to a galaxy that will never receive your message? As it turns out, that's 97% of the galaxies in our Universe!
Image credit: NASA; ESA; G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch, University of California, Santa Cruz; R. Bouwens, Leiden University; and the HUDF09 Team.
While we might still be able to see the…
esiegel | January 1, 2015“And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.” -Rainer Maria Rilke
Yes, it's true, with 2015 upon us, the new year holds a number of wonderful new things. Not only for us, but for the Universe as well!
Image credit: Stuart Rickard of After Ice, viahttp://blog.after-ice.com/stuart-rickard/.
Consider all the time that's passed, leading up to today. Consider how far we've come, from the Big Bang until right now, as "one Universe year," and now imagine, looking forward, what the next Universe year (or years) will hold.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, J. Jee (University of…
esiegel | December 30, 2014“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” -Winston Churchill
There was a piece that ran over this weekend in the Wall Street Journal, claiming that the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial life is actually evidence pointing towards the existence of God.
Image credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech, via http://kepler.arc.nasa.gov/news/nasakeplernews/index.cfm?FuseAction=Sho….
Does this argument hold any water? If we want to scrutinize it (for real), there are three questions we should be asking ourselves:
What are,…
esiegel | December 29, 2014“The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.” -Ralph W. Sockman
After millennia looking up at the Milky Way overhead, it's only recently that we discovered our galaxy had a spiral-like structure, and that the other spirals and ellipticals in the night sky are galaxies much like our own. But how did they come to be? Why do they appear the way they are? And what will come of them in the future?
Find out the answers to all these questions and more on the third episode of Genesis, where we focus on the galaxy and where it comes from!
(And if you missed either of the…
esiegel | December 28, 2014“I believe that we are here for each other, not against each other. Everything comes from an understanding that you are a gift in my life — whoever you are, whatever our differences.” -John Denver
So why not lead by example? If you think there's too much carbon in the atmosphere (because there is), if you think the Earth is undergoing global warming and climate change because of it (which the science says it is), and you think that you want to live in a time and place where the natural world is healthy, as John Denver would sing you in his classic song,
Take Me Home Country Roads,
maybe…
esiegel | December 27, 2014“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” -John Steinbeck
Here we are: the final Comments of the Week of 2014 here at Starts With A Bang, a year that's seen a tremendous number of changes, achievements, struggles and triumphs. This past week has perhaps been a microcosm for the entire year, with articles on cosmology, a new Monday series, a guest post and more. If you missed anything, here's what we've covered:
Dark matter vs. dark…
esiegel | December 26, 2014“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.” -Wayne Dyer
We all can think back to that moment that happened where we knew our lives would be forever different, right? To that one moment in our past where we suddenly knew what it was that we wanted to be, what we wanted to do, what that special career move defining us would wind up becoming.
Image credit: My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Season 1 Episode 23.
You know, that moment where you figure out what your special talent/passion is.
Only, that isn't how real life works! It's actually a…
esiegel | December 24, 2014“Bethany: Is your house on fire, Clark?
Clark: No, Aunt Bethany, those are the Christmas lights.” -National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
With Christmas upon us, what would you ask for from the Universe? It can't bring you tangible presents, perhaps, but it can bring you the greatest cosmic sights you've ever feasted upon.
Image credit: Flickr user Alicia, via https://www.flickr.com/photos/capella_891/2779209611/.
So why not learn how to find the Christmas Tree Cluster, and enjoy the greatest astrophotography efforts of it, all in the form of a Christmas poem?
Image credit: European…
esiegel | December 23, 2014“It is always the simple that produces the marvelous.” -Amelia Barr
All things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the best. At least, that's how Occam's razor is most commonly phrased these days. Yet, when it comes to the headlines -- whether it's a "discovery" of dark matter or "evidence" for life on Mars -- you have to wonder what "simple" actually means.
Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SAM-GSFC / Univ. of Michigan.
The answer isn't what most people suspect, and it shouldn't really be up for debate. If you want to hypothesize that something novel is occurring, something…
esiegel | December 23, 2014We don't normally think about it in our day-to-day work, but as scientists, our equations, our models, our observations, our experiments and our instruments are more than just our tools for approaching our work. In a very real way, they're our connection to the Universe itself.
Image source: http://www.cramerinc.com/environments/laboratory/.
Yet some people miss out on that connection, never finding the wonder, joy and knowledge that comes along with science. Sabine Hossenfelder has an interesting take on this -- and a personal story, too -- that's worth reading. Here's a snippet:
We don’t…
esiegel | December 22, 2014“When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel that you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system.” -Kalpana Chawla
Two weeks ago, we released the first video in our web series: Genesis, the story of where all this comes from.
