esiegel | November 28, 2011"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." -William Shakespeare
In January of 2006, the Hubble Space Telescope -- equipped with the greatest telescope camera ever designed -- took this detailed picture of globular cluster NGC 1846.
Image credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA, and P. Goudfrooij.
Like most globular clusters, this is a very tight, dense collection of perhaps a few hundred thousand stars, contained in a roughly spherical region just a few light years in size. Unlike most of the globular clusters we know, this one is not located within our own galaxy, but…
esiegel | November 27, 2011"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat." -Albert Einstein
Long superseded by television and the internet, the radio perhaps is better seen today as a symbol of nostalgia than as one of paramount relevance to modern life. You can perhaps get a feel for this from Josh Ritter's live performance (from Dublin Castle) of his song,
Golden Age Of Radio.But…
esiegel | November 25, 2011"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
I'm going to tell you a story that starts back in 1770, before not only the…
esiegel | November 23, 2011"Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving." -Henry Ford
Here in the United States, it's American Thanksgiving, our annual harvest festival. Traditionally, it's the one day out of the year where we spend it with the people most important to us, and give genuine appreciation for the good things we have in our lives. And there is so much to be thankful for.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI / AURA).
Last year, I gave thanks to the entire Universe, from the smallest subatomic particles and the laws that govern them…
esiegel | November 21, 2011"Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul." -Victor Hugo
Everyone knows the Earth revolves around the Sun, which takes a year, and the Moon revolves around the Earth, which takes just under a month. So why, then, don't we have 12 solar eclipses and 12 lunar eclipses a year?
If you didn't know any better, you'd expect that each time the Moon passes between the Earth and Sun, its shadow would fall…
esiegel | November 20, 2011"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -Mark Twain
Although I spend the majority of my time here writing about the Universe, from the subatomic to the largest scales, I try not to forget that our home -- Earth -- is full of some of the most remarkable places, experiences, and sights that existence has to offer. For the next few minutes, I'd like to, as Thievery Corporation might say,
Focus On Sight,or…
esiegel | November 18, 2011Q: "Why don't physicists shield themselves from neutrinos?"
A: "Because they never see them coming." #neutrinojokes
Over the past two months, we've talked more about neutrinos than ever before thanks to an extraordinary claim that neutrinos have been observed to move faster-than-light!
And as you well know, no particle is allowed to travel through spacetime faster than the speed of light in vacuum, no matter how much energy you put into it!
(Unless, that is, you count what happens in video games.)
Here's a brief refresher for you as to what's been going on. CERN, the home of the world's most…
esiegel | November 16, 2011"She eyes me like a pisces when I am weak
I've been locked inside your Heart Shaped box for weeks
I've been drawn into your magnet tar pit trap
I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black" -Nirvana, Heart-Shaped Box
By looking at the right combinations of wavelengths of light, one can literally find almost anything in the depths of space.
Image credit: Daniel Marquardt, of nebula IC 1805.
But back on Earth, we have some surprising natural features that have been captured from above with nothing more than a camera.
Image credit: NASA / STS-129 / Space Shuttle Atlantis, retrieved from…
esiegel | November 15, 2011"If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance." -Abraham Lincoln
It was nearly four years ago that I started blogging back at my old site, branching out from the hardcore research of physical cosmology and the teaching of physics and astronomy, and into what I think of as science communication.
Image credit: The cover of Paul Halpern's book.
And there have been a number of very curious things I've learned, some of which I expected and some of which caught me by surprise.
The least surprising: the entirety of our experience in this world is something…
esiegel | November 14, 2011"We don't understand how a single star forms, yet we want to understand how 10 billion stars form." -Carlos Frenck
When we look out into the distant Universe, we're also looking back into the Universe's past. The farther away an object is, the longer it's taken its light to travel from it to our eyes. And each time we observe something farther away than anything we've seen before, we're looking farther back into the past -- closer to the Big Bang -- than ever before.
Image credit: NASA, ESA and A. Felid (STScI).
