October 30, 2009
Category: Astronomy
I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space... --Lord Byron, Darkness Or, in other words, boo! Halloween, believe it or not, is an...
Read on »
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 11:55 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 29, 2009
Category: Astronomy
The farther backwards you can look, the farther forwards you are likely to see. -- Winston Churchill Sometimes, we point our most powerful telescopes at the sky, peering as deeply as we possibly can, hoping to shed some light on...
Read on »
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 10:03 AM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 28, 2009
Category: Q & A
In 1908, a huge fireball streaked across the sky and exploded a few kilometers above the Earth's surface, downing trees for miles and miles around but leaving no impact crater on the ground. This mystery was known as the Tunguska...
Read on »
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 11:21 AM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 27, 2009
Category: Dark Matter
Perhaps you've been following my ongoing series on dark matter. Perhaps, like many, you're still skeptical. After all, it's not like we've gone and made it in a lab or discovered it in an experiment. 15 years after David Weinberg...
Read on »
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 2:05 AM • 31 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 26, 2009
Category: Galaxies
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a...
Read on »
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 10:31 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 24, 2009
Category: Random Stuff
Most of the time, I like to showcase some new music to you, or at least music that's new to me. But this week, I heard an old favorite for the first time in a long time. You're probably familiar...
Read on »
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 10:59 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 23, 2009
Category: Astronomy
Seed Magazine (which I've written for) has just put out a space slideshow: Traveling Through Time and Stars. Michael Benson gives an account -- in words and pictures -- of a journey outwards, from nearby stars to nebulae to other...
Read on »
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 11:35 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 22, 2009
Category: Physics
Yesterday, I showed you a video of an amazing incidence of magnetic levitation. There's another video, courtesy of Matthew Sullivan and his students, that demonstrates this equally as well: What do you need to do to make this happen, and...
Read on »
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 4:58 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 21, 2009
Category: Physics
I don't understand French nearly well enough to understand the explanation in this video, but I was amazed at what the physical world can do when I saw this video. (Video courtesy of Wimp.com.) What's going on here? Well, you've...
Read on »
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 11:06 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 20, 2009
Category: Stars
Ever see a picture of a Solar Prominence before? If you have, you'll recognize these loop-like features leaving the Sun's surface and ending up in the Sun's corona: Well two spacecraft designed to monitor the Sun, Stereo A (which stands...
Read on »
Posted by Ethan Siegel at 10:18 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks