Supernovae
esiegel | February 25, 2015“End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.” -J.R.R. Tolkien
No matter how well we care for our bodies, they eventually wear down, give out, and we all will someday face death. Yet if there's anything to be learned from looking at the physical Universe, there's no reason to expect that death is truly the end.
Image credit: NASA/ISS Expedition 28.
Every time a star runs out of fuel and dies, no matter what type of star it is or what fate it…
esiegel | February 24, 2015One of the great, catastrophic truths of the Universe is that everything has an expiration date. And this includes every single point of light in the entire sky.
Image credit: Rogelio Bernal Andreo of Deep Sky Colors, via http://deepskycolors.com/astro/JPEG/RBA_Orion_HeadToToes.jpg.
The most massive stars -- like Betelgeuse (at the upper left) -- will die in a spectacular supernova explosion when their final stage of core fuel runs out. At only an estimated 600 light years distant, Betelgeuse is one (along with Antares) of the closest red supergiants to us, and it's estimated to have only…
esiegel | January 5, 2015“A physicist is just an atom’s way of looking at itself.” -Niels Bohr
There's a wonderful story that the Universe tells us about itself: the story of where everything in it came from, and how it came to be this way. From the perspective of a human being, there's possibly no component of that as important to our existence as the humblest of all building blocks: the atoms.
Image credit: (c) Theodore W. Gray, from http://periodictable.com/.
Yet when the Universe first cooled from the Big Bang, over 99.999999% of what existed was nothing more than hydrogen and helium. So where did the atoms…
milhayser | December 12, 2014New research from the Weizmann Institute of Science reveals that "cells in our brain form little hexagonal grids that keep us oriented, map-like, in our surroundings." Weizmann's resident blogger describes this finding as "a pyrotechnic flash of insight that changes how we understand the brain to work." Game developers delight; this discovery shows "that you can really apply mathematical models to understand how our mammalian brains get their bearings." It may also have immediate implications for understanding human brain disorders such as vertigo. Meanwhile, on ERV, Abbie Smith explores a…
esiegel | August 14, 2014“When I had satisfied myself that no star of that kind had ever shone before, I was led into such perplexity by the unbelievability of the thing that I began to doubt the faith of my own eyes.” -Tycho Brahe
The Milky Way is home to many of the greatest sights ever to grace the night sky, including some spectacular, transient objects: supernovae! Formed from the death of supermassive stars or the "second-chance" explosions of white dwarfs, they brighten incredibly and then fade away, leaving spectacular remnants (and a plethora of heavy, enriched elements) behind.
Image credit: NASA, ESA and…
esiegel | July 22, 2014“Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.” -Publilius Syrus
Out in the depths of space, objects range from the incredibly small and low mass to the huge and super-heavy, shrinking down again for the most ultra-massive objects in the Universe.
Image credit: The Antiope Doublet asteroid / ESO, via http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0718b/.
But what would happen, on all scales, if you took two such identical objects and merged them together?
Image credit: NASA.
Find out what happens when the…
esiegel | April 23, 2014“Don’t gain the world and lose your soul;
wisdom is better than silver or gold.” -Bob Marley
Going back to ancient times, it's hard to think of a more commonly coveted element than gold. In fact, trying to transmute other elements into it was perhaps the holy grail of the pseudoscience of alchemy, the forerunner of modern chemistry.
Image credit: National Etruscan Museum at Villa Giulia, of Etruscan Gold, via flickr user HEN-Magonza, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/hen-magonza/4256649637/.
Yet, when was the last time you thought about where elements like gold actually came from? It's true…
esiegel | November 6, 2013"I conclude, therefore, that this star is not some kind of comet or a fiery meteor... but that it is a star shining in the firmament itself one that has never previously been seen before our time, in any age since the beginning of the world." -Tycho Brahe
I want to take you back in history, back to the middle of the 1500s. Night skies were spectacular, even from the world's most cosmopolitan cities, and thousands of stars consistently graced the sky, sights only visible from a few select locations in the world these days.
Image credit: Lennox & Addington County Dark Sky Viewing Area, via…
esiegel | October 28, 2013"I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms." -Voltaire
Every object that we look at for Messier Monday has its own flavor, its own qualities, and its own unique characteristics. By far the most numerous of the 110 deep-sky objects making up the Messier catalogue are the galaxies, of which there are 40. It's best to observe them on moonless nights, as their surface brightness is spread out across a large area, and even a crescent Moon's presence in the night sky can make all but the brightest of these galaxies invisible to the eye, even in good equipment.
Image credit: Mike Keith…
esiegel | August 1, 2013“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 years of cosmic evolution to the Universe we know and love today.
Image credit: ESA and the Planck collaboration.
