This World and Me

In the summer of 2017, my family did a tour of the U.S. national parks. We had traveled out west first to Salt Lake City, where we rented out a small storage closet and placed our fencing bags there (more on that soon), then traveled south to visit Bryce Canyon National Park, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Arches National Park, and the Horseshoe Bend. These were absolutely stunning sights, to say the least. Words don't do them justice, and while it's possible for you to search up on Google an image of each location, in my view nothing beats actually going there and experiencing it for yourself. I think by looking at a picture of it, you create an expectation for how it will look when you go, and it may actually result in the views being less spectacular if the image was digitally touched up to make it look better. When it comes to national parks, it's best to go in cold. The natural formations are absolutely breathtaking. After spending a week touring the parks south ...

Song of the Week #6 is "Halley Came to Jackson" by Mary Chapin Carpenter . This semester I am taking Introduction to General Astronomy (ASTRO C10 / L&S C70U) as a general education course at the University of California, Berkeley. Before each lecture, my professor, Alex Filippenko, usually plays a song that is related to the content we will cover in that lecture. For example, before a lecture that discussed time (among other things), he played  "Time" by Pink Floyd , and before a lecture that discussed the planet Jupiter, he played  "Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity", the fourth movement of Gustav Holst's  The Planets . Before a lecture that discussed comets, my professor played for us "Halley Came to Jackson". The title of the song refers to Halley's Comet , a famous comet that appears in the night sky approximately every 76 years. "Jackson" probably refers to Jackson, Mississippi , the capital of the state of Mississip...

Almost all of the heavy elements that exist in nature – carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, calcium, etc. – were originally formed as a result of nuclear reactions within the core of dying stars. This is one of the only locations in the universe we know of that is capable of producing these elements naturally. You are made of all of these elements. The material that constitutes your body was formed in the core of a star a long time ago. The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff. —Carl Sagan, Cosmos Look up at the night sky. See those little pinpricks of light? Who knows whether, at the end of the star's life, the elements it formed will eventually come together to form new life?

A week ago, I was at the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg, Germany. For some odd reason, I had brought a jacket with me; not a single cloud came to my rescue as the Sun turned the sweat glands in my head into faucets. At least I had my sunglasses. The other Americans and I made our way to the Zeppelinfeld, a large field where hundreds of thousands of Germans historically congregated to hear Adolf Hitler's rally speeches. As I walked the steps to ascend the tribune, my heart began to beat more quickly, for I knew that I would be standing in the exact spot that Adolf Hitler – a name which has become synonymous with pure evil – stood not more than a century ago. A few other tourists were there as well, and they each took their turn standing upon the little balcony that overlooked the entire Zeppelinfeld. When my turn came, I braced myself for whatever paranormal curse that Hitler left on the tribune to hit me like a freight train. Thankfully, it never came. There's somethi...

On Thursday, February 11, 2016, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Livingston, Louisiana and Hanford, Washington, announced the first direct observation of gravitational waves. Part of the scientific method  and any scientific theory is being able to make testable predictions. This is an ecstatic moment for science because such waves were predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which he had published in 1915. The direct observation of gravitational waves further solidifies the theory, and provides a strong basis for further experimentation, observation, and prediction. The scientists at LIGO are almost certainly going to receive a Nobel Prize in Physics for their contributions. Comment from discussion ELI5: Why is today's announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves important, and what are the ramifications? . I have  posted about science  before. Science is—and always will be—a...

We are a speck, a sliver, a grain in this massive universe. No, "massive" would be a huge understatement. The universe is indescribably large. First of all, there are two kinds of perspectives you can take for sizing the universe. There is the universe, and then there is the "observable universe". The universe is the "totality of existence". It's the sum of all matter, energy, and events that exist. The observable universe  only includes the part of the universe which Earth can detect and observe  through the use of tools such as telescopes. Wait. We can only see a part of the universe? That's right. Everyone knows that light travels at a constant speed in space: the speed of light. Everyone also knows that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Light itself cannot travel faster than the cosmic speed limit. From the point of the Big Bang to now, the universe has expanded quite a lot. It's even created us and the Earth. But lig...