I love being a science communicator, being with people and sharing my knowledge of the universe. However, I have a personal fascination with the universe, and although this helps me learn more and ultimately makes me a better communicator, there is something nice about connecting with the stars in a traditional way, ie with a telescope. Every year, usually in Summer (a short season in Canada), I venture to a dark sky location and get in some observing, to remind me of the real universe that’s out there. Since I also love the visualization of space as a communication tool,...
I love working on different projects every day. Some days I present planetarium shows, some days I do a radio show, some days I’m doing video conference calls with school children, and some days I’m on TV commenting on recent space news. I enjoy the variety that being a science communicator offers. In that spirit, I want to introduce a project I’ve been working on for the past year, a podcast called “The Expanding Universe.” Together with my good friend Jesse Rogerson (@JesseRogerson), a fellow astronomer and science communicator, we have been recording an episode every two weeks on...
Alliteration is accessible to all! Okay I’m done. Start some science! Really done this time. Today’s double post covers the smallest of stars, still larger than most planets, and the only weather Mercury will ever have. Humans are naturally interested in the extremes, the biggest, smallest, fastest, hottest, coldest, and every other characteristic outlier. With stars, being so huge and powerful, we are often more interested in the largest, hottest, and most energetic. Though on the opposite end of the spectrum, Cambridge University astronomers have discovered the smallest star in the known universe. The star, a red dwarf, has the...
I saw an article last night about gravitational waves, that a black hole merger was detected by not just the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), but by another project altogether, the Virgo collaboration. This is the first gravitational wave detection confirmed by two separate groups, and it marks the beginning of a new era of experimental science, the first in astronomy in over two decades. Around 1.8 Billion years ago, to black holes merged in a faroff galaxy. They had masses of 31 and 25 times that of the Sun, though with their incredible density they would each be...
Last week, while looking at some of the best images from the Cassini spacecraft, I commented on the fact that the smooth rings of Saturn are small, varied chunks of ice and rock when you get down to the smaller scales. Reflecting on that this morning, I was thinking about how observing objects in our universe at smaller scales gives new insight into the variety and complexity of natural phenomena. Not long after, I came across a story of a new interesting object in our own Solar System. A new binary asteroid was discovered. This in itself isn’t too different...
It was like someone turned down the Sun with a dimmer switch. The tempurate dropped quickly, enhanced by the lack of moisture in the dry mountain air. In a span of an hour, the Sun looked the same, but was very different, as totality approached. I was taking photos through my telescope with an attached solar filter, so I could see the Moon slowly covering the Sun. But as the environment changed in Northern Wyoming, I grew more excited for what was to come. Over a year of preparation for this event, and clear skies greeted me with the confidence...
Why does the Universe expand the way it does? Why does it accelerate? Einstein’s equations offer an explanation of gravity that works on the scale we know, but do they work on the grandest scales of space and time? Humanity now has a way to find out. The General Theory of Relativity predicts the behaviour of gravity, and includes a term known as the cosmological constant. Einstein added this term to make the universe static and unchanging, as he believed it was. But when the expansion of the universe was discovered by Edwin Hubble, Einstein regarded it as ‘the greatest blunder...
When you start to think about the most massive and extreme ‘stuff’ in the universe, you inevitably go to Dark Matter and Dark Energy. They exist as opposites, one with incredible gravity holding the universe together, and the other a mysterious vacuum energy tearing it apart. Studying this cosmic tug of war gives astronomers a chance to determine the past and future of the entire universe. To study the immense scale of these two quantities, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) program of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III (SDSS) constructed a 3D map of the sky, amounting to a volume...
How did supermassive black holes form in the early epochs of the universe? More importantly, how did they have enough time to grow as large as they did? The answer requires a very different universe. And back then, conditions were much different than they are now. There was a lot of gas, little dust, no stars, and a plethora of dark matter. Astronomers have spent decades observing early quasars, massive active galaxies powered by huge black holes feeding on surrounding gas. But these galaxies are seen so early in the universe’s history, one starts to wonder how a black hole finds sufficient...
One of the reasons I love science is that it actually does allow us to look into the past and future, beyond our existence in the present. Written history gives us a perspective of a person who was around before any human currently living on Earth, and allows us to piece together the history of our culture. This is very important, so no disrespect to historians and their work. Much disrespect to fortune telling though. It’s a waste of energy involving a person who fishes for information for a living. But let’s talk about Science. Since we just passed Canada...
