esiegel | June 18, 2011"Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas." -Alfred Whitney Griswold
Those of you who read my weekend post have some inkling that I'm a bit of a sucker for beautifully done covers of songs.
But when they give me chills listening to them, that's when I know I've really found a special one. This week, I'm proud to introduce Rebecca Loebe to you, whom I discovered while watching her audition at NBC's singing competition: The Voice. Have a listen…
esiegel | June 17, 2011"What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning." -Werner Heisenberg
Looking down at the fundamental nature of matter, down past our cells and organelles, deep into the individual molecules and inside of the atoms that make them up, at long last, you get to things like the fundamental particles that make up all the known matter in the Universe.
Things like electrons, photons, and the quarks that make up protons and neutrons, are all, as best as we can tell, fundamental particles. That means we can't break them up into anything smaller; they're not "made…
esiegel | June 16, 2011"He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast." -Leonardo Da Vinci
It's often lonely, these days, as a theorist. As soon as most people hear the word theory, in fact, they start thinking about something like this:
Image credit: F. Steiger.
But if you're scientifically minded, you know just how powerful your theory is. Because your theory - if it's any good - allows you to not only explain what you've already seen, but allows you to predict something new, which you can then go look for.
By the early…
esiegel | June 14, 2011"It is one of life's bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting." -Lemony Snicket
Those of you who live basically anywhere other than North America are in for a treat this Wednesday. All over Earth, of course, the Moon is nearing its "full" phase, where the half of the Moon illuminated by the Sun is completely visible from Earth.
And it will reach complete fullness on Wednesday night.
Now, most times, when this happens, the full Moon is completely visible from everywhere on Earth. But every so often -- about twice a year on average -- the…
esiegel | June 12, 2011"We're always on the side of the animal that's being chased. We always seem to be on the side of the rabbit or the fox and not on the side of the hounds." -Norman Jewison
For those of you who are fans of Punk Rock, Post-Punk, or New Wave music, you definitely need to check out the French group, Nouvelle Vague. Performing only covers of well-known songs in those genres, they present them in a light, poppy way that's reminiscent of such bizarre albums as Lounge Against the Machine. Only, it's much more "art" than it is novelty, at least to my ears. For this weekend's diversion, I present to you…
esiegel | June 10, 2011"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires." -William Arthur Ward
Every so often, people get up-in-arms about teaching and education in college. New studies come out, new methods are touted and tried, curricula get revised, and pretty much everyone gets criticized. Anyone familiar with the undergraduate experience knows that -- nationwide, at least -- physics departments are often at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to how poorly their students rate them. (There are, of course, some very notable exceptions.)…
esiegel | June 8, 2011"This nebula had such a resemblance to a comet in its form and brightness that I endeavored to find others, so that astronomers would not confuse these same nebulae with comets just beginning to shine." -Charles Messier
Astronomers have been scouring the skies for new discoveries since long before the invention of the telescope. Why, just with the naked eye and some dark skies, anyone can discover about 6,000 stars, five major planets, the Milky Way, and the occasional very faint nebula.
Image credit: Miloslav Druckmuller.
And of course, if you're very fortunate and very diligent, you could…
esiegel | June 6, 2011"As far as I see, such a theory [of the Big Bang] remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question. It leaves the materialist free to deny any transcendental Being. He may keep, for the bottom of space-time, the same attitude of mind he has been able to adopt for events occurring in non-singular places in space-time... Science has not to surrender in face of the Universe and when Pascal tries to infer the existence of God from the supposed infinitude of Nature, we may think that he is looking in the wrong direction." -Georges Lemaître
Recently, David Dilworth has been getting…
esiegel | June 3, 2011"Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike." -Alexander Pope
As you know, last weekend I was on vacation at a certain music festival, and of course, a good time was had by all.
Image credit: my new buddy Chad. Also, R.I.P., Macho Man.
There were a huge number of great bands there with big names, like Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse, The Flaming Lips, Wilco, and the band that I'll pick this week's song from, Foo Fighters and their hit,
Learn to Fly.…
esiegel | June 3, 2011"It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else. Sometimes it is years before I see the way forward. In the case of information loss and black holes, it was 29 years." -Stephen Hawking
When we look out at the Universe, you know what it is that we see.
Image credit: Misti Mountain Observatory.
Light! Light from stars, galaxies, clusters, etc., covering all the different wavelengths you can measure.
