Now on ScienceBlogs: Friday Weird Science: Redder than a baboon's butt
Ethan Siegel is a theoretical astrophysicist who currently teaches at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR. You can learn about him, contact him, or just enjoy the site.
April 8th @ 7PM -- premiere of the short film "Dark Matter", starring me, at Hollywood Theatre in Portland, OR!
January 31, 2008
Category: Scientific papers
Last year, I had just finished my Ph.D. studies, and had moved to Madison, WI to teach introductory physics at the University of Wisconsin. I was working on this paper, and when I submitted it, I got a phone call...
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 2:46 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 28, 2008
Category: Solar System
One of the worst teaching tools physicists use (and they almost all do it) is to tell students, There's no such thing as centrifugal force. What can you do when the top physics education website says, "It is important to...
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 9:24 PM • 18 Comments • 3 TrackBacks
Category: Scientific papers
Okay, so I got a question from my friend Tamara, who's a high school teacher in my hometown of New York City. It concerns a recent article she read on the front page of the New York Times about something...
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 7:21 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 25, 2008
Category: Q & A
I got a great question earlier today from my buddy Zrinka, and decided to figure out the answer for her, and also for myself. She asks: Ethan, is it possible to know, or better to say to imagine somehow how...
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 4:35 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 24, 2008
Category: Video
Evolution, creationism, and intelligent design are words that many people have extremely strong opinions about. Regardless of how you feel about why the laws of nature are what they are, which have evidently allowed us to exist, the evidence for...
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 9:58 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Hubble
One of the perks of being a postdoc at a place like the University of Arizona, one of the top places in the US for astronomy, is that we get a number of really interesting visitors. Today we got paid...
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 1:22 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 22, 2008
Category: Scientific papers
The first serious advocate of modifying Newton's laws instead of postulating unseen (or dark) matter was Moti Milgrom, from whom today a new article appears on the astrophysics preprint archives. In particular, Milgrom asserts the following: MOND predictions imply that...
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 10:52 AM • 1 Comments • 2 TrackBacks
January 21, 2008
Category: Q & A
Dave, one of my online chessplaying buddies, asked me this question (edited for appropriateness): Now this speeding up of the expansion of the universe: Do I understand correctly that one of the theories to explain why relates to "dark matter"?...
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 1:49 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 20, 2008
Category: Dark Matter
Taking a look at the background picture, and wondering what it is? It's the Bullet Cluster, also known to astronomers as 1E 0657-56. What's so special about it? Well, these are actually two galaxy clusters that are in the process of merging,...
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 5:30 PM • 0 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
January 17, 2008
Category: Video
In 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...
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 2:51 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
