May 14, 2016
“The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.” -Carl Sagan
Inside a typical human body, beneath the organs, cells and even molecules that define us, there are atoms: some 7 × 10^27 of them in each of us. Mostly oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and…
May 13, 2016
"It's everywhere, really. It's between the galaxies. It is in this room. We believe that everywhere that you have space, empty space, that you cannot avoid having some of this dark energy." -Adam Riess
Back in the 1990s, scientists were quite surprised to find that when they measured the brightness…
May 12, 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
Imagine you had arbitrarily great technology, limitless energy, and the…
May 11, 2016
“There’s no god, it’s the elements that control this world and everything on it.” -Scott A. Butler
From hydrogen through uranium and even beyond, the Universe gives us a huge variety of elements that can bond together in practically innumerable ways, creating all the matter we've ever observed in…
May 10, 2016
"The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so vast and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment." -Johannes Kepler, and the adopted saying of the Kepler mission
The latest haul from NASA's Kepler mission…
May 9, 2016
"In other words, theory attempts to segregate the minimum number of possible worlds which must include the actual world we inhabit. Then the observer, with new factual information, attempts to reduce the list further. And so it goes, observation and theory advancing together toward the common goal…
May 8, 2016
"Thinking isn't agreeing or disagreeing. That's voting." -Robert Frost
Our first week of may has gone by here at Starts With A Bang, and we're just $26 in pledges short, over on Patreon, of unlocking our next goal! In addition, we've also guest-starred on a Podcast/radio show over at Science For…
May 7, 2016
“A single day is enough to make us a little larger or, another time, a little smaller.” -Paul Klee
When it comes to normal matter, dark matter is a bit of a puzzle. Other than through the gravitational force, there's no way we've yet figured out to make it interact. Try and collide it with matter…
May 6, 2016
“Even when Darwin’s teaching first made its appearance, it became clear at once that its scientific, materialist core, its teaching concerning the evolution of living nature, was antagonistic to the idealism that reigned in biology.” -Trofim Lysenko
When it comes to many issues, democracy and…
May 5, 2016
"Gamow was fantastic in his ideas. He was right, he was wrong. More often wrong than right. Always interesting; … and when his idea was not wrong it was not only right, it was new." -Edward Teller
There are few scientific idea more revered or more important than the Big Bang. For the vast majority…
May 4, 2016
“Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.” -Carl Sagan
Glittering above high overhead, the canopy of night offers thousands of points of light,…
May 3, 2016
"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." -J. Robert Oppenheimer
The nucleus of the atom holds many secrets, not the least of which is the key to the release of energy hundreds of thousands-to-millions of times more efficient than any chemical means known. In order to build and develop the…
May 2, 2016
"Actually I think Art lies in both directions - the broad strokes, big picture but on the other hand the minute examination of the apparently mundane. Seeing the whole world in a grain of sand, that kind of thing." -Peter Hammill
When fine-and-coarse-grained sand is carried by the winds across…
May 1, 2016
"Science is the only self-correcting human institution, but it also is a process that progresses only by showing itself to be wrong." -Allan Sandage
As April leaves us and May commences here at Starts With A Bang, I'm so pleased to inform you that amazing things are happening! Thanks to the support…
April 30, 2016
"Trying to understand the way nature works involves a most terrible test of human reasoning ability. It involves subtle trickery, beautiful tightropes of logic on which one has to walk in order not to make a mistake in predicting what will happen." -Richard Feynman
If you were to send a space probe…
April 29, 2016
"Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul." -Samuel Ullman
When it comes to the Universe, there are some dead giveaways as to what its age is. Its elemental composition changes,…
April 28, 2016
"The fact that gravitational damping is measured at all is a strong indication that the propagation speed of gravity is not infinite. If the calculational framework of general relativity is accepted, the damping can be used to calculate the speed, and the actual measurement confirms that the speed…
April 27, 2016
"This event marks the culmination of many years of hard work on behalf of all involved." -Jane Bachynski
If you want to take an ideal image of the Universe, you need to not only minimize your light pollution, cloud cover and build the largest-aperture telescope you can, you also need to take away…
April 26, 2016
"The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong." -Swami Vivekananda
But what does it truly mean to be strong? We have four fundamental forces in the Universe: the strong, electromagnetic, weak and gravitational forces. You might think that, by virtue of its name, the…
April 25, 2016
"The phenomena of nature, especially those that fall under the inspection of the astronomer, are to be viewed, not only with the usual attention to facts as they occur, but with the eye of reason and experience." -William Herschel
We typically think of Saturn as our Solar System’s ringed world,…
April 24, 2016
“I left Earth three times and found no other place to go. Please take care of Spaceship Earth.” -Wally Schirra
We've made it through another amazing week here at Starts With A Bang, and what many of you might not realize is that there was a fabulous new release thanks to the support of everyone on…
April 23, 2016
"Yes, now there is this technological path. But it's just starting." -Mae Jemison
Earlier this month, Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking teamed up to announce the Breakthrough Starshot, a $100 million investment in technology that would build a laser array to propel a thin, light "laser sail"…
April 22, 2016
"We are not learning to view ourselves as an advanced, evolving civilization. That is what we really must learn to do, in due course, if we were to survive. All of that will take place, in due course, and we will be able to explore solar system. We will be able to go beyond it, provided we get our…
April 21, 2016
"Space is certainly something more complicated than the average person would probably realize. Space is not just an empty background in which things happen." -Alan Guth
If you go back in time, earlier and earlier, things get hotter, denser and more energetic. But there's a limit to how far back you…
April 20, 2016
"You cannot rob me of free nature's grace,
You cannot shut the windows of the sky
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face." -James Thomson
The northern (aurora borealis) and southern (aurora australis) lights are caused by a combination of three phenomena on our world, that make our aurorae…
April 19, 2016
"That’s the next step: to simultaneously see [gravitational waves] with three, four or five interferometers, localize it quickly, within minutes, and have other observatories catch it instantly, and catch it in the optical or the X-ray bands. That’s going to provide a whole new understanding in…
April 18, 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. Just do as I tell you." -Total Recall
Every two years, Earth passes Mars in orbit, as the inner, faster world overtakes the outer one. This year, it…
April 17, 2016
“Not going to the Moon and banging on it with my own hammer has been the biggest disappointment in life.” -Gene Shoemaker, co-discoverer of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9
Don't fret about your taxes here at Starts With A Bang; I'll continue to bring you the Universe for free! (Although I do take donations…
April 16, 2016
"If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity." -John F. Kennedy
No one likes being denied an opportunity -- or told they shouldn't do something they want to -- solely because of the way they are. That's especially true when it comes to something that…
April 15, 2016
"Fundamental physics is like an art more or less. It's completely non-practical, and you can't use it for anything. But it's about the universe and how the world came into being. It's very remote from your daily life and mine, and yet it defines us as human beings." -Yuri Milner
In one of the…
