Blog Info
esiegel | November 15, 2010"Victory is sweetest when you've known defeat." -Malcolm Forbes
It is official; you voted and the world has listened. I am proud to welcome you to the best physics blog in the world!
We not only won physics.org's best blog, we were also the people's choice award winner!
Thanks to the judges, thanks to all of you who voted, and a special thanks to all of you who just read and enjoy what I'm putting out, regardless of whether you comment on every single post or not on a single one at all.
The Universe wouldn't be the same without each one of us, and I owe a huge thanks to each one of you.…
esiegel | October 23, 2010
"In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms." -Stephen Jay Gould
It's been almost three years since I started science writing, and almost two years since I moved over here, to ScienceBlogs. And together, you and I have been through over five hundred posts, nearly ten thousand comments, and more than two million pageviews. No one can take that away from us, just like Billie Holiday sings:
They…
esiegel | April 9, 2010Those of you who've been reading Starts With A Bang since this last summer may have seen this article I wrote -- The Math of the Fastest Human Alive -- about Usain Bolt's world record in the 100 meter dash.
Little did I know what type of interest this would generate. A few weeks after I wrote it, I found that my article was reprinted -- verbatim -- in the St. Petersburg Times, and then was featured in MacLean's. And I thought that was going to be it.
And then Esquire Magazine called. I'm featured on page 133 and 134 of this month's (April 2010) issue, and you can read the article online…
esiegel | January 4, 2010Cheers to a New Year and another chance for us to get it right. -Oprah
Welcome to 2010, everybody! I know that many of you have been following my writing for some time, and many of you have just started recently, so I'd like to start the New Year off right, and (re)introduce myself and this blog to you. With lots of pretty pictures.
My name's Ethan, and I love the Universe. I love looking up, out, and beyond what's here on Earth, into the great abyss of deep space, and trying to figure out what's out there.
Not just what's out there, but how it got to be there, where it came from, where it'…
esiegel | March 31, 2009Welcome to our new home on the web! For those of you who are longtime readers of Starts With A Bang!, I welcome you to our new location! And to those of you who see me as a new face, it's my pleasure to meet you!
I'm looking forward to a long and healthy partnership with scienceblogs and their outstanding team of bloggers, including (some of my favorites):
Pharyngula -- full of irate opinions and outstanding biology,
Dynamics of Cats -- where theoretical physics and random events meet,
Framing Science -- Matthew Nisbet brings some reason to science communication, and
Eruptions -- Volcanoes,…
esiegel | May 13, 2008Sometimes, I publish things on this website that are not entirely correct (and when I do, I'll own up to it). Sometimes other people do on theirs. There are bad ways and good ways to argue these points, ranging from name-calling to explicitly explaining where the flaws are in one's arguments, and what the corrections are.
And I had no idea how I was going to articulate this. But then Lucas pointed this chart out to me, and it does a better job of explaining it than I ever could.
You know who could explain this? Captain Picard. Imagine you got to be a Starfleet officer. Here's what he has to…
esiegel | April 30, 2008The one-year anniversary edition of the Carnival of Space is up at Why Homeschool? If only more homeschoolers were into space, Astronomy, and science in general, the United States would be a far superior place, I'm sure!
Thanks to Henry Cate for starting the Carnival and coming back to host it one year later! My post on a black hole getting kicked out of our galaxy is up there; check it out and find out what's going on in outer space!
esiegel | April 27, 2008Dear Reader(s):
This is Ethan, and I'm writing this to you to let you know that I owe you an apology. I have gotten so excited with the idea of bringing the story of the Universe to you -- to tell you how we got from the birth of the Universe to the present day, to tell you what the world, galaxy, and Universe is like and how it got to be that way -- that I've gotten carried away.
You deserve the story, because it's wonderful and beautiful. You deserve the story, because it's something specialized and complicated, and it's something that I happen to have studied, hard, for the last seven…
esiegel | April 10, 2008
In my mind, and in my car,
we can't rewind, we've gone too far,
pictures came and broke your heart,
put the blame on VTR.
And for those of you who are under the age of 25, VTR stands for Video Tape Recorder. This was the Buggles, who made the first music video that ever appeared on MTV, back when MTV played music videos. (I wonder what the last music video on MTV was? My guess is California Love by Tupac and Dre back in 1996. At least, that's probably the last music video that I've ever seen on MTV.)
But why all this? Because I wanted to tell you about my appearance on The Space Show this…
esiegel | April 7, 2008Tonight, from 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM Pacific Time, I will be Dr. David Livingston's guest on his radio program, The Space Show! I have no idea how it's going to go or if I'll be able to communicate clearly on an audio-only format, as I've never tried before, but I'm really looking forward to the experience.
You can listen live via internet radio by going to http://www.thespaceshow.com/live.htm at the appropriate time, or by heading to the RSS feed afterwards and downloading the episode. Don't forget to leave your comments if you listen to it!
esiegel | April 4, 2008First things first: this week's Carnival of Space is up at Brian Wang's site, Next Big Future. You can find my post on Mars or Arizona? up there.
Now, what comes next for me, since I don't like it here in Arizona? Well, the Dangerman audition didn't work out (I never heard back), and I've been scoping out the Portland, OR area, which could work out well. But I got an email earlier this week about a job vacancy at ESO (the European Southern Observatories). They are looking for someone to take on the role of being head of the ESO public outreach office! Really, this would be a wonderful…
esiegel | March 2, 2008Well, it's not technically a weekend diversion, but something awesome happened in the wake of my recent Awards-show posting of the Carnival of Space. David Livingston, a blogger over at Space Cynics and a radio host of The Space Show, has invited me to be his guest on his April 8th broadcast of his show!
So get ready to listen up, because this is going to be available worldwide for download! I'll definitely have an entry for you after the recording to let you know how it goes and what we talked about, but I hope to get to talk about all the things that excite me about doing this, including…
esiegel | February 27, 2008It's been a spectacular week for the film space industry, and here at Starts With A Bang!, we've got the recap of all the highlights that you may have missed while watching the countless Oscar montages. Take your time browsing and enjoying this site, and maybe even find out what the question is if 42 is the answer! And now, without further ado, here are the winners from the 43rd Carnival of Space, as chosen by Ethan Siegel, your magnanimous host of this week's Carnival (and check out all previous carnivals here):
Nancy Young-Houser, of A Mars Odyssey, for Stellar Breakthrough Performance…
esiegel | February 14, 2008
Three awesome things are going on today for you, and I invite you to check them all out:
The latest Carnival of Space is live, where you have your choice of 23 different astronomical topics to choose from. Of course, my post this week on galaxies and how they're made is on there, too!
Pamela L. Gay, cohost of Astronomy Cast, blogger of Star Stryder and all-around great person, saw a press release this week about whether we need dark matter and dark energy. The answer, of course, is yes, but since I'm an expert on that stuff, she came to me and asked me to give my analysis of the…
esiegel | January 17, 2008In preparation for the launch of startswithabang.com, I am attempting to embed a video I had found on youtube, of the slow-motion ignition of a lighter.
How does this work? The video demonstrates that to make something very simple happen (to get a sustained, controlled flame out of a compact piece of equipment), a lot of thought needs to go into how it's made, and what each step is going to accomplish. A lighter works by the following:
Flint and steel rub together (that's turning the wheel) to create very high temperatures along the metal shavings, which fly off in many directions.
The…