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"My strength is much greater than yours!" -Zangief, Street Fighter II
I hope everyone had as great a halloween as I did, and -- although I know it's sad -- it's time to bid a fond farewell to my Zangief avatar that once graced the top this blog. To be honest, I'll miss Zangief quite a bit.
Image credit: Capcom / IGN, retrieved from http://www.torontothumbs.com/.
But that doesn't mean that we can't reminisce about Street Fighter II every now and again, and that I didn't enjoy this tremendous nine-webisode-miniseries by CollegeHumor about what's happened to each of my favorite characters…
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"Galileo got it wrong. The Earth does not revolve around the Sun. It revolves around you and has been doing so for decades. At least, this is the model you are using." -Srikumar Rao
It's the end of the week, so that means its time to take on another one of your questions from the question/suggestion box, and continue our ongoing Ask Ethan series! Even though there's a backlog of hundreds of questions, you should keep sending the new ones in, as all questions are fair game for any segment. This week's question comes from reader Brian Mucha, who asks us:
Where did the sun and planets get their…
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"I'm not ashamed to dress 'like a woman' because I don't think it's shameful to be a woman." - Iggy Pop
Well folks, it's that time of year once again: to share my favorite holiday with you and change my digital avatar for the next 365 days! Traditionally, I've dressed as superhero-figures from my childhood, but I wanted to switch it up a little bit this year. This year, my halloween costume is based on Rainbow Dash.
Image credit: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Season 1 Episode 16, via http://mlp.wikia.com/.
For those of you who've never encountered the new My Little Pony: Friendship…
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“I followed him at the time and thought he was hysterical. He was the first serial killer, a new kettle of fish, because we didn't have the detection techniques in those days.” -Matthew Bright
You can't get mad at a team for trying the improbable, hoping that nature cooperates. Some of the most famous discoveries of all time have come about thanks to nothing more than mere serendipity, and so if we can test something at low-cost with an insanely high reward, we tend to go for it. Believe it or not, that's the mindset that's driving the direct searches for dark matter.
Image credit…
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"I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms." -Voltaire
Every object that we look at for Messier Monday has its own flavor, its own qualities, and its own unique characteristics. By far the most numerous of the 110 deep-sky objects making up the Messier catalogue are the galaxies, of which there are 40. It's best to observe them on moonless nights, as their surface brightness is spread out across a large area, and even a crescent Moon's presence in the night sky can make all but the brightest of these galaxies invisible to the eye, even in good equipment.
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"If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little." -George Carlin
Whatever you may think of the chances are for intelligent life in our galaxy are today, I can guarantee you they're going to go up dramatically in a few billion years. Sure, by that time the Earth may be a little too hot for comfort, and in that sense -- as Split Lip Rayfield would say -- we'll probably
Never Make It Home.
But that doesn't mean there won't be a new-and-improved home out there, not only from among the stars and planets in our…
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"I have just gone over my comet computations again, and it is humiliating to perceive how very little more I know than I did seven years ago when I first did this kind of work." -Maria Mitchell
Well, it's getting close to the end of October, the Moon is waning towards its new phase, and -- at least in the northern hemisphere -- the days are getting shorter and the nights are lengthening. Is there anything unique on its way that's worth watching the skies for? In today's Ask Ethan column, our suggestion comes from longtime reader and commenter Sinisa Lazarek, who inquires:
Since ISON …
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"Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing." -John Stuart Mill
No one becomes a master overnight, and practically no one does it without the outside help and support of not just a mentor, but of a number of peers, advisors and other allies along the way. At least, that was my story.
Image credit: University of Baltimore.
I remember being an undergraduate. I remember the combined struggles of rigorous academics, self-confidence crises, trying to figure myself out as a person, and trying to make friends and forge relationships…
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"Controversy is only dreaded by the advocates of error." -Benjamin Rush
Welcome back to another Messier Monday! Each week, we take an in-depth look at one of the 110 deep-sky wonders of the Messier Catalogue, from distant galaxies to nearby star clusters, from nebulous star factories to ancient globular bunches, and from stellar remnants to the rare-but-interesting anomalies. There are only three such anomalous entries out of all 110 Messier objects, and today provides us with a fantastic opportunity to take an in-depth look at one of them.
