Often in astronomy and astrophysics we talk about the big breakthroughs. Galileo’s discovery of the moons of Jupiter that showed not everything moves about the Sun, Henrietta Leavitt’s discovery of the cepheid luminosity relation which allowed us to measure the distance to galaxies, Eddington’s observation of light deflection that verified Einstein’s theory of general relativity. But much of the field is based upon lesser findings.
Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? Morons
Although its easy to see the absurdity in a self-declared scientific genius, it is similar to an attitude taken by some scientists with a dim view of philosophy. Plato, Aristotle and Socrates may have been deep thinkers, but philosophers are idiot scientists. Except they aren’t.
Confluence of Evidence
Suppose you were an electrician. You’ve trained, apprenticed, passed all your certifications, and you’ve worked with electric wiring for years. You’ve wired houses and commercial buildings for years, and you feel pretty confident in your trade. One day you finish wiring a light switch, dust off your hands, and flip the switch to test it. But instead of seeing the light turn right on, you find that it flickers dimly. You’re pretty sure you wired things correctly, so what do you do?
Pale Blue Dot
The image above is a radio image of Voyager 1. It was taken from the Very Long Baseline Array, which is a collection of 10 radio telescopes scattered from Hawaii to the Virgin Islands. It captures the faint radio signal of the distant probe. That pale blue dot is the most distant object made by humans.
Not So Fast
One of the fundamental principles of modern physics is that nothing can travel faster than light. Of course when this is mentioned, someone usually suggests a way to get around that limit. What about warp drive, for example. Or what about tachyons? These are hypothetical particles that can never go slower than the speed of light. What I like about tachyons is that it’s a good example of how what seems like a simple and obvious solution turns out to be deeply complex when you take it seriously.
Spherical Cow
There’s an old joke in physics where a farmer wants to increase milk production, and asks his physicist neighbor for advice. She agrees to think about the problem, and after a week comes back declaring she’s found a brilliant solution. “The first step is to get some spherical cows that can breed in a vacuum.” The point of the joke is physicists often make wildly unphysical assumptions when creating physical models, such as assuming cows are spherical. While that might seem like a poor way to do science, it is actually a powerful tool.
The Rules
I’ve been on the road the past two days, hence the lack of a morning post. But as I was driving for countless hours I noticed lots of signs detailing the Law. Don’t drive drowsy; Wear your seatbelt; Don’t text while driving; Speed limits, etc. I also noticed that pretty much all of these laws being violated by drivers along the way. Apparently laws are really more like guidelines, at least until you get caught. It’s interesting, then, that we describe the behavior of the universe in terms of laws. Law of gravity, law of relativity, etc. Unlike traffic laws they aren’t violated, at least as far as we know.
Poor Einstein, Dummy Boy
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.
Home
The image above is a processed color image of Earth from Saturn. As Carl Sagan once wrote, “That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.” The view of Earth as a pale blue dot demonstrates the rarity of our world, and the fragility of our lives. It is easy to feel small and humbled by such a visage. But this image of our …