Color-Challenged Astronomers Are Lost in a Latte' Universe

November 04, 2009

God was sitting up late one night designing the universe. He took care of simple things first. Gravity would construct stars, galaxies and planets. Biological evolution would ensure a robust diversity of life forms.

But what color to make the universe?  God looked down into his foamy cup of latte' and decided that the color beige would be just perfect. In reality God hadn't invented the other colors yet so He didn't have much of a choice at the time.

Last Monday the Astronomy Picture of the Day displayed nothing but a plain eggshell white panel. The caption declared that is how the entire sky would look if the light from all the stars and galaxies were smeared out into a homogeneous glow.

Gold Rush to the Horizon of the Universe

September 16, 2009

Last week the Internet news was ablaze with fabulous photos from everybody’s favorite telescope: Hubble.

The pictures released are headed for astronomy textbooks  everywhere, not to mention YouTube videos,  and music album covers. The new images unveil a stunning Technicolor universe.

But now the “Gold Rush” is on among Hubble astronomers. The prize: who will be first to push Hubble to its very limits of performance and definitively see the farthest objects in the universe to date.

I’ve joked that the new Hubble will see so far that we’ll seen the back of our heads (that’s only if space were positively curved that the universe was old enough for light to circumnavigate it!)

Government Hides Alien Moon Base!

July 01, 2009

Now that I've got your attention . . .

Every time I take a stab at debunking pseudo-science topics like UFOs and the 2012-doomsday predictions, it’s like kicking a hornet’s nest, judging from some of the comments posted here.

Some of these counterpoint arguments from readers are tied to references in clips on YouTube (truly a cesspool of idiocy) where self-styled “experts” try and sound authoritative in front of the camera.  More often than not these "whistle-blowers"  assert having special knowledge about  “government conspiracies.” They’ve discovered the Internet is a bottomless pit of people who feel powerless and suspicious of everything. Healthy skepticism is good, which means followers should not unequivocally swallow the tall tales from self-proclaimed "insiders."

Occasionally I’m going to give out a Pants-on-Fire award to those individuals who make outrageous claims that are simply incredulous.  Either they were duped or have endless other motives: selling books, videos, articles, going on a lecture circuit, getting onto radio shows or CNN’s Larry King Live (he loves UFO tall-tales), or simply bolstering their sense of self importance.

The Meaning of Spacetime, Relatively Speaking

June 17, 2009

Space and time are something we deal with every waking moment of the day. We need to navigate space (at least between home and office) and are subservient to time from cradle to grave. But there are inherent puzzles that stumped history’s top scientists. And, these puzzles can frustrate science fiction writers who want to find shortcuts though space and time to get from one side for the galaxy to the other within the lifetime of their characters.

Would there be space if there weren’t matter around to define a volume, like the walls of a room, or periphery of the solar system? How could we ever know that space in the universe is expanding, without galaxies flowing along with the expansion and sending us signals from the remote past? Would there be time if we never saw anything changing?