The earliest thing we've ever been able to see -- of course -- is the Cosmic…
esiegel | November 13, 2011"It's Doctor Evil. I didn't spend six years in Evil Medical School to be called 'mister,' thank you very much." -Dr. Evil
This weekend, I'd like to start by introducing you to the sounds of Galactic Funk, a group whose cosmically epic name is surpassed by their novel, entrancing sound, as highlighted by this week's song,
Doomed.But you yourself would never you'd be doomed simply because you failed to address someone with the proper honorific title. There are very few things that I find as pretentious as people with degrees of any sort who demand that they be addressed with a special title,…
esiegel | November 11, 2011"After all, facts are facts, and although we may quote one to another with a chuckle the words of the Wise Statesman, 'Lies - damned lies - and statistics,' still there are some easy figures the simplest must understand, and the astutest cannot wriggle out of." -Leonard Courtney, 1895
"The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat oneself." -Philip James Bailey
In the study of any scientific field, there are two great perils that you have to be careful to avoid: fraud and incompetence. Incompetence could be as innocuous as making a simple mistake in your analysis, a contamination of your data…
esiegel | November 9, 2011"A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring success from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements." -Orison Swett Marden
One of the greatest assumptions we make in our study of the laws of nature is, well, that they're laws of nature, not particularly special to where or when we happen to be looking at them.
Image credit: NASA & ESA.
Whether we look on our home planet, within our own galaxy, at a relatively nearby galaxy (like NGC 4522, above), or at galaxies extremely far away (faintly visible in the background), we always tend to assume that the…
esiegel | November 7, 2011"Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity." -Joseph Addison
One of the most brilliant phenomena found in our atmosphere is that of a lightning strike.
Shown below in breathtaking slow-motion, somewhere on the order of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 electrons are exchanged in a single bolt between the clouds and the Earth's surface.
Video credit: Tom A. Warner from ZT Research; credit also WeatherVideoHD.TV, and retrieved from Jest.…
esiegel | November 5, 2011"Events often move faster than our ability to comprehend them." -Lee H. Hamilton
But sometimes, going ever faster is where all the fun is at. Have a listen to the Stray Cats, from their debut album, as they plow through their title track,
Built For Speed.Well, believe it or not, I think my car just became a neutrino! Why's that? See for yourself!
(For those of you who need a little help, remember that the USA does distances in miles.)
Of course, I had to push it just a little bit more to become an OPERA neutrino...
so if you see that Cohen-Glashow radiation out there on the highway, don't…
esiegel | November 4, 2011"They credited us with the birth of that sort of heavy metal thing. Well, if that's the case, there should be an immediate abortion." -Ginger Baker
As hard as it may be to believe, take a look outside. I don't mean a glance, I mean to take a real look. At all the things there are to see -- the rocks, trees, mountains, skies, clouds, Sun, water, and everything alive -- all of it.
Image credit: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos, under the GFDL.
Now ask yourself, "what's it made of?"
At a fundamental level -- like everything else you know of -- everything on Earth is made of atoms. Oxygen, Hydrogen,…
esiegel | November 2, 2011"The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible." -Vladimir Nabokov
The wonderful images we take of deep space -- from distant galaxies to all the stars, clusters, and nebulae within our own galaxy -- all have something in common.
Image credit: Wolfgang Brandner, Eva K. Grebel, You-Hua Chu, and NASA.
Light! More specifically, electromagnetic radiation. While this light isn't always in the visible portion of the spectrum, that's certainly the type of radiation we're most accustomed to. And that's…
esiegel | October 31, 2011"I'm the best there is at what I do, but what I do best isn't very nice." -Wolverine
For those of you who thought long and hard about the song I gave you yesterday, perhaps you anticipated that there might have been a connection to this years costume. It's a little tenuous, but this year? The choice was obvious for me.
Image credit: The Complete Hugh Jackman Workout.
That's right, Hugh Jackman's portrayal of Wolverine. As is always the case on Halloween, I've been spending the day terrorizing my local city.
And after trying out a number of styles, I think I got my facial hair just right…
esiegel | October 30, 2011"If human beings had genuine courage, they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween." -Doug Coupland
Halloween is just around the corner, and there's no better song to listen to for the holiday spirit than Warren Zevon's classic,
Werewolves Of London.Those of you who've been hanging around for the last year or two (or maybe just took a glance over at my profile photo) might have gotten an inkling that it is, in fact, my favorite holiday. (Those of you with modest google-fu skills will find all kinds of evidence supporting that fact.)
I always take pride in putting…
esiegel | October 28, 2011"Every true, eternal problem is an equally true, eternal fault; every answer an atonement, every realisation an improvement." -Otto Weininger
The best measurements of the distant Universe -- out beyond our galaxy -- have led us to the current picture of exactly what our Universe is doing: expanding and cooling, with its galaxies progressively getting farther and farther apart.
Image credit: Molly Read for the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
But what does that mean for our past?
If we're expanding and cooling, that means our past was less expanded and less cooled, or as we like to think of…