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Intel Science Talent Search Winner: Mr. Bush, please save Hubble.
Then-President Bush: Is Hubble in trouble?
Oh my, yes, for those of you who don't know, Hubble is, in fact, in trouble once again. To set the mood, I've got one of the best songs about it: Ray LaMontagne's
Trouble.
For the uninitiated, Hubble -- imaged here from the Space Shuttle Atlantis -- is not only the telescope that changed the Universe, it is the single most scientifically productive piece of equipment of all time. That's right, as Neil de Grasse Tyson wrote,
More research papers have been published using its data than…
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"This is Tokyo. Once a city of six million people. What has happened here was caused by a force which up until a few days ago was entirely beyond the scope of Man's imagination." -Steve Martin
What was once only in the realm of our wildest science-fiction fantasies has become a nightmare come true for the people of Japan. Reports are everywhere that a fearsome, 200-foot tall monster emerged from the damaged Fukushima Reactor early this morning.
Referred to by eyewitnesses as some kind of whale-gorilla, the creature now has one Universally recognized name,
Godzilla.After emerging from the…
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"It took less than an hour to make the atoms, a few hundred million years to make the stars and planets, but five billion years to make man!" -George Gamow
Some people are never satisfied. After I wrote last time on the odds for cosmic inflation, I started noticing a flurry of comments on an older post about alternatives to the big bang. So, might as well go back to the basics, and ask what the odds are that the Big Bang is correct! Let's start by taking a look at what's out there in the Universe.
Image credit: Hubble Space Telescope.
Sure, we've got stars surrounding us: hundreds of…
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"If it were worth the while to settle in those parts near to the Pleiades or the Hyades, to Aldebaran or Altair, then I was really there, or at an equal remoteness from the life which I had left behind, dwindled and twinkling with as fine a ray to my nearest neighbor, and to be seen only in moonless nights by him." -Henry David Thoreau
Two weeks ago, I asked if you knew your brightest stars. And there are some spectacular ones, of course.
But our nearest major star, alpha centauri, the yellow guy (below, found near the Southern Cross) is over four light years away from us.
But not every star…
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"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more." -Lord Byron
All over the world, Earth Hour has fallen, and it's about to, imminently, here in my part of the world. For a song to take you through this post, I've got a (Peter Rowan?) folk classic performed by The Be Good Tanyas in their own unique style,
Midnight Moonlight.Perhaps, if you're one of the lucky ones with clear skies, you might be able to notice something you hardly ever get…
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"Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe." -Frank Zappa
Oh yeah, Zappa? Well, let me show you what hydrogen can do!
With just one proton and one electron, hydrogen is not only the simplest of all the atoms in the Universe, it's also the most abundant: over 90% of all the atoms in the Universe are hydrogen atoms!
How could such a small thing possibly have anything interesting to tell us about the entire Universe…
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"I came from the country, and when I came to the city, I was ridin' high, you know. I was seeing more lights than I ever dreamed to shine in the world. 'Cos where I came from, there wasn't too many lights. Bugs made a lot of light, but after that there wasn't no lights." -John Hunter
John Hunter should have been at a higher latitude! Because if you're fortunate, at a high enough latitude (either north or south), the following sight will sometimes greet you in the night sky.
Image credit: Thundafunda.com.
In the northern hemisphere, we call it the Aurora Borealis, while the southern gets the…
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"And Lord, we are especially thankful for nuclear power, the cleanest, safest energy source there is. Except for solar, which is just a pipe dream." -Homer Simpson
If you've been reading or watching the news, you've probably been hearing a whole lot of information about the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in Japan.
And how the recent earthquake and tsunami have combined to turn the above scene into a potential disaster.
At present, however, contamination has been minimal, and the damage -- thus far -- has been practically zero.
What do I mean? Let's explain -- in the simplest terms possible…
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"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?" -Rabbi Hillel
As you all know, it has been one week since the devastating earthquake first struck Japan. And the damage is simply horrific.
The death toll is in the thousands (if not the tens of thousands), there are hundreds of aftershocks still ongoing, and over 350,000 people have been displaced from their homes. National geographic has some heartbreaking pictures here.
And although I haven't asked it of you in years, my dear readers, I am asking you now to join with me and help the…
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"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." -Anton Chekhov
Ahh, Chekhov, you old sour puss, what do you have against the brilliance of our Moon?
Beautiful in our sky, the Moon typically takes up half-a-degree in the night sky, where it's by far the largest and brightest object visible to the naked eye (well, for those of you who can't see the full Andromeda galaxy with your naked eye). But the Moon actually varies in its apparent size in the sky! If you photograph the Moon when it appears to be at its largest, it actually appears about 14% bigger than…
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"It is said that there's no such thing as a free lunch. But the Universe is the ultimate free lunch." -Alan Guth
We've talked about the Big Bang too many times to count, and why it's easily the leading theory regarding the origin of the Universe. It's the only cosmic idea we have that can explain all three of the following observations:
1.) The Hubble Expansion of the Universe. When we look out at distant galaxies, we find that the farther a galaxy is from us, the faster it's receding from us! It was realized pretty early on that this is because space itself is expanding!
