When it comes to science communication, the most important thing to keep in mind is the perspective of the layperson, what someone will see, think, or understand if they have no prior knowledge. When you have some expert knowledge in science it can be hard to put it aside, but imagining the thought-process of a beginner gives you valuable information about how you are communicating, and can make a huge difference in your effectiveness. Which is why I am always thrilled to see things that communicate real science, yet stimulate the imagination. NASA, being a publicly funded organization, has to...
Gamma rays are the highest energy photons on the electromagnetic spectrum. Their wavelength is similar to the size of an atom, and when two of them collide they tend to produce a matter-antimatter particle pair. They represent energy high enough to synthesize the fundamental particles of matter, and are produced in the highest energy environments in the cosmos. The interchange of matter and energy works both ways, so one of the ways gamma rays are generated is through annihilation of a matter-antimatter particle pair. Looking back to the beginning of the universe it gives us the earliest ‘chicken or egg’...
Since the dawn of human history, we have looked up into the night sky and found patterns in the stars. Some of us saw animals, others saw gods and heroes, but we all agreed that they were greater than our simple existence. In this blog series, we will take a deeper look into the constellations that Astronomers use to map today’s night sky. We will look into the history of each of the 88 constellations and the stars and objects that form them, to discover more about our culture, and our connection with the universe. Our first constellation on the list is bright, large,...
What do you think made the bright features in the picture below? Was it a deep layer of rock underneath sand that was swept away by wind? Or maybe it was salt left over from the drying of an ancient lake? Or perhaps even ash left over by an ancient volcano. One of the answers is correct, and not the one I was hoping for. I wish it was from an ancient lakebed, oh what the salt deposits could teach us. But alas, it is only volcanic ash. So as true scientists, we follow what the data tells us, and learn...
The merger of black holes proven by LIGO yesterday looks amazing in this simulated view in today’s APOD. What would normally take a third of a second has been stretched out to show the entanglement. And remember, these things are far more massive than the Sun, so to be moving this quickly and merging is an extremely high-energy interaction. And kablammo, matter converted to energy, gravitational waves aplenty, and an even bigger black hole. Happy Long Weekend!
A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away…. Two black holes, with masses 29 and 35 times the mass of the Sun, merged to form an even bigger black hole. The merger resulted in three entire suns worth of matter converted to pure energy in the form of gravitational waves. The waves travelled a billion light years before a tiny meat-filled species on a pale blue dot in space figured how to see them. Thanks to the smartest one that species had seen in a century, they knew that black holes might merge, and that they would produce these waves if...
Today, the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is expected to announce a monumental discovery that is 100 years in the making. Theorized by Einstein’s general relativity in 1915, gravitational waves are ripples in space-time, similar to sound waves, but much tinier. The search has been ongoing for decades, with no results. Until now. LIGO has the most sensitive gravitational wave detector ever conceived – in two interferometer facilities in Livingston, Louisiana and Hanford, Washington. They use a laser split along two axes to give an in-phase beam. If gravitational waves along one of the axes affect the beam, it...
I’ve covered a few ‘hidden galaxy’ stories lately, from the ultra high resolution see-through of Andromeda, to dark dust in front of M81 and M82. Now, hundreds of new hidden galaxies have been revealed by a team of astronomers who are looking straight through the Milky Way for the first time ever, shedding light on the structure of new galaxy clusters and the enigmatic pull of the ‘great attractor.’ The Earth is not stationary in space. It orbits the Sun, which in turn orbits the Milky Way galaxy, which then moves through the Universe as part of a galaxy cluster. ...
If you listen to an astronomer talk about a supernova, you’ll probably hear something along the lines of ‘A massive explosion of a massive star that is bright enough to outshine an entire galaxy.’ You can imagine how bright it might be, but it doesn’t really give you enough context to get the wow factor from it. Carl Sagan always said ‘When you make the finding yourself – even if you’re the last person on Earth to see the light – you’ll never forget it.’ Now you, dear reader, have the chance to make the discovery yourself. A series of images of galaxy...
Big stars tend to stick together. They all require incredibly dense regions in which to form, but once they do, they do a great job of blowing away and ionizing any other gas and dust in the vicinity. This is why nebulas in distant galaxies are great tracers of massive star formation. The bigger and hotter the star, the more UV light it produces, the more it ionized a gas cloud, the more we see gorgeous nebula. So it’s no surprise that when I look at the nebula below, I can guess that the central stars are huge, outweighing our...
