Ethan was born in New York City as the son of a Jewish postal worker. He did his undergrad at Northwestern, taught public school in Houston, Texas and Los Angeles, California, before moving to Florida, where he got his PhD in theoretical astrophysics at the University of Florida. After that, he moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where he taught at the University of Wisconsin, ate too much cheese, and also met his life partner, Jamie. After working in astrophysics research at the University of Arizona and starting the world-renowned science blog, Starts With A Bang, he moved from the hellish desert to rain-soaked Portland in 2008. Since then, he's been a professor at the University of Portland and Lewis & Clark College, grown a nationally renowned beard and mustache, got invited to join a circus and probably drank more beer than a healthy person should. He currently works as the head curator at Trapit, and can't wait to tell you a little bit more about the Universe.
"There is an ancient saying among men that you cannot thoroughly understand the life of mortals before the man has died, then only can you call it good or bad." -Sophocles
Imagine looking up at the night sky -- able to survey the full depths of space -- with eyes the size of saucers instead of our…
"I'll chop your head off!" -Axe Cop
What games did you play with your imagination as a little kid? Did you make up stories involving muppets? Horses? Cartoon characters? Cowboys and... native americans? Or, as the Hoosiers would sing,
Cops And Robbers?
Well, if ever any of that amused you,…
“Next to reasoning, the greatest handicap to the optimum development of Man lies in the fact that this planet is just barely habitable. Its minimum temperatures are too low, and its maximum temperatures too high. Its day is not long enough, and its night is too long... These factors encourage…
"What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the Moon, but that they set eye on the Earth." -Norman Cousins
What would life on Earth be like without the Moon?
Our nearest neighboring body in the cosmos has a profound effect on us. It's helped not only shape our…
"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence." -Robert Frost
Middle school -- or junior high, which we called it when I went -- should really be classified as a form of child abuse. I recognize that it isn't as bad for everyone as it was…
"Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Welcome back to another Messier Monday here on Starts With A Bang! Each Monday, we go through one of the 110 deep-sky wonders of the Messier Catalogue,…
"My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people." -Orson Welles
I just completed my 35th trip around the Sun yesterday, which was a great time! But, it got me thinking, has my time in this world resulted in a build-up of toxic substances in my body?…
“Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, dead perfection; no more” -Lord Alfred Tennyson
Ahh, the Standard Model of elementary particles and their interactions. It's right up there with General Relativity -- our theory of gravitation in the Universe -- as the most successful…
“We are not simply in the universe, we are part of it. We are born from it.” -Neil deGrasse Tyson
The story of the Universe is the story of us all; we all share the same cosmic history, coming from a hot, dense state some 13.8 billion years ago known as the Big Bang and emerging after billions of…
"You can't exactly bake a man to your specifications... A hybrid of Einstein, Tarzan and Inge Meysel doesn't exist." -Peer Steinbruck
Of course, if you create enough chances, all the things that could eventually happen will come to pass. This is as true for human beings as it is for the…
"Pinwheel, pinwheel spinning around. Look at my Pinwheel and see what I found.
Pinwheel, pinwheel, breezy and bright. Spin me good morning, spin me good night." -Janet Gardner
It's time for another Messier Monday, where each week, one of the 110 deep-sky objects that make up the famed…
"If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito." -Anita Roddick
There's a lot to enjoy when it's warm and tropical, which it is many places this time of year. The flowers are out, the Sun often shines, and there's no shortage of spectacular music. Have a listen…
"That's why I enjoy taking myself out of my own element, my own comfort zone, and hurling myself out into the unknown. Because it's during those scary moments, those unsure steps taken, that I am able to see that I'm like a comet hitting a new atmosphere: suddenly I illuminate magnificently and…
"But certainly the laser proved to be what I realized it was going to be. At that moment in my life I was too ignorant in business law to be able to do it right, and if I did it over again probably the same damn thing would happen." -Gordon Gould, inventor of the laser
You're used to the iconic…
"Most writers spend their lives standing a little apart from the crowd, watching and listening and hoping to catch that tiny hint of despair, that sliver of malice, that makes them think, 'Aha, here is the story.'" -Ayelet Waldman
Welcome back again to another Messier Monday, where we're…
"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent." -Victor Hugo
Well, they say that man cannot subsist on bread alone, nor should he want to, and I suppose I'm no different. You all know I'm a big fan of music, particularly live, and with outstanding…
"These neutrino observations are so exciting and significant that I think we're about to see the birth of an entirely new branch of astronomy: neutrino astronomy." -John Bahcall
You've been around here long enough to know about the Big Bang. The vast majority of galaxies are speeding away from us,…
"The image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy." -Ezra Pound
It's time for another Messier Monday, where we profile one of the 110 deep-sky objects that make up the Messier catalogue! This was the first large, accurate catalogue of fixed,…
"It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: 'And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride!…
"By denying scientific principles, one can maintain any paradox." -Galileo Galilei
Day and night. It seems like the simplest, most natural thing about our world, that the Sun illuminates one half of the Earth at a time.
Image credit: Public Domain Image from Desktop Wallpaper HD.
While the Earth…
"It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing — a somewhat unfamiliar conception for the average mind." -Albert Einstein
You've heard and seen it plenty of times: Einstein's most famous equation, E = mc2. I've taken…
"Cross that rules the Southern Sky!
Stars that sweep, and turn, and fly
Hear the Lovers' Litany:
'Love like ours can never die!'" -Rudyard Kipling
Welcome back for yet another Messier Monday, where we choose one of the 110 deep-sky objects making up Charles Messier's 18th Century catalogue to…
"If I see a spider in my house, I put it in a cup, and then I take it outside. I save it. What is wrong with me?" -Jacqueline Emerson
There's something not only incredibly useful but also beautiful about the intricate structure of a spider web. It's such a universally admired phenomenon that it's…
"I see a lot of new faces. But, you know the old saying, 'out with the old, in with the nucleus.'" -The Simpsons
Looking around the Universe today, there's no doubt that there's plenty of hydrogen and helium around; after all, it's the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium that powers the…
"To disagree leads to study, to study leads to understanding, to understand is to appreciate, to appreciate is to love. So maybe I'll end up loving your theory." -John Wheeler
Out there in the Universe, there's a lot to marvel at. Over billions of years, gravity has attracted different portions of…
"One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them" -J.R.R. Tolkien
Every Monday has been devoted to our ongoing series on Messier's objects for nearly a year now, and we've covered some spectacular objects, from open star clusters to…
"It's a wonderful world. You can't go backwards. You're always moving forward. It's the wonderful part about life. And that's terrific." -Harvey Fierstein
Yes, it's true. As stationary and secure as it seems when you plant your feet firmly on the ground, the reality is we are always moving through…
“...the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.” -Carl Sagan
As many of you know, I'm fortunate enough to live in a city that values science and scientific knowledge so highly that…
"New stars offer to the mind a phenomenon more surprising, and less explicable, than almost any other in the science of astronomy." -George Adams
Welcome back to another Messier Monday here on Starts With A Bang! The Messier catalogue was the very first accurate deep-sky catalogue with over 100…
"If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!" -Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you're a regular here, you're no doubt more connected and interested in what lies beyond…
