esiegel | January 6, 2013"The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men." -Alice Walker
This weekend -- perhaps inspired by the growing friendship between our new dog and our old one -- I've got a surprising find along with a sweet White Stripes song for you,
We're Going To Be Friends.
Every once in a while, I'll run across something in the natural world that wholeheartedly surprises me. I remember watching a nature documentary about lions, where I saw a wounded, pregnant lioness leave her pack to give birth…
esiegel | January 5, 2013"Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories." -Ray Bradbury
It wasn't all that long ago -- back when I was a boy -- that the only planets we knew of were the ones in our own Solar System. The rocky planets, our four gas giants, and the moons, asteroids, comets, and kuiper belt objects (which was only Pluto and Charon at the time) were all that we knew of.
Image credit: NASA's Solar System Exploration, http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/index.cfm.
But these were just the worlds…
esiegel | January 2, 2013"Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others." -Timothy Leary
Here we are, on planet Earth, the product of generations of civilization-building, maybe four-billion years of evolution on our world, around 13.7 billion years into the existence of our observable Universe.
Image credit: Paranal Observatory, ESO / Babak Tafreshi.
The Universe, quite possibly, didn't have to be exactly the way it is. It didn't have to have the laws of physics be exactly what they are, with the masses and charges…
esiegel | December 31, 2012"I'd rather be a could-be if I cannot be an are;
because a could-be is a maybe who is reaching for a star.
I'd rather be a has-been than a might-have-been, by far;
for a might have-been has never been, but a has was once an are." -Milton Berle
Welcome to Messier Monday, where we pick one of the 110 spectacular deep-sky objects of the Messier catalogue each week and learn a little more about it.
Image credit: Paul Gitto's Messier Marathon.
This week, to usher in 2013, I'd like to take a look at Messier 13, the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, which is visible to northern skywatchers both…
esiegel | December 30, 2012"When you're a little kid you're a bit of everything; scientist, philosopher, artist. Sometimes it seems like growing up is giving these things up one at a time." -Kevin Arnold, The Wonder Years
Like many who grew up around the same time I did, The Wonder Years was one of my favorite shows, putting on display much of the awkwardness, anxiety, hope and powerlessness that comes along with being a pre-teen/teenager in this world. And like many, I had a secret crush on Winnie Cooper, played by Danica McKellar. To accompany this post, with a modern twist, here's the Easy Star All-Stars singing…
esiegel | December 28, 2012"People hear the happy story, but the truth is they could all disappear in the blink of an eye. The threats just keep coming." -Todd Steiner
It's taken generations of scientists, examining the night sky for millennia, to comprehend the full size and scope of what's out there in the Universe.
Image of the southern Milky Way, by A. Fujii.
Out beyond the planets and stars, outside of the Milky Way itself, is a great cosmic abyss filled with still-uncounted galaxies that stretch for billions of light years across the Universe.
Image credit: 2P2 Team, WFI, MPG/ESO 2.2-m Telescope, La Silla, ESO…
esiegel | December 27, 2012"Tell me what you feel in your room when the full moon is shining in upon you and your lamp is dying out, and I will tell you how old you are, and I shall know if you are happy." -Henri Frederic Amiel
Tonight is a special night, although not for the reasons you may think. Yes, it's just a few days after Christmas and before the new year, but tonight is the night of the Full Moon closest to the winter solstice.
Image credit: Judy Stone-Goldman.
Up here in the northern hemisphere (above the Tropic of Cancer), December 21st corresponds to the winter solstice, or the shortest day in terms of…
esiegel | December 26, 2012"We have been forced to admit for the first time in history not only the possibility of the fact of the growth and decay of the elements of matter. With radium and with uranium we do not see anything but the decay. And yet, somewhere, somehow, it is almost certain that these elements must be continuously forming. They are probably being put together now in the laboratory of the stars." -Robert Millikan
The Universe has been around for a long time, but without the Big Bang, we'd never have any of the matter or starlight that gives rise to practically all of our experiences in the entire…
esiegel | December 24, 2012"This holiday season is about remembering that the greatest gift was not laid under a tree, but in a filthy manger." -Unknown
But it isn't the manger you're thinking of that I want to share with you this Messier Monday. Although Charles Messier's catalogue of 110 deep sky objects -- designed to pinpoint nebulae that could possibly be confused for potential comets -- is composed mostly of objects only visible through a telescope, a few of them are visible under good seeing conditions to the naked eye, and have been known since ancient times.
Image credit: Finotto Enrico, 2011 / flickr user…
esiegel | December 23, 2012"Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring -- it was peace." -Milan Kundera
It's the holiday season, and for most of us, that means spending time with loved ones, having some type of feast-day, and in many cases, giving and sharing gifts with one another. To spread a little holiday cheer, I present to you my all-time favorite Christmas song, Run-DMC's classic,
Christmas In Hollis.
