Physical Science
Ask Ethan: How Do Black Hole Jets Carve Out Bubbles In Space? (Synopsis)
Posted by Ethan on March 26, 2016 
“When a person starts to talk about their dreams, it’s as if something bubbles up from within. Their eyes brighten, their face glows, and you can feel the excitement in their words.” -John C. Maxwell One of the most remarkable features of a great number of giant, active galaxies are the presence of jets of…
Creationist Probability
Posted by jrosenhouse on March 25, 2016 When I got interested in evolution, one of the first books I read was The Blind Watchmaker, by Richard Dawkins. I had never heard of Dawkins before reading that book. I read it simply because I happened to notice it a the public library and thought it had a cool cover. The book’s third chapter…
Why Do The Tiniest Galaxies Have The Most Dark Matter? (Synopsis)
Posted by Ethan on March 25, 2016 
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.” -Winston Churchill When we look out at the Universe on the largest scales, from large-scale structure to the fluctuations in the CMB to lensed clusters of galaxies and to giant spirals and ellipticals, we…
Could dark matter not exist at all? (Synopsis)
Posted by Ethan on March 24, 2016 
“For the moment we might very well can them DUNNOS (for Dark Unknown Nonreflective Nondetectable Objects Somewhere).” -Bill Bryson The Sun makes up 99.8% the mass of our Solar System, yet stars account for only about 10-20% of the matter that protons, neutrons and electrons make up. Protons, neutrons and electrons — along with all…
Ceres, the solar system’s closest dwarf planet, has its mysteries solved by NASA (Synopsis)
Posted by Ethan on March 23, 2016 
“Although impact processes dominate the surface geology on Ceres, we have identified specific color variations on the surface indicating material alterations that are due to a complex interaction of the impact process and the subsurface composition.” -Ralf Jaumann, Dawn scientist NASA’s Dawn mission has just revealed a huge suite of data about Ceres, our Solar…
What is it going to take to turn around Boatie McBoatface?
Posted by Greg Laden on March 23, 2016 
You know about Boatie McBoatface, so I won’t bother telling you about it. Did you know, though, that the guy who originally suggested, on Twitter, this name for the polar research vessel actually voted for the RRS David Attenborough? I love the name Boatie McBoatface, as does everyone, but I also voted for a different…
What It Means If CERN Discovers A New Particle
Posted by Ethan on March 22, 2016 
“I’m a fan of supersymmetry, largely because it seems to be the only route by which gravity can be brought into the scheme. It’s probably not even enough, but it’s a way forward to get gravity involved. If you have supersymmetry, then there are more of these particles. That would be my favourite outcome.” -Peter…
Most Massive Collection Of Giant Stars Ever Revealed By Hubble (Synopsis)
Posted by Ethan on March 22, 2016 
“The night has a thousand eyes, and the day but one; Yet the light of the bright world dies with the dying sun.” -Francis William Bourdillon When we look for the brightest, bluest, most massive individual stars, we’re restricted to looking nearby, since it’s impossible to resolve individual stars at distances that extend much beyond…
POTW 7!
Posted by jrosenhouse on March 21, 2016 The seventh POTW has been posted. Enjoy! While at the Indiana math conference, I had the pleasure of seeing a short magic show by Caleb Wiles, who lives in Indianapolis and was apparently a math major at one time. I was impressed! It turns out he will at some point be appearing on Penn and…
193-197/366: March Meeting
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 20, 2016 
I didn’t take the DSLR to March Meeting with me, but I did throw a point-and-shoot in my bag. A few of these are still just cell-phone snapshots, because I didn’t have the bag with me all the time. 193/366: Stadium View When I checked into the hotel, they told me I had a “stadium…
