Space

It can be hard to admit that something you’ve believed for a long time was wrong, but it is essential for your mental health to understand how to admit being wrong. — The wrinkles of tin foil are can only become so small; if you scale tin foil up 10x, it will appear to have micro wrinkles as opposed to a model that was scaled down 10x from the original where they would appear to be large and countable.

When stars form, they emit energetic radiation that boils gas away. But it can’t stop gravitational collapse from making even newer stars. — Gravity collapses large collections of matter to form new stars, and then the energy emitted from those stars brings star-formation to a grinding halt. At least, that’s the prevailing picture we have of how it should always work. You have to gather enough matter together in one place so that…

If you think you know how an astronomical nova works, buckle up. You’re in for a ride like you never expected. — Stars, although they’re incredibly stable over very long timescales, simply cannot live forever. No matter what their composition, mass, temperature, or other properties may be, every star will eventually run out of the nuclear fuel that powers it. For all but the most massive stars in the Universe, each one…

Does dark matter consist of black holes, do we live in a universe surrounded by black holes, or, — do we live inside a black hole? — The message of this lecture is that black holes ain’t as black as they are painted. They are not the eternal prisons they were once though…things can get out of a black hole both on the outside and possibly to another universe. So if you feel you are in a…

A Japanese satellite was accidentally recording the weather on Betelgeuse — The giant star Betelgeuse has long fascinated the inhabitants of our planet. The ancients saw fire and war in its deep red image; its flickering gaze was associated with great predators hunting amongst the heavens. …