esiegel | October 16, 2014“Between cold fusion and respectable science there is virtually no communication at all. …because the Cold-Fusioners see themselves as a community under siege, there is little internal criticism. Experiments and theories tend to be accepted at face value, for fear of providing even more fuel for external critics, if anyone outside the group was bothering to listen. In these circumstances, crackpots flourish, making matters worse for those who believe that there is serious science going on here.” -David Goodstein
So, you want to reach the fabled "breakeven" point when it comes to nuclear…
esiegel | October 16, 2014“There’s a mark born every minute, and one to trim ‘em and one to knock ‘em.” -David W. Maurer, The Big Con (1940)
But how could you tell? There's lots of amazing science going on out there, and none of us can be experts in it all. Moreover, even when we think we know how things ought to behave, nature has a way of surprising us, and that's usually via experiment, which is our first indication that our theories are incomplete.
Image credit: CERN, via http://home.web.cern.ch/students-educators/updates/2013/04/find-higgs-b….
So what do we do when a new experimental result comes out,…
esiegel | October 13, 2014“For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.” -John F. Kennedy
If you went back in time to the birth of the Sun and the Solar System, what would you see? You wouldn't simply have a protostar with a gas-and-dust filled nebula around it, with the seeds of what would become our planets. Sure, they would be there, but they'd be immersed in a giant molecular gas cloud with hundreds-to-thousands of stars just like ours, as well as some that were far more…
esiegel | October 12, 2014“Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end.” -George R.R. Martin
But fantasy not only wakes us up to the lavish things in life, it also gives us a connection to our history, to the land and to the thousands of generations that have come before us. Have a listen to Tan Dun and Yo-Yo Ma’s legendary collaboration from Crouching…
esiegel | October 11, 2014"No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish." -David Hume
It's sometimes mind-boggling how many different aspects of the Universe we touch on here at Starts With A Bang, and the past week has perhaps really exemplified that. Ranging from the largest scales down to the smallest, from Nobel-winning developments to the science of hundreds of years ago, here's what we've covered during the first week in October:
Are black holes made of dark matter? (for Ask…
esiegel | October 11, 2014“Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.” -T.H. Huxley
It's said that nothing lasts forever, and as far as we can tell, this is true. Every living thing that has ever lived will die; every star that's ever burned fuel will run out of it; galaxies will eventually be destroyed as their stars are thrown out from gravitational interaction, and even black holes will eventually decay.
Illustration credit: ESA, retrieved via http://chandra.harvard.edu/resources/…
esiegel | October 9, 2014“But certainly the laser proved to be what I realized it was going to be. At that moment in my life I was too ignorant in business law to be able to do it right, and if I did it over again probably the same damn thing would happen.” -Gordon Gould, inventor of the LASER
If you want the best telescopic view of the Universe, you build the biggest telescope you can, you outfit it with the best camera(s) you can, and you send it to space. Right?
Image credit: Fort Lewis College Observatory, via http://www.fortlewis.edu/.
Well, unfortunately, quite often you can't. If you want to build the…
esiegel | October 9, 2014“In physics, you don’t have to go around making trouble for yourself — nature does it for you.” -Frank Wilczek
Freedom is an easy thing for almost all the particles we think of. Want a free photon? Just let it go in a place where there's nothing that's going to absorb it. A free electron? Just keep it from binding to a proton and you're good. Even a free star or planet is possible, so long as you're willing to get far enough away from a gravitational source it might fall into.
Image credit: The browser-crashing http://hortenseardalan.com/blackholes.html.
But a free quark? Impossible! In…
esiegel | October 7, 2014“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies… Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die… It doesn’t matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.” -Ray Bradbury
Well, the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics has been announced, and by now you've probably heard: it's gone to three solid-state physicists for the development of the blue LED, or light-emitting diode.
Image credit: Fun Flashing LEDs, via http://www.funflashingleds.com/clear-light-up-…
esiegel | October 6, 2014“I love the sea’s sounds and the way it reflects the sky. The colours that shimmer across its surface are unbelievable.” -John Dyer
When you look up into the night sky, most of the fixed, non-stellar objects you see are faint, extended and diffuse. One of the things that surprises most skywatchers is what a galaxy or nebula actually looks like through an eyepiece; it's nothing like the astrophotos that you see.
Image credit: N.A.Sharp, REU program/AURA/NOAO/NSF.
