October 22, 2015
“The discrepancy between what was expected and what has been observed has grown over the years, and we’re straining harder and harder to fill the gap.” -Jeremiah P. Ostriker
When it comes to the structure of the Universe -- forming the galaxies, clusters, and Universe as we see it -- the normal…
October 21, 2015
Mr. Strickland: “I noticed your band is on the roster for the dance auditions after school today. Why even bother, McFly? You don’t have a chance. You’re too much like your old man. No McFly ever amounted to anything in the history of Hill Valley!”
Marty McFly: “Yeah, well, history is gonna change…
October 21, 2015
When we look at the vast expanse of stars in the night sky, we can't help but wonder what else is out there. Not just at the gas giants, rocky worlds, comets, asteroids, moons, and homeless planets strewn throughout our galaxy and all the galaxies beyond our own, but about what life -- what…
October 20, 2015
When you take a large amount of mass and put it all together in a small volume of space, you fully expect gravity to do its thing, and eventually collapse things down as far as they'll go. You can imagine that for compact masses with large distances between them -- like planets in the solar system…
October 19, 2015
“My Lord, the fleet has moved out of lightspeed. Com Scan has detected an energy field protecting an area of the sixth planet of the Hoth System. The field is strong enough to deflect any bombardment.” -General Veers, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
Out beyond Saturn’s main rings lie a number of…
October 18, 2015
“Life is life’s greatest gift. Guard the life of another creature as you would your own because it is your own. On life’s scale of values, the smallest is no less precious to the creature who owns it than the largest.” -Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
And yet it's certainly something to consider how little…
October 17, 2015
"The more people rationalize cheating, the more it becomes a culture of dishonesty. And that can become a vicious, downward cycle. Because suddenly, if everyone else is cheating, you feel a need to cheat, too." -Stephen Covey
It's been a really eventful week, with topics from the fundamental to the…
October 16, 2015
“In such moments, offering up his heart at the hour when the flowers of night inhale their perfume, lighted like a lamp in the center of the starry night, expanding his soul in ecstasy in the midst of the universal radiance of creation, he could not himself perhaps have told what was passing in his…
October 15, 2015
“I have announced this star as a comet, but since it is not accompanied by any nebulosity and, further, since its movement is so slow and rather uniform, it has occurred to me several times that it might be something better than a comet. But I have been careful not to advance this supposition to…
October 14, 2015
“If I had to describe myself to an alien I’d say I was bigger than the average human, enjoy a drink or two with a good meal and have a bigger head than most. I’d also say I’m really handsome — especially if they were a female alien.” -Dwayne Johnson
The fact that Earth has not only life on it, but…
October 13, 2015
“There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.” -Denis Diderot
Last week, news broke that UC Berkeley astronomer Geoff Marcy -- perhaps the most famous single person in the field of exoplanet discoveries and study -- was found guilty by a…
October 12, 2015
“If I want water, I’ll have to make it from scratch. Fortunately, I know the recipe: Take hydrogen. Add oxygen. Burn.” -Andy Weir
It wasn't merely one discovery that led to the announcement of liquid water on Mars, but a slew of pieces of evidence of a watery past, including dried-up riverbeds,…
October 11, 2015
“I can look in their eyes and see it. That’s the best feeling I can have. … I know I didn’t affect their lives just today, but it carries on for years and years to come.” -Warrick Dunn
When most people think about the NFL, they think of a sport they either enjoy watching or couldn't care less…
October 10, 2015
“In the world of the very small, where particle and wave aspects of reality are equally significant, things do not behave in any way that we can understand from our experience of the everyday world...all pictures are false, and there is no physical analogy we can make to understand what goes on…
October 9, 2015
“Everyone has his dream; I would like to live till dawn, but I know I have less than three hours left. It will be night, but no matter. Dying is simple. It does not take daylight. So be it: I will die by starlight.” -Victor Hugo
Whether you're at rest or in motion, you can be confident that -- from…
October 8, 2015
“It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.” -Enrico Fermi
At 13 TeV of proton-proton energy collisions, CERN's Large Hadron Collider gives us the greatest number of the most powerful particle collisions ever seen on Earth, far more than any…
October 7, 2015
We live in a Universe full of galaxies, supermassive black holes, and violence. The violence is particularly relevant here, because every so often, these galaxies merge, and if they each contain a supermassive black hole, the gravitational wave "ripples" that get sent through space will literally…
October 6, 2015
“My main interest is the problem of the singularity. If we can’t understand what happened at the singularity we came out of, then we don’t seem to have any understanding of the laws of particle physics.” -Neil Turok
The birth of space and time is perhaps the most fundamental question in all of…
October 6, 2015
"Indeed some of the users were advised by their older colleagues to “abandon all hope, ye who enter here!” I fear that I bear the responsibility for this fiasco." -Robert R. Wilson
Back in 1967, the National Accelerator Laboratory was first commissioned, which would later become Fermilab, making…
October 5, 2015
“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.” -Rabindranath Tagore
When stars like the Sun reach the end of their lives, they all follow fairly predictable patterns:
Their cores contract, heat up, and start fusing helium into carbon.
Their outer layers expand into a luminous…
October 4, 2015
“Suddenly, from behind the rim of the Moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes…
October 3, 2015
“Today we have touched Mars. There is life on Mars, and it is us—extensions of our eyes in all directions, extensions of our mind, extensions of our heart and soul have touched Mars today. That's the message to look for there: We are on Mars. We are the Martians!” -Ray Bradbury
It was a busy week,…
October 2, 2015
“Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn’t people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?” -Rose Kennedy
It's a good thing that sunlight doesn't reach us simply from its moment of creation in the core of stars, otherwise we'd be bombarded with lethal gamma rays, rather than the…
October 1, 2015
“This is evidently a discovery of a new particle. If anybody claims otherwise you can tell them they have lost connection with reality.” –Tommaso Dorigo
Three years ago, we announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, the last undiscovered fundamental particle predicted by the standard model. In…
October 1, 2015
“The reports of the eclipse parties not only described the scientific observations in great detail, but also the travels and experiences, and were sometimes marked by a piquancy not common in official documents.” -Simon Newcomb
By far, one of the highlights of astronomy this year took place earlier…
September 29, 2015
When young galaxies are first formed, they're accompanied by tremendous bursts of star formation, giving rise to billions of new stars within just a few million years. Yet how these galaxies first form in the initial stages is very much an open question. In addition, pretty much every large galaxy…
September 28, 2015
“Bringing an asteroid back to Earth? What’s that have to do with space exploration? If we were moving outward from there, and an asteroid is a good stopping point, then fine. But now it’s turned into a whole planetary defense exercise at the cost of our outward exploration.” -Buzz Aldrin
What…
September 27, 2015
“Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better looking place.” -Banksy
Not everyone who's a street artist engages in vandalism, nor are all acts of vandalism negative or unwanted in any way. Consider all the different ways one can contribute to the vibrancy of a city as…
September 25, 2015
“Making a wrong decision is understandable. Refusing to search continually for learning is not.” -Phil Crosby
It was a busy week, from science to politics to the simple question of Earth's color here at Starts With A Bang. As always, you didn't disappoint, with plenty to say about it all, and I'm…
September 25, 2015
“What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakeable, unforgettable, unshamable, elemental as earth and ice, water, fire and air, a quintessence, pure spirit, resolving into no constituents.” -Jay Griffiths
When you think about the frontiers of scientific knowledge -- on…