But there weren't always stars, galaxies, and clusters in the Universe. When the Universe was first "born," in fact, the…
esiegel | June 1, 2011"The very closest stars would require many years to visit, even traveling at the speed of light, which is impossible according to Einstein's theory of relativity. Today's fastest spaceships would require 200,000 years to travel to Alpha Centauri, our closest bright star. The energy required to send a hundred colonists to another star, as Frank Drake has pointed out, would be enough to meet the energy needs of the entire United States over a human lifetime. And these estimates are regarding nearby stars. When we consider the distances across the entire galaxy, and between galaxies,…
esiegel | May 25, 2011"Too much work, and no vacation,
Deserves at least a small libation.
So hail! my friends, and raise your glasses,
Work's the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
It may seem like it's been forever since I've taken a vacation, because it has been. So this coming Memorial Day Weekend, I'm going to make it count. (Although you can read my previous Memorial Day post here if you're starving.)
So what will I be doing? Well, here's a little taste, courtesy of the band Flogging Molly, whom I'll be listening to in just a few days,
Selfish Man.Why's that? Where am I going to be?
At the 2011…
esiegel | May 25, 2011"We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special." -Stephen Hawking
You're probably familiar with the standard picture of our Universe. You've heard it all before: that the Universe we know of -- stars, planets, atoms, etc. -- is less than 5% of the Universe's total energy. That most of the matter is dark matter, and that most of the energy in the Universe isn't matter at all, but dark energy.
But recently, we've started to discover a couple of interesting things about the atoms in the…
esiegel | May 24, 2011"If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens... Where Is Everybody?" -Stephen Webb
As egocentric as we are, we know that not only are we but one planet of many orbiting our Sun, but that when we look up in the heavens, every point of light we see is another chance -- another opportunity -- for planets, for life, and even for intelligence.
Image credit: Ned Wright, COBE / DIRBE, and NASA.
With hundreds of billions of stars (visible here in infrared wavelengths) in our galaxy alone, we have many, many chances for life to have evolved similarly to how it did here on Earth. With hundreds of billions…
esiegel | May 22, 2011"There is nothing more contemptible than a bald man who pretends to have hair." -Martial
It's been far too long since I introduced you to a great musical artist you may not have heard of, so let's get right to that. Kristin Hersch, famed leader of the punk/alternative band Throwing Muses (which she started at the age of 15 or so), has gone on to do some amazing singing/songwriting work. Here's one of my favorites of hers,
Uncle June And Aunt Kiyoti.On a completely unrelated note, other than its amusement for me, the 2011 World Beard and Mustache Championships just took place in Trondheim,…
esiegel | May 20, 2011"We all need to look into the dark side of our nature - that's where the energy is, the passion. People are afraid of that because it holds pieces of us we're busy denying." -Sue Grafton
No, not the dark side of our nature, just the dark side of nature! Because if all our Universe were made out of were atoms and photons, we wouldn't get a Universe that looks like ours.
What do I mean? Let's take a look.
Image credit: MPA Garching and Volker Springel.
The Universe starts off as a very smooth place, where regions that are denser or less dense than average are only something like 0.003% away…
esiegel | May 18, 2011"There is also an amplitude for light to go faster (or slower) than the conventional speed of light. You found out... that light doesn't go only in straight lines; now, you find out that it doesn't go only at the speed of light! It may surprise you that there is an amplitude for a photon to go at speeds faster or slower than the conventional speed, c." -Richard Feynman
You've been around the block a few times, and you know how it goes when you try to go faster and faster. Everything works just like you expect, until you start getting close to the speed of light, c. And then, all sorts of…
esiegel | May 16, 2011Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice. -Robert Frost
Sure, if all we're talking about is the Earth, that one's a no-brainer. It's fire.
Our Sun, very slowly, is burning up its Hydrogen fuel into Helium, through the process of nuclear fusion. But over the course of billions of years, it starts to burn its remaining fuel at an ever increasing rate. Over the next billion or two years, the…
esiegel | May 14, 2011"I'm going to fight if you touch me or hurt me or do harm to my family. But if you call me a bad name, or whatnot, I'm too smart for that. That's the message the kids need to hear coming from me. I tell them, 'If I fought every time somebody called me a name, I would never get out of jail. But I'm disciplined. I'm smarter than that.' So I tell them, like my mother said, 'Consider the source.' When you see who called you the name, then you understand why they're doing it. Then you don't have to stoop that low." -Mr. T
Ahh, Mr. T. Perhaps my favorite of the muscular, brash, but positive role…
esiegel | May 13, 2011"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." -Antoine de Saint-Exupery
For me, personally, it isn't the endless immensity of the seas that calls. It's the endless immensity of space, the Universe, and the stars.
Image credit: NASA, ESA and A. Nota (STScI/ESA).
And I try to not just share my passion for it with my readers and students, but to encourage all of you (and all of them) to follow their passions. Perhaps it's physical science that excites you, like it…