The latest science news features a big black hole that is way too big. Big black holes are hot these days. There are two reasons. Big black holes are so extreme they confront us with puzzles that test the limits of our theories. And new telescopes are showing us more crazy things that big black […]
Here’s more news from big telescopes. The galaxy depicted in the illustration is called CR7. It has a football flavor: Google tells me CR7 is Cristiano Ronaldo, star player for famed Spanish soccer team, Real Madrid. The galaxy named after him shows up way down on page three of my search results! That bright patch […]
No doubt you never thought about this question. But suddenly it is hot science news. The answer that we get is: Yes. And it has interesting implications. The story starts with the odd properties of carbon. (It’s our story too because they are the basis for life, not to mention much of our industry.) Carbon […]
Another stunning discovery hits the astronomic news: Seems there are big black holes in galaxies all over. This opens a new chapter in the quest to understand the role of black holes in our universe. But its significance may run even deeper: a step toward unraveling the mystery of dark matter. Last year I reviewed […]
Scientists are building better ways to look back into time. A discovery announced last week may be the most exciting thing in physics: a big black hole (called SDSS J0010+2802). It’s not just big; for its age it is a monster. It compels us to rethink our current concepts of the universe. How can we […]
The idea of the universe as a single thing has roots in ancient societies. It speaks to our existential questions: Where are we? What is our relation to the world? In the fifth century BCE, Zeno of Elea ponders whether the world is one thing or many. He says the concept of plurality is a […]
Sir Isaac Newton was a serious two timer long before that term took on its modern meaning. In 1687 he spoke of two kinds of time: Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature flows equably without relation to anything external, and by another name is called duration; [and] relative, apparent […]
These days―thanks to the mash-up of Leonard Hofstadter, Sheldon Cooper, David Saltzberg, Ed Robertson and the Barenaked Ladies―most everyone has heard of the Big Bang theory. And most everyone knows it ‘all started with the Big Bang!’ Most everyone is wrong. Wikipedia has it precisely right. It says: The Big Bang theory is the prevailing […]
News from the Planck satellite is almost 14 billion years old. It’s coded in cold photons from the Big Flash, let loose about 380,000 years after the universe began and stretched as space expanded while they winged their way. The photons reaching Planck bear the same message as those seen by COBE and WMAP but […]