Image credit: The Messier Objects by Alistair…
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"I think one of the reasons that we like conspiracy theories is I think that we like to feel like there is a group of people who are so smart and powerful that they can pull the wool over an entire country or in fact even an entire world's eyes. That certainly makes us feel like somehow we're protected, even if it's not in our best interest." -Jason Ritter
Everyone knows one: the friend-or-relative who simply can't believe that things are the way they are, that someone's out to get them, trick them, or con them in some way. It's where my sympathies for Todd Snider came to a screeching halt…
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"If you are writing any book about the end of the world, what you are really writing about is what's worth saving about it." -Justin Cronin
Well, it's Friday again, and that means it's time to dip into the question/suggestion box, and see what you've come up with for me. This week's Ask Ethan comes from our reader Michael Acosta, who wants to know about the end of the world. Not, mind you, the way the world is actually likely to end, but in a way that would be satisfying to an aspiring science fiction writer.
In this wonderful science fiction book I am writing, there is a subplot involving…
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"It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters." -Friedrich Nietzsche
Although the innermost planets, from Mercury through Saturn, were known since ancient times, it's only since the advent of the telescope that we've discovered what really lives in our Solar System. Over the past four centuries, the wonders of not only the distant Universe, but also our nearby neighborhood, have been uncovered in spectacular detail.
Image credit: NASA and – I believe – G. Bacon (STScI).
The third and fourth largest planets were…
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"The deeper reason we fear our own glory is that once we let others see it, they will have seen the truest us, and that is nakedness indeed. [...] It is an awkward thing to shimmer when everyone else around you is not, to walk in your glory with an unveiled face when everyone else is veiling his." -John Eldredge
Welcome back to another Messier Monday, where the glittering wonders of the night sky -- visible to anyone at the right latitudes with even simple equipment -- are on display for everyone. The bright collection of 110 deep-sky wonders include star clusters, globular clusters, galaxies…
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"Haters are like crickets; they make a lot of noise you can hear but you never see them, then you walk right by them and they're quiet." -Unknown
The sound of crickets adds an unavoidable hum to the evenings and nights in many places throughout the world, a familiar sound -- I'm sure -- to a great many of you.
Each male cricket has a large, serrated (sawtooth) vein running along the bottom of each wing, and by rubbing the top of one wing against the bottom of the other, while simultaneously holding the wings up-and-open, the wing membranes vibrate, and create that familiar chirping sound…
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"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair." -C. S. Lewis
And yet, when you search for the truth, you often find answers that butt up against your sensibilities, your preconceptions, and even your very notions of common sense. Such is the case in this week's Ask Ethan, where longtime reader and commenter MandoZink asks:
I have a question that has perplexed me for most of my life. Recently I sought out and re-read more expert explanations of the…
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"Even in hindsight, I would not change one whit of the Voyager experience. Dreams and sweat carried it off. But most of all, its legacy makes us all Earth travelers among the stars." -Charley Kohlhase
In the early days of space exploration, it was quite a feat just to get up and out of Earth's atmosphere. There's are two good, simple reason for that, of course: first, it takes a lot of energy to go up that high...
Image credit: Nathan Bergey of http://psas.pdx.edu/orbit_intro/.
and second, if you don't get your spacecraft moving really fast, you're just going to fall back to…
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"The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave." -Patrick Henry
It's not a good idea to showcase a galaxy for you every Messier Monday, considering that even a crescent Moon can render most of them completely unobservable. Now that the autumnal equinox has passed, however, a very special spiral will be visible after sunset for the next six months or so in a relatively nondescript part of the night sky. Out of the 110 deep-sky objects that comprise the Messier catalogue, a full forty of them are galaxies, although today's object wasn't…
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“Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful flamingo, flying across in front of a beautiful sunset? And he's carrying a beautiful rose in his beak, and also he's carrying a very beautiful painting with his feet. And also, you're drunk.” -Jack Handy
The diversity of the world's animals is one of the most fantastic natural marvels that life on Earth has delivered. From the sea to land to the air, there's no shortage of wonders to explore. Today, though, I want to talk to you about one of the most bizarre sights of nature, as the 1989 supergroup Strength in Numbers once played…
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"Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away." -Marcus Aurelius
Every one of us does our best to come up with an accurate picture of reality, and that includes the Universe, from the smallest subatomic particles to the largest scales fathomable. But given how bizarre and counterintuitive some of our physical laws are -- even at a fundamental level -- this can be a daunting task for even those of us who are professional theoretical physicists.
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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." -Charles Darwin
There are problems with science today, no doubt. With all the knowledge we've accumulated about the Universe, from the smallest subatomic scales to the farthest recesses of deep space, there are still realms and regimes where our best theories fail, where the predictions and the data don't match, and where no known explanation is sufficient for the phenomena that shows up…