Cosmos Episode 4 Thoughts

This Cosmos reboot just keeps getting better and better.  This last episode was all about gravity, light, and William Herschel.  Herschel, like Halley from last week, made incredible contributions to science, only to have most of them ignored.  Yes, discovering Uranus was very important, but his work with binary star systems was inspired.  Herschel was not the first to observe binaries, and as last night's episode revealed, his contemporary John Michell theorized their mechanics first, but Herschel's work would prove the most fruitful.  I really enjoyed the animated segments with Herschel and his son, it was interesting.

Last night's episode also recreated a segment from Carl Sagan's Cosmos, and one of Einstein's classic thought experiments on the nature of light.  Time dilation and the nature of light while moving at relativistic speeds is always fascinating to hear about, and while it may not be possible to really understand it, I think Tyson made it easy for people to at least wrap their mind around the idea.

The best part of the episode was the black holes.  From the animation of Herschel talking about dark stars to the black hole dive with callbacks to 2001: A Space Odyssey, it was an intense and enlightening segment.  Sure, it was all theory crafting because we have no idea what happens within a black hole, but this is the ship of the imagination.  And if we do ever figure black holes out, the truth will always be stranger than what we can possibly imagine.  From the black hole, we went straight to the most poignant part, where Tyson talked about John Herschel, and how photography is a sort of time travel.  A great episode, from start to finish.

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The Big Bang: Just an Opinion, Apparently

I just read this article on CNN.  I think it's a good article, it goes over the most recent discovery regarding the Big Bang and how it gives major credence to the theory in a way that anyone can understand.  My issue is that this article is in the Opinion section, and the first word you see in the tab is opinion.  The Big Bang is a theory, not an opinion.  I've talked about this before, but I'm gonna talk about it again, because there is a very important distinction.  A theory is backed up by facts, an opinion is not.  Any scientific concept that cannot be explicitly proven is a theory.  Gravity is a theory, and I'm pretty sure we're all sold on that idea.  Nobody is going around claiming that gravity is just an opinion.  It just really bugs me when people get the two mixed up, and it really irritates me when a major news website does it.

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Coastal Wind Power for the United States

I think it's important to develop multiple sources of energy for the future, because it just doesn't make sense to depend on one kind of power.  That's just not good practice.  So, I found this article to be interesting.  I didn't know there was so much available wind power out there.  Hurricanes are of course a threat, ironically, but again, that's just another reason to develop different kinds of energy.  And if we build these wind farms offshore, it eliminates one of the biggest problems people have with windmills.  They're kind of an eyesore.  But if they're ten miles offshore, you can't see them from the coast, so problem solved.  Renewable energy is the future, and we should invest in it now.  It's for the good of mankind.

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New Dwarf Planet

Scientists have discovered a dwarf planet which orbits in a strange place in the solar system.  It's beyond the Kuiper Belt, but far within the Oort Cloud.  The dwarf planet Sedna was previously discovered in the same area, but it was seen as a fluke, orbiting in a basically empty space.  But with this, there might be good reason to think that there's a whole bunch of objects floating out there.  It's an interesting development, and it just goes to show there is still so much to learn about our own solar system.

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Ringed Asteroid

Scientists have recently discovered rings around an asteroid called Chariklo.  This is certainly a big surprise, because only the large planets in our solar have ring systems, and it is certainly unprecedented for something as small as an asteroid to have it.  I suppose this isn't exactly the most groundbreaking news ever, but it is really interesting, and completely unexpected.

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Non-Electric Hybrids

This article shares some details about KERS on a normal car.  I like cars, I really do, but I would have to be a fool not to realize that hybrid technology is the future.  It's a good thing for performance as well as for the environment, as you can see from Porsche's and McLaren's new hypercars.  And Ferrari's, whenever it comes out.   While there are certainly advantages to the hybrid system those cars have, the car Volvo has built is significant in it's own way.  This news, in combination with Volkswagen's new Up, and new Golf GTE, shows that the public will soon be getting its hands on real hybrid technology that makes much more environmental and economic sense compared to the old hybrid systems. 

