Now on ScienceBlogs: The Advent Calendar of Physics: Eponym
What We're Talking About Sunday, December 25, 2011
When the stars align, the results can be nothing short of spectacular. On Starts With a Bang, Ethan Siegel shows us an "Einstein ring" photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. This celestial halo surrounds a massive red galaxy, and is in fact light from a much more distant galaxy focused by gravity. Ethan explains, "gravity will bend spacetime, forcing light into a curved path. If a very distant galaxy is properly lined-up with us and a less distant—but very massive—galaxy, its light will not only be bent into a ring if the alignment is perfect, but its light will be greatly magnified, making a dim galaxy appear very bright." The newly-imaged LRG 3-757 "makes about 80% of a full ring: a cosmic horseshoe." A never-before-seen galaxy is also visible on Greg Laden's Blog: GN-108036. Greg says this galaxy produces stars "at the rate of about 100 per year. In contract, the Mikly Way (our galaxy), even though it is 100 times bigger in mass than GN-108036, produces about 30 new stars per year." Amazingly, we are seeing this galaxy as it existed only 750 million years after the big bang. Greg also has the first low-altitude images of the massive asteroid Vesta, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft. And on Starts With a Bang, Ethan covers Kepler's discovery of the first exoplanet smaller than Earth, whose very hot year is shorter than a week.
starts with a bang!December 22, 2011
"While the giant red galaxies, above, might be something like two-to-four billion light years distant, the 'rings' around them are actually individual galaxies twice as far away! Just as an optical lens can focus light and bend its path, on large enough scales and from massive enough sources, gravity can do the same thing!"
greg laden's blogDecember 22, 2011
"GN-108036 is an unexpected find because we previously thought that a that early stage in the universe's history, about 750 million years after the Big Bang, galaxies this massive and bright did not exist yet."
greg laden's blogDecember 21, 2011
"Those ripples almost look like the result of conchoidal fracturing, but can't be. Compression? Early melting?"
starts with a bang!December 20, 2011
"Even the fourth planet from this star, Kepler-20f, makes a complete orbit in 19.5 days. Kepler-20e is smaller than Venus, while Kepler-20f is only 3% larger than Earth! The result of all this careful watching is a Solar System where the inner five planets are all scorchingly unsuitable for life, but have a very rich orbital tale to tell."
“Sometimes science can sound strange, at least until you understand its drive to understand nature at a deeper level.”
This is an exciting day for a comparative physiologist! I just received word from a reader that the...
(via Aquaviews) One of the bonuses of having lots of legs is that you can go bipedal...
You've probably heard this story many times before: there's some kind of glass ceiling in the world of...
The Life Science Channel RSS FeedAs we started the last week of the advent calendar, I was trying to map out the final...
"Just as I did some 25 years ago, my graduate student is right now using one of the...
The BSB (that's the big Sudoku book, for those not up on the local slang) is now...
The Physical Science Channel RSS FeedMarch is the snowiest month. We get lots of snow in December. Sometimes it is too cold to...
Andy Revkin thinks so. In a recent Dot Earth post, he writes that the head of the Intergovernmental...
I've decided to update this blog entry (20 Dec 2011) because it occurs to me that certain things...
The Environment Channel RSS FeedUSA Science and Engineering Festival: The Blog
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world's foremost biomedical research center and the U.S. federal government's focal point for such research, is returning to the Festival as a major Sponsor and Exhibitor, bringing with it a bevy of high-caliber excitement in medical science that helped attract scores of visitors to last year's finale Expo.
Books, of course, but which books...?...
Interpretative Dance of Astrobiology...
The Education Channel RSS FeedBelow the fold because the video is too wide:...
Plimer contradicts himself on the same page of his book -- giving incorrect figures for CO2 concentrations immediately above a graph giving the correct numbers.
You should read Ross Douthat's obnoxious eulogy for Christopher Hitchens just so you can enjoy this magnificent takedown...
The Politics Channel RSS FeedBecause there's only one way for Orac to wish his minions, shills, and fans a Merry Christmas: Well,...
Hitler is unhappy at how the war against the Gardasil vaccine is going.
The holidays are now upon us, but I can't resist having a bit of fun before I disappear...
The Medicine & Health Channel RSS FeedIt occurs to me that I haven't done a chess post in a while. It's possible that I'm...
I said I didn't want to say anything about free will, and I still don't, but Massimo Pigliucci...
On The USA Science and Engineering Festival, Joe Schwarcz writes that in the media's "drive to capture public...
The Brain & Behavior Channel RSS FeedTheorists think of observations and data a bit like businesses think of science and technology: it happens,...
You might want to weigh the winter cover for your boat down with water tanks.
Seeing Martin's mention that he's hit the sixth anniversary of his entry into the awoke a vague sense...
The Technology Channel RSS FeedConfessions of a Science Librarian
Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure. Every year for the last bunch of years...
Confessions of a Science Librarian
Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure. Every year for the last bunch of years...
Confessions of a Science Librarian
Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure. Every year for the last bunch of years...
The Information Science Channel RSS Feed"If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him...
Someone from the American Astronomical Society ran across the Project for Non-Academic Science posts here, and is looking...
The idea of the program is simple: To improve science education, invest in the teachers.
The Jobs Channel RSS FeedOrac 12.24.2011
Orac 12.24.2011
Tim Lambert 12.23.2011
Tim Lambert 12.24.2011
Jason Rosenhouse 10.28.2011
starts with a bang! 12.22.2011
pharyngula 12.22.2011
the pump handle 12.21.2011
life lines 12.21.2011
erv 12.21.2011
Latest science stories | More at nytimes.com
Humanities & Soc. Sciences
Aardvarchaeology
Rediscovering Ancient Landscape Rules
My current project on the siting of Bronze Age sacrificial sites aims to rediscover some of the the period's landscape rules.
EvolutionBlog
The Basis for Morality
Michael Ruse has now written a second post on the subject of scientism. He gets down to business...
Greg Laden's Blog
Linking Elevators, Rebecca Watson, Richard Dawkins and of course, Hitler and the Nazis!!!11!!
As you know, I've shifted some of the topics I have discussed on this blog over to The...
The Social Sciences Channel RSS Feed