But there are some relatively close clusters -- both star clusters and globular clusters -- that are exceptions, and are clearly…
esiegel | October 5, 2014“While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.” -Chinua Achebe
When you think of charitable enterprises, you probably think of things like eradicating hunger, poverty, or disease of some sort. After all, that's what most charity is: helping others who are less fortunate than we are. But there's also another form of charity, where we put our time, effort and resources into improving the world for everyone. This weekend, have a listen to Beirut's song,
Mount Wroclai (Idle Days),
while I share with you a…
esiegel | October 5, 2014“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” -Albert Einstein
After a wide-ranging week here on Starts With A Bang, it's only fair to take a look at what conversations this has sparked among all of you, and to jump in where there's a good opportunity to add even more amazing stories about the Universe into the mix. In case you missed anything, this past week saw us cover the following topics:
Could a manned mission to Mars abort? (for Ask Ethan),
The ultimate fighter... of stains? (for our Weekend Diversion),
The most elusive globular cluster,…
esiegel | October 3, 2014“A single day is enough to make us a little larger or, another time, a little smaller.” -Paul Klee
As the time passes for us all, and we age, so too does everything else in the Universe. For an object like a black hole, it has the potential to form, grow or shrink as we move forward.
Image credit: Mark Garlick (University of Warwick).
The question, of course, that we might ask is how, and by how much? Is normal (baryonic) matter the only culprit, or can dark matter make a difference for this as well? And if so, under what circumstances, and can it teach us anything about dark matter in the…
esiegel | October 2, 2014“The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.” -Oliver Wendell Holmes
But it isn't just your mind that expands as time goes on and you increase your knowledge, but the entire Universe as well. General Relativity, as it turns out, doesn't leave us with much of a choice. If you start with a Universe full of matter and radiation, it's got to expand, otherwise it will collapse in on itself!
Image credit: James N. Imamura of U. of Oregon.
But this expansion has consequences of its own, including the surprising fact that there's not only a finite…
esiegel | October 2, 2014“Language… has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.” -Paul Tillich
One of the biggest questions in all of science is that of just how ubiquitous -- or rare -- life in the Universe is. With the sole exception of Earth, all the worlds in our Solar System seem devoid of life. Or at least, their detection has eluded us so far. But what of all the other planets, star systems and galaxies in the Universe?
Image credit: Robert Gendler of http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/Biography.html.
We…
esiegel | September 30, 2014When you think about it, it wasn't all that long ago -- just 50 years -- that we didn't know where our Universe came from. A hot, dense early state? A cyclical, swirling past? Or perhaps a time-independent one, where the Universe back then was not so different from our own today? All that changed in 1964, quite by accident.
“Horn Antenna-in Holmdel, New Jersey” by NASA — Great Images in NASA Description. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
With the first detection of the Cosmic Microwave Background, and its identification as the leftover glow from the Big Bang, we entered a…
esiegel | September 30, 2014When it comes to physics, there sure are some strange theories -- and even stranger phenomena -- out there. The notion that particles don't have fixed, intrinsic properties that are simultaneously measurable can only be described as weird, and the fact that you can add as much energy as you want to a particle but it will never accelerate to beyond a particular speed is certainly counterintuitive. Yet one theory has them all beat.
Image credit: John D. Norton, via http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/Special_relati….
For ninety-nine years, now, General Relativity has…
esiegel | September 29, 2014“The only thing I have learnt over the years is that if you enjoy your work and put in the best efforts, it will show. If you follow this process, things work out. But if you go chasing a formula, success will elude you.” -Mahesh Babu
When you know something is there but you can't find it for yourself, it makes the search all the more maddening. Yet this exactly was the case for Charles Messier, hunting a catalogued object by a colleague of his for fourteen years before he finally found it!
Image credit: Jim Mazur’s Astrophotography, via Skyledge at http://www.skyledge.net/Messier55.htm.…
esiegel | September 28, 2014“You can clean your sword as much as you want but the blood still stains it.” -Matsuro
I can't count for you the number of shirts I've ruined through spills and other stains. Have a listen to José González's song,
Lovestain,
while you consider what you'd do if you got a stain on your clothes. I'd run them through the wash, sometimes multiple times, and if that wouldn't get the stains out, that'd be the end of that article of clothing. Some of the worst culprits were fruit, grass, wine, oils, and -- of course -- blood.
Image credit: photo by Andrew Kahn, via http://andrewjkahn.com/2013/07/17…
esiegel | September 27, 2014“Everything comes at the right time, but if the right time is too late to be patient, go earlier before it becomes too late.” -Michael Bassey Johnson
After another fun-and-science-filled week here on Starts With A Bang, where we've covered topics ranging from near-to-far, from historical to very modern, and from the beginnings of the Universe up to the present day, it's time once again to take a look at the fabulous comments you've left for us! Looking back, we've recently covered the following topics:
What's the earliest signal from the Universe? (for Ask Ethan),
The Greatest Chatroulette…