It's a beautiful story -- and one I've told before -- but it might seem, at least from our perspective, that something is missing from the astrophysicist's version of events. Yes, we…
esiegel | May 24, 2013"Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me!" -Ronald Moore
Well, you probably don't actually want to feel the wind of a supernova flowing over you; trust me on this.
Image credit: ESO / L. Calçada, of the remnant of SN 1987a.
But to find one for yourself, that's definitely within your reach, if you know where to look.…
esiegel | May 23, 2013“Because dark energy makes up about 70 percent of the content of the universe, it dominates over the matter content. That means dark energy will govern expansion and, ultimately, determine the fate of the universe.” -Eric Linder
It's been a while since we've spoken about dark energy, and we were just talking about Einstein's greatest blunder, so let's just dive right in.
Image credit: S. Beckwith & the HUDF Working Group (STScI), HST, ESA, NASA.
This is our observable Universe, as unveiled by the Hubble Space Telescope. With hundreds of billions of galaxies stretched out some 41…
esiegel | May 6, 2013"Why I came here, I know not; where I shall go it is useless to inquire - in the midst of myriads of the living and the dead worlds, stars, systems, infinity, why should I be anxious about an atom?" -Lord Byron
Welcome back to another Messier Monday here on Starts With a Bang! Messier's 18th-Century catalogue of 110 deep-sky objects that could potentially be confused with comets by skywatchers has endured as one of the greatest collections of deep-sky objects clearly visible to amateur and professional astronomers worldwide!
Image credit: ScienceSouth - Tony's Astronomy Corner, via http://…
esiegel | March 25, 2013"I wouldn't dream of working on something that didn't make my gut rumble and my heart want to explode." -Kate Winslet
Welcome back for another Messier Monday! At the start of each week, we take a detailed look at one of the 110 deep-sky objects that make up the Messier Catalogue. This week, we've got a very special happening in the night sky to introduce you to.
Image credit: Tenho Tuomi, Saskatchewan, Canada.
One of the most common class of object in the Messier Catalogue are galaxies external to our own Milky Way, which make up a whopping 40 of these 110 objects. Occasionally -- a little…
esiegel | February 8, 2013"Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again." -Antoine de Saint-Exupery
When you look out into the Universe, what is it that you typically think of? Do you think of reliable, fixed stars and constellations? The vast expanse of the Milky Way, with its memorable dust lanes and amorphous shapes?
Image credit: Wally Pacholka of http://www.astropics.com/.
The unchanging nature of the points of light in the sky?
Image credit: Roth Ritter (Dark Atmospheres), of the double cluster in…
esiegel | January 16, 2013“Aristotle taught that stars are made of a different matter than the four earthly elements— a quintessence— that also happens to be what the human psyche is made of. Which is why man’s spirit corresponds to the stars. Perhaps that’s not a very scientific view, but I do like the idea that there’s a little starlight in each of us.” -Lisa Kleypas
Ah, but what if you did want the scientific view of starlight? After all, it's through the very stars themselves that we've unveiled some of the greatest secrets of the Universe.
Image (mosaic) credit: Nick Risinger.
But while the stars of the night…
esiegel | November 21, 2012“We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.” -George Bernard Shaw
All that is real about ourselves is nothing to be ashamed about; quite to the contrary, it's something to be eminently thankful for. This very existence is all we have, and while it's minuscule compared to the entire Universe, it required the entire Universe to bring us to the point where it's possible for us to exist.
What do I mean by…
esiegel | November 8, 2012"You have to have a canon so the next generation can come along and explode it." -Henry Louis Gates
When it comes to stars, their fates are very well known. Every single star that's massive enough to fuse hydrogen into helium in its core will someday run out of fuel and die.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, F. Paresce, R. O'Connell, & the HST WFC3 Science Oversight Committee.
The very brightest and most massive stars -- about 1-in-800 of all stars -- will die in a spectacular, core-collapse supernova when their core burns fuel all the way through iron and finally runs out of room to go.
This…
esiegel | October 22, 2012"This nebula had such a resemblance to a comet in its form and brightness that I endeavored to find others, so that astronomers would not confuse these same nebulae with comets just beginning to shine." -Charles Messier
Let's take a journey back in time to when our known Universe was a lot smaller. The only planets discovered were Mercury through Saturn: the naked eye planets. The well-known objects were our Moon, the (naked-eye) planets and their moons, and the stars and the Sun. After those, the only new objects that were routinely hunted in the night sky were those two-tailed recurring…
esiegel | July 19, 2012This is an enhanced version (with some upgraded images and text) of an article I first wrote over two years ago. It is just as valid today as it was back then, only today, I have a special offer to go with it. Next week, a bunch of cosmologists and myself are getting together and all writing about dark energy. And I want you to have your say.
So at the end of this post, ask your dark energy questions. Ask anything and everything you ever wanted to know about dark energy. I'll choose the best one (or, space & time permitting, more than one) and write a special post on it for you then.…