November 9, 2016
"Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge." -Nate Silver
When you take a poll, you survey a number of people with an opinion about something in an attempt to predict the behavior of a much larger number of people. If you increase the number of…
November 8, 2016
"To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science." -Albert Einstein
When we first began looking for exoplanets, we were expecting that other solar systems would be like ours: with inner, small, rocky…
November 7, 2016
"This is the plan. Get your ass to Mars, and go to the Hilton Hotel and flash the fake Brubaker I.D. at the front desk, that's all there is to it." -Hauser, Total Recall
There are many locations on Earth that look like they’d be right at home on another world. While from space, it’s incredibly…
November 6, 2016
"Computers don't make mistakes. What they do, they do on purpose." -Dale Gribble, King of the Hill
Alright, so I know you're all impatient with the most burning Starts With A Bang! question of all: what was Ethan for Halloween? Well, without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to my avatar for…
November 5, 2016
"Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not yet completely sure about the universe." -Frederick S. Perls, quoting Einstein
The Universe we can see and access is certainly a big place. We see that it goes on for 46 billion light years in all directions, full of stars,…
November 4, 2016
"The Universe is very, very big. It also loves a paradox. For example, it has some extremely strict rules.
Rule number one: Nothing lasts forever. Not you or your family or your house or your planet or the sun. It is an absolute rule. Therefore when someone says that their love will never die, it…
November 3, 2016
"Cosmology is the study of the origin, evolution, and fate of objects in the observable universe. [...] The key to the birth and evolution of such objects lies in the primordial ripples observed through light shining through from the early universe." -Wayne Hu
The Big Bang’s leftover glow -- the…
November 2, 2016
"The pressure to compete, the fear somebody else will make the splash first, creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is presented and serious questions may not be raised." -Carl Bernstein
Why is our Moon so unlike every other moon in the Solar System? No other moon is such…
November 1, 2016
"All we know so far is what doesn't work." -Richard Feynman
The past month has seen a slew of papers out highlighting the tension between modified gravity and dark matter. Both recognize the same puzzles and problems with the Universe, and both ideas recognize that either one could be valid. In…
October 31, 2016
“Cassini is different -- it's a mission of enormous scope and is being conducted in grand style. It is much more sophisticated than Voyager, ... I can't say it's got that flavor of romance, though. Voyager was very romantic. Cassini is spectacular.” -Carolyn Porco
It was a big enough mystery when…
October 30, 2016
“Weightlessness was unbelievable. It's physical euphoria: Nothing about you has any weight. You don't realize that you are weighed down all the time by yourself, and your organs, and your head. Your arms weigh down your shoulders. In space simulation, you get to fly like Superman! You're hanging in…
October 29, 2016
"This isn't my life anymore, Mulder. I'm done chasing monsters in the dark." -Dana Scully, X-files
One of the most exciting things a scientist can experience is when they look at a sample of data, expecting to not see a particular exciting effect, and yet, something’s there. Immediately, you have…
October 28, 2016
“All enterprises that are entered into with indiscreet zeal may be pursued with great vigor at first, but are sure to collapse in the end.” -Tacitus
Dark matter makes up the overwhelming majority of mass in the Universe. With five times as much of it as there is normal matter, and the fact that it…
October 27, 2016
"Even if I stumble on to the absolute truth of any aspect of the universe, I will not realise my luck and instead will spend my life trying to find flaws in this understanding - such is the role of a scientist." -Brian Schmidt
Just a few days ago, a new paper was published in the journal Scientific…
October 26, 2016
"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof." -J. K. Galbraith
Last month, tensions between dark matter simulations and galactic rotation observations reached a new high. Despite all the successes of dark…
October 25, 2016
"Which is more likely? That the universe was designed just for us, or that we see the universe as having been designed just for us?" -Michael Shermer
One of the problems with the Standard Model of particle physics is known as the hierarchy problem. If you were to calculate the masses of the…
October 24, 2016
"If you look at the field of robotics today, you can say robots have been in the deepest oceans, they've been to Mars, you know? They've been all these places, but they're just now starting to come into your living room. Your living room is the final frontier for robots." -Cynthia Breazeal
Ever…
October 23, 2016
"Ships that could circumnavigate the galaxy in a few years, and count every cell in your body from light-years off, but he wasn't able to go back one miserable day and alter one tiny, stupid, idiotic, shameful decision..." -Iain Banks
And while we can't travel back in time at all to change the…
October 22, 2016
"Do I believe, for example, that by using magic I could fly? No. How would you get around gravity? Impossible. Do I believe that I might be able to project my consciousness into a very, very vivid simulation of flying? Yeah. Yes, I've done that. Yes, that works." -Alan Moore
If you possessed a…
October 21, 2016
"I know perfectly well that at this moment the whole universe is listening to us, and that every word we say echoes to the remotest star." -Jean Giraudoux
Since the 1930s, humans have been broadcasting radio signals powerful enough to be picked up by a sufficiently advanced alien civilization, even…
October 20, 2016
“Man is something that shall be overcome. Man is a rope,tied between beast and overman - a rope over an abyss.What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
There are only two types of singularities that General Relativity predicts the existence of in our Universe…
October 19, 2016
"In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present." -Francis Bacon
If you had previously thought the Universe contained a certain amount of stuff, like stars, galaxies and matter, then you might think that learning it had ten times as many galaxies might mean it had ten…
October 18, 2016
"The supermoon is a 16-inch pizza compared with a 15-inch pizza. It's a slightly bigger moon; I ain't using the adjective 'supermoon.'" -Neil deGrasse Tyson
Earlier this month, the full Moon was the first "Supermoon" we've seen all year, where the bright full Moon coincided nearly perfectly with…
October 17, 2016
“From our home on the Earth, we look out into the distances ... to imagine the sort of world into which we are born… . But with increasing distance our knowledge fades, and fades rapidly, until at the last dim horizon we search among ghostly errors of observations for landmarks that are scarcely…
October 16, 2016
“There are in fact 100 billion galaxies, each of which contain something like a 100 billion stars. Think of how many stars, and planets, and kinds of life there may be in this vast and awesome universe.” -Carl Sagan
And at long last, Carl Sagan's estimates are finally out of date. It's not ~100…
October 15, 2016
“Honestly, if you’re given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don’t say ‘what kind of tea?” -Neil Gaiman
Between the near-Earth asteroids that orbit close by our planet, and the distant comets that plunge periodically into the inner Solar System, Earth has plenty to be concerned about over…
October 14, 2016
“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will…
October 13, 2016
“Scratch a cynic and you'll find a disappointed idealist.” -Jon F. Merz
The stars overhead might twinkle and cause us to wonder what they are, exactly, but perhaps a more important question is to wonder where they are. If we can determine the distances to the stars, and then use those known…
October 12, 2016
"Thus is our treaty written; thus is agreement made. Thought is the arrow of time; memory never fades. What was asked is given; the price is paid." -Robert Jordan
Why does time flow forwards and not backwards, in 100% of cases, if the laws of physics are completely time-symmetric? From Newton's…
October 11, 2016
"Each ray of light moves in the coordinate system 'at rest' with the definite, constant velocity V independent of whether this ray of light is emitted by a body at rest or a body in motion." -Albert Einstein, 1905
The idea of relativity, that there's no "absolute rest frame" where the laws of…