This means that…
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"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." -Jeannette Rankin
As you all surely know, an 8.9 magnitude earthquake just struck Japan, devastating the island of Honshu.
Before and after images link at abc.net.au.
Ask a geologist, and they'll rightly tell you about plate tectonics, subduction zones, fault lines, and much, much more. But there's a simple physics reason that they happen underlying all of it.
Image credit: Jean Anastasia.
The Earth is built like a giant, spherical layer cake. The inner core -- made up of mostly iron and nickel -- is the densest of all the layers…
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"The makers of entertainment must try, in our field, to be honest and grown-up." -Elia Kazan
There's a lot of negativity in the world lately, from natural disasters to social, political, and economic strife. But this week also saw the 100th International Women's Day go by, and what I saw was so inspirational that I decided to share one piece of it with you.
This is Lil Wayne: a young, successful musician with four kids, including a 12 year-old daughter. By all accounts, Wayne is a good dad -- something his father never was -- and an intelligent, independent-minded man.
But his lyrics are…
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Well, don't you know
I'm gonna skate right through
Ain't nobody do it but me
Nobody but me -The Human Beinz
If you're only a casual watcher of the night sky, you might have no idea what the brightest stars are. Sure, if you're in the northern hemisphere, you probably recognize the Big Dipper,
the bright stars in the constellation Orion (particularly the "belt"),
the Pleiades, otherwise known as the Seven Sisters,
and Cassiopeia, the giant "W".
And if you're farther south, you probably know the extraordinarily bright Canis Major (big dog),
as well as the Southern Cross and the two Pointer…
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"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." -Galileo Galilei
Ever since the time of Galileo, Jupiter has been an amazing sight for skywatchers. With its four large moons, even the smallest of amateur telescopes provide amazing sights.
In fact, if you watch Jupiter's four large Moons over the span of a few hours, you're likely to discover the same exact thing that Galileo did.
You can see that Jupiter's moons orbit around Jupiter! Looking through a larger telescope, like the video above was shot using, you can actually see the shadows of…
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"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less." -Marie Curie
Were you here last week, when I wrote about MOND and dark matter, and in particular what the supreme failings of MOND are? Apparently, right here on Scienceblogs was a hugely dissenting opinion.
Image credit: Subaru Telescope.
After all, when you look at what we call small-scale structure, from dwarf spheroidal galaxies up to the scales of some very small galaxy clusters, MOND works even better than dark matter does!
So what is dark matter, and why am I…
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"Blessed be Providence which has given to each his toy: the doll to the child, the child to the woman, the woman to the man, the man to the devil!" -Victor Hugo
I don't know how many of you have ever had the experience of listening to all your music on shuffle, had a song come on, and then say to yourself, "That's really good! Who is that?" Well, that happened to me this week, when I was, apparently, listening to The Decemberists' song,
Culling Of The Fold.(And for those of you who like music festivals, I'll see you -- and The Decemberists -- at this one this coming Memorial Day…
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"The subject of gambling is all encompassing. It combines man's natural play instinct with his desire to know about his fate and his future." -Franz Rosenthal
Last month, Sean Carroll asked the blogosphere to give their personal odds on whether various theories will turn out to be true or not.
And so I thought it would be a lot of fun to take a look at some of the best theories or most renowned theories and ideas out there today, and to tell you, if I were a Las Vegas bookmaker, what are the odds I would give you on various ideas. (If you know of an idea you want my odds on, leave it in the…
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"Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretenses to foretell events." -Jonathan Swift
Last week, I showed you the new, highest-resolution mosaic ever made of the near side of the Moon.
And I also showed you a small, somewhat unusual feature that I named "Snakey."
Snakey isn't all that impressive, of course. What might strike you as unusual, however, is that it appears to be a chain of craters, found close together, making a (roughly) straight line!
But there is a far better example. Much thanks goes to our reader, Tom Scrace, who was looking at…
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"There's an old saying about those who forget history. I don't remember it, but it's good." -Stephen Colbert
Let me start by telling you a story about an old problem. Take a look at the planet Mercury, one of the five planets (not counting Earth) visible in our night sky to the naked eye.
And I can see some of you at home squinting at your screen, asking why I'm showing you a picture of the Moon right after sunset. Well, Mercury's in that picture, I promise. Let me make it a little easier for you.
No less a naked-eye astronomer than Copernicus had difficulty seeing the planet Mercury, and…