The video was on Organic Molecules, and while it hasn't exactly gone viral (yet), the like/dislike ratio is pretty hard to beat.
Well, it's time for Episode 2, on the topic of the Solar System. Head on over to Medium to watch the whole thing, along with an official transcript as well!
esiegel | December 21, 2014“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
For most of us, news of a total solar eclipse -- even though they happen (on average) once every three years -- seems distant and remote, and far from the possibility of us enjoying it. Have a listen to the Cat Stevens classic,
Moonshadow,
while you consider how rare it is to have the Moon's shadow fall on us.For those of us in the United States, we haven't seen a total solar eclipse…
esiegel | December 20, 2014"I'm a man! I'm forty!" -Mike Gundy
'Twas the weekend before Christmas at Starts With A Bang, and the comments you left ranged from "hooray" to "dang!" There's much that you like and a bit you abhor, but some things require explaining some more. This past week saw seven posts, crafted with care:
Did we just find dark matter? (for Ask Ethan),
25th Anniversary of Wendy's training music videos (for our Weekend Diversion),
Our Universe changes (for Memory Monday),
The Big Bang for children,
Does the scientific method need revision? (by Sabine Hossenfelder),
Quantum Immortality (by Paul Halpern…
esiegel | December 19, 2014“We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposed to rob us of their companionship.” -James Harvey Robinson
The Universe seems to be full of contradictions. On one hand, everywhere we look -- in all directions and at all locations -- we find that it's full of stars, galaxies and clusters. There are regions pretty much everywhere where, in the great cosmic struggle between all the pulls and pushes, gravitation has won.
Image credit: NASA; ESA; G. Illingworth, UCO/Lick Observatory and the University of…
esiegel | December 18, 2014“In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” -Albert Camus
This Sunday marks the Winter Solstice: the darkest, longest evening of the year for all the Earth's northern hemisphere denizens.
Image credit: Ken Tape, of the Winter Solstice at Fairbanks, Alaska.
Sure, you probably know all about Earth's axial tilt and how the southern hemisphere experiences the summer solstice at the same time, but here are a few solstice facts that you might not know, including what it means for the Moon, for new year's celebrations, and for our history of venturing…
esiegel | December 17, 2014They say that a cat has nine lives, mostly because of their uncanny ability to find themselves in -- and escape from -- frequently perilous situations. Perhaps, of all the animals that he could have chosen, that's why Schrödinger made his famous thought experiment about the most diminutive of felines.
Image credit: retrieved from Øystein Elgarøy at http://fritanke.no/index.php?page=vis_nyhet&NyhetID=8513.
But there's an incredible outcome that one interpretation -- the Many-Worlds Interpretation -- of quantum mechanics allow for: that any time there's a situation where you have the…
esiegel | December 17, 2014We all have our own interpretation of what "the scientific method" is, but there's always at least one thing that they all have in common: the ultimate arbiter of whether a theory or idea is valid depends on the evidence that comes back from physically observable phenomena.
Image credit: abstruse goose, via http://abstrusegoose.com/275
But not everyone necessarily agrees with this in the way we commonly understand it. Sabine Hossenfelder has some fantastic thoughts analyzing and synthesizing a variety of viewpoints, laying the hammer down with a sweeping statement:
You can thus never…
esiegel | December 16, 2014“To begin, begin.” -William Wordsworth
Is the Big Bang the greatest scientific achievement of the 20th century? I -- along with many others -- would argue that it is. It's something that even young children are curious about!
Image credit: David Burstein, of http://www.davidburstein.net/2012/10/07/quiver-trees/.
Perhaps it's in our nature to wonder about where we come from? Yet despite the fact that it's been half a century since the Big Bang was validated and its alternatives shown to be wrong, it remains a very difficult concept for most people to understand. More importantly, I have yet…
esiegel | December 15, 2014“Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.” -Carl Sagan
34 years ago, Carl Sagan became the first person to present -- in a format accessible to the entire world -- a synthesized story of all the most important scientific points and facts that we had learned about the cosmic story common to us all.
Image credit: NASA / GSFC, via http://cosmictimes.gsfc.nasa.gov/universemashup/archive/pages/big_bang….
No…
esiegel | December 14, 2014“If there are things you don’t like in the world you grew up in, make your own life different.” -Dave Thomas
That's great advice, and is the same advice that the iconic Grandmaster Flash not only pushed in his legendary song,
The Message,
but also lived. The music style he helped developed had a tremendous impact on the world, too. And not only the world of music, but -- for a brief golden age in the late 1980s -- the world of employee training videos.
Image credit: screenshot from Wendy’s Inc., 1989.
Because a standard, boring fast-food training video might not cut it in the fast-paced…