Those of you who've been following Starts With A Bang since the…
esiegel | December 20, 2012"I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again." -Eric Roth, screenwriter
Forget the prognosticators, the fortune-tellers and the mediums. Pay no mind to the soothsayers, the prophets, the augurs and diviners. The seers see no more than any other sighted person, the omen-interpreters have been superseded by the ornithologists, the psychics made obsolete by the scientists.
Because if doomsday ever does approach, we won't be…
esiegel | December 19, 2012"Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the great cosmic ocean, there's only one planet that we know -- for certain -- has the right conditions and history to result in intelligent life: our own.
Image credit: NASA, from the Space Shuttle, for Sun-Earth Day 2008.
Life -- or even intelligent life -- may be possible in environments vastly different than our own: around different classes of stars, at different temperatures, and even with different molecules and/or chemical elements.
But we know for…
esiegel | December 17, 2012“Men... have had the vanity to pretend that the world creation was made for them, whilst in reality the whole creation does not suspect their existence.” -Camille Flammarion
Welcome to the latest -- and most controversial -- Messier Monday, where each week, I'll take a look at one of the 110 deep-sky objects that make up the Messier catalogue. These objects were identified so as not to be confused with potential comets, and make up the brightest and best-known observational sights beyond our own Solar System. But there is one object that, if you go to the wikipedia list, that has not been…
esiegel | December 16, 2012"The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination. It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it." -Richard Feynman
What did you think about, wonder about, and dream about the first time you saw the true magnificence of the night sky? Did you wonder about planets orbiting each of the thousands of points of light you saw? Did you think about the possibilities of rocky worlds with liquid water, of life, and even of intelligent aliens? Or did you perhaps think on even larger scales, about what stars…
esiegel | December 14, 2012"And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make." -Paul McCartney
Every once in a while, I throw the chance out there (on facebook, twitter, or google+) to ask me whatever questions you want. Yesterday, for some insane reason, I invited people across all three platforms to ask me whatever they liked, with a dual promise that I'd not only answer them, but that the best ones would receive a free "The Year In Space" calendar for 2013, courtesy of the Planetary Society.
Image credit: The Planetary Society.
So I got a ton of questions, and now I'll do my best to answer them as…
esiegel | December 12, 2012"I have this one little saying, when things get too heavy just call me helium, the lightest known gas to man." -Jimi Hendrix
Hendrix, as I told you once before, was almost right. We know of helium, conventionally, as the lighter-than-air gas that we fill balloons, blimps and zeppelins with in order to quickly and easily "defy gravity" here on Earth.
Image credit: Jonathan Trappe.
At least defying gravity is what it appears to do. But what's really going on is that helium is simply a very low-density gas. Our atmosphere, a mix of mostly Nitrogen (N2) and Oxygen (O2) gases, has an average…
esiegel | December 10, 2012"My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all." -John Lennon
Welcome to the latest edition of Messier Monday, where each week we take an in-depth look at one of the 110 deep-sky objects in the Messier Catalog. These objects, all of which are visible from certain northern latitudes at certain times of the year, were catalogued explicitly to prevent comet-hunters from confusing these static objects with potential comets.
Image credit: SEDS Messier…
esiegel | December 9, 2012"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man." -Mark Twain
While it's hard to imagine for me now that I have one, there are plenty of people out there who have never known the rewards and joys that come with rescuing an animal. This week, I present to you a song by six future Soundgarden-and-Pearl Jam members back when they were part of the band Temple of the Dog,
Call Me a Dog.
And while there are many internet jokes out there about dogs driving cars...
Image credit: Kathy of http://www.petswelcome.com…
esiegel | December 7, 2012"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the Universe." -Carl Sagan
The Universe is a lot like an extremely intricate cake. We view it today as a snapshot in time, now that it's complete.
Image credit: Blogger user Hilly of http://makesbakesfakes.blogspot.com/.
We can view the whole thing from one point of view, determined by where we happened to be located. But we can also look intricately inside certain sections of it, so long as we have the right tools.
Image credit: Blogger user Hilly of http://makesbakesfakes.blogspot.com/.
But if we truly want to…
esiegel | December 6, 2012"Forget it. I didn't have that thing inside me where I wanted to smash against somebody and watch them break. I was too sensitive for that and disliked being that sensitive." -Josh Brolin
How do you figure out what something is made of? You take it apart -- cracking it open if necessary -- and look inside. This is something we've been doing since... well, since before our ancestors were even human.
Images credit: Elisabetta Visalberghi.
For most things here on Earth, that's easy enough. If you wanted to go down to the smallest scales possible, however, it becomes harder and harder to "crack…