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Golf Clubs and Wildfires

Well, we finally have our first non-Cosmos related post.  It's an interesting one, too, as you can see from this article.   You may know this if you read my other blogs, but I am a very avid golfer.  It's the reason I couldn't resist writing about this.  I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised there are people who will hit off of rocks, but I sure wouldn't.  Not intentionally, anyway.  I've hit my fair share of rocks on accident, and it hurts.  It just seems like common sense to move the ball off the rocks, even if you are bent on following all of golf's many, many rules.

Interesting little side story.  There have been several occasions where I've managed to create sparks off of a driver, simply by hitting the golf ball.  I have no idea why it happens, and it happens only very rarely.  If it had just happened once, and it was just me who saw it, I would just chalk it up to a trick of the light.  But, it's happened multiple times, and I have eye-witnesses.  I haven't started any fires yet, so for now, it's just one of life's little mysteries.

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Cosmos Episode 3 Thoughts

Been really busy the past few days, which is why there's two posts in a row about Cosmos.  Trust me, there will be other subjects eventually.  But, onto tonight's episode, which was all about comets and Edmund Halley.  On the surface, this episode didn't seem to say nearly as much as the previous two episodes.  It seemed like a history lesson about comets, which, while interesting, hardly seem worthy of an hour's worth of time, especially considering that the show only has 13 episodes to explore literally all of the universe.

There are some very important things this episode went over.  First off, it gave a voice to a man whose contributions to science have been cut down dramatically.  Edmund Halley was far more than the namesake of the comet.  It also showed that time and time again, history is a fascinating thing.  Who knows what our world would look like if Halley hadn't personally published Newton's book?  So many things in history have come down to one person in the right place at the right time.  Most importantly, it shows that mankind has the capacity for knowledge to triumph over fear.  For most of human history, comets were looked at as bad omens, but the extraordinary persistence and intelligence of a few people conquered that fear.  It has been this way throughout history, and it will continue to be this way.  Mankind will always seek to conquer its fears, and it is important to remember that.

I feel like there's a lot of doom and gloom about mankind's future, I even had a professor flat out tell our class that she thought mankind was doomed.  I don't believe this, I refuse to.  Humanity has a bright future ahead of us, and it's important to always believe that.  Once we stop, that's when mankind is truly doomed.

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Cosmos Episode 1 and 2 Thoughts

The revival of Cosmos is big news for everyone who cares about science.  I loved the old series, but after so many years, it needed updating.  While much of what Carl Sagan said remains as inspiring as it did when he first said them, the fact is science has moved on.  The new graphics certainly help too, showing the universe in its full glory.  So, how has Neil deGrasse Tyson done so far?

The first episode is about our place in the universe.  While I have to say I preferred the old ship of the imagination to the new one, everything else was fantastic.  I wasn't sure at first how I felt about the animation of Bruno's life, but I decided that it works.  You can take more liberty with animation, you can make the world more vibrant, more imaginative.  The story Tyson told at the end about how he met Carl Sagan was remarkable, and it really gave a good grounding to a cosmic adventure that literally went to the edge of the universe.

The second episode was about life, and the incredible journey it has taken to get to where it is today.  There's no denying the fact that evolution is still a hotly contested concept, and the fact that there are still so many people who flat-out deny it was an unavoidable subject.  However, it was kept to a minimum, and it was handled without explicitly insulting those who don't believe in evolution.  Tyson brings up a couple of great points, mentioning that gravity, like evolution, is a theory, but that doesn't stop them from being true.  He also mentions that the great thing about science is that belief doesn't stop it from being the truth.  I also really liked the ending, and the return of the 40 second journey from the first DNA to human life.  That was one of the most potent parts of the original, and since nothing's changed, it made perfect sense to bring it back.  The combination of the elegance of the format along with the complexity of life makes for a potent image.

Things are looking good so far.  I can't wait for the next episode.

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Introduction

Well, this is a blog that's about science.  I know that's a real vague subject, but if I think it's interesting, I'll write about it.  Now, my personal preference is for astronomy, so don't be surprised if that tends to be the most-written about subject here.  But like I said, if it's interesting, and it's science, that you can find it here. 

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