I’ve been seeing a lot of Albert Einstein quotes recently. It struck me how the quotes are attributed to Einstein as if it gives them more power. Einstein was such a genius that his views on education or new-age philosophy must be genius as well. Of course that’s not how it works. Being very talented or knowledgable in one area doesn’t make one an authority in others. And as history shows, Einstein even got things wrong in his own field.
Hot Topic
The structure of the Sun can be divided into three main parts: the interior, which consists of the core, radiative and convective regions; the photosphere, which is basically the surface of the Sun where light comes from; and the atmosphere, of which includes the corona. Since nuclear fusion occurs in the core of the Sun, it’s reasonable to assume that the core is the hottest part of the Sun. In fact we know the core is about 15 million K, and that as you move outward from the center the temperature drops, until you reach a temperature of about 5,800 K at the surface. One would expect that this cooling trend continues, so that the solar atmosphere is cooler than the surface. But what we observe is that the atmosphere, specifically the corona, gets hotter. Much hotter.
Impossible Dream
Imagine working on a project to mine asteroids, or mapping a billon stars in our galaxy, or using the next generation of space telescopes to study the atmospheres of possibly habitable exoplanets. Imagine going to the Moon, or even Mars. Those are dreams you can make real.
The Death Star
While doing a bit of background research on the Kozai mechanism for yesterday’s post, I kept running into mention of a mysterious object known as Nibiru. The Kozai mechanism is pretty esoteric, so seeing it mentioned in blog articles is a bit odd. Being curious, I followed the internet trail of Nibiru, and down the rabbit hole of the weird.
Seeing Red
Ever since Henrietta Leavitt discovered the period-luminosity relation for Cepheid variable stars, and Edwin Hubble used her work to demonstrate the relation between the redshifts of galaxies and their distances, we’ve had a pretty good idea that the universe was expanding. Since then we’ve gathered much more evidence on the connection between redshift and cosmic expansion, including redshift observations of distant supernovae that show the universe is undergoing cosmic inflation due to dark energy. While cosmic expansion is now well established, there have been some interesting mysteries along the way. One of these involves some seemingly strange behavior of quasars.
Science and Non-Science
This video is on RIT’s Escharian Stairwell. The Escharian Stairwell is a stairwell that loops back upon itself. So if you walk up a flight of stairs you find yourself back where you started. It’s inspired by M. C. Escher’s Ascending and Descending. At this point you probably recognize that the stairwell is nonsense. The video was created as the project of an RIT graduate student. It is well done, but clearly not real. Surprisingly (or perhaps not surprisingly) many people think it is.
Gravity’s Shadow
In 1748 Georges-Louis Le Sage proposed a solution to gravity. He argued that gravity wasn’t due to a mutual attraction between masses, but rather due to the interactions of particles moving through space. This idea came to be known as shadow gravity.
Tower of Babble
Words have power. They can move us, enlighten us or confuse us. We could do with a little less of the last one.
Engage
With the rise of online media, it is increasingly easy for anyone to present scientific ideas in ways that are entertaining and engaging. This can lead to TV shows like Cosmos, and it can also lead to documentaries such as The Principle. If you haven’t heard of it, The Principle claims that we live in a geocentric universe.