Astronomy has not been easy for me. I had an inkling of this going in. I knew that I had a hard time getting myself interested in things who's direct effect I cannot see.
Ironically, considering the subject of my speech, the one area where I seem to do fine with the invisible or ineffable is in the humanities. If it has to do with people and the way we relate to each other I have no problem getting as abstract as possible.
Astronomy seemed to me about the farthest I could go from my comfort zone and that's one of the reasons I took the class.
It turned out this was only partially the case. I eventually found my way in by conceptualizing much of astronomy through the lens of philosophy. Astronomical discoveries had such huge implications they where often paradigm shatters in regards to how we perceive reality. Learning about these different ideas and contemplating there implications was a joy for me.
Even more fascinating to me was the level of abstract thought required to grok astronomical concepts. The idea, for instance, that we can know things through mathematics that we later find provable through our senses has some mind boggling implications as far as the power of the human mind goes. It's also a total trip to think about.
As we reach the end of the semester and I begin my review for finals I'm starting to realize just how much I'm going to miss learning about astronomy (not that I'll have to stop). I feel like I'm just starting to get the hang of how to think about these things. Although, I'm still shaky on some of it, I feel like I've now got a much better grasp of the way things outside our atmosphere work. I'm hoping I'll be able to hold onto this and use it understand future developments in astronomy. I read a lot of science news. In the past I'd skip over anything having to do with astronomy of astrophysics, I'm hoping those days are done.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Monday, May 13, 2013
I Can't Imagine How David Bowie Feels
Beyond the how awesome to hear this song actually sung by a person is space, the video it's self is pretty breath taking. The visions of earth are amazing but the part that really gave me goose bumps was all the zero gravity movements.
Everything seems so serene. Personally the idea of being up there stuck on that thing has always filled me with dread. This video made me understand a bit how someone could actually stay sane up there.
I spent a little time following different youtube links and watching this guy. He's pretty great. He's also the guy who wrung the washcloth out earlier this month.That video was even cooler than this one.
Watching all these videos I really started thinking about how gravity operates in space. In each one he lets his guitar or microphone go and it sort of floats and moves about. What makes it do that? Obviously some of it is inertia and I imagine there isn't really "zero gravity"anywhere, but still these objects seem to have a mind of their own.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
From the Aether
Spent today's public transit time reading up on the Theory of Relativity. I was looking for lay reactions to the E=MC² equation and it's implications of the uniformity of stuff. I ended up spending way more time reading the lead up section of this wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_special_relativity
It's pretty fascinating stuff. I never realized how accepted and ingrained the concept of aether was. I guess my reference point for is has always been Victorian mysticism. Reading this article I realized that it was actually an accepted and tested scientific phenomenon. From a modern perspective it seems absurd to believe that there's something which permeates the universe against which we could measure objective speed but reading all the actual work that was done under this assumption it starts to make sense. What's even more interesting is that, from what I can gather, the current theory of relativity may not have been developed without previous work that proved, or assumed, the existence of aether. It's as if this entirely non existent thing was needed as training wheels to get us to the a place where Einstein could develop his theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_special_relativity
It's pretty fascinating stuff. I never realized how accepted and ingrained the concept of aether was. I guess my reference point for is has always been Victorian mysticism. Reading this article I realized that it was actually an accepted and tested scientific phenomenon. From a modern perspective it seems absurd to believe that there's something which permeates the universe against which we could measure objective speed but reading all the actual work that was done under this assumption it starts to make sense. What's even more interesting is that, from what I can gather, the current theory of relativity may not have been developed without previous work that proved, or assumed, the existence of aether. It's as if this entirely non existent thing was needed as training wheels to get us to the a place where Einstein could develop his theory.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Pillars of Creation
Just looked up what exactly the Pillars of Creation are. I guess the term refers specifally to this photo taken by the Hubble Telescope in 1995:
This is a picture of giant gas clouds in the Eagle nebula. They are in the process of creating stars which is why they where called the "Pillars of Creation". They are also apparently being eroded by the light of nearby stars in a process called photoevaportation, which I had to look up.
Interestingly, the Pillars of Creation are actually neither creating new stars nor being eroded because, most likely, they no longer exist. They where destroyed by a shock wave from a super nova. In fact they where destroyed 6000 years ago but since they are 7000 light years away from us we see them in their still extant state.
Interestingly, the Pillars of Creation are actually neither creating new stars nor being eroded because, most likely, they no longer exist. They where destroyed by a shock wave from a super nova. In fact they where destroyed 6000 years ago but since they are 7000 light years away from us we see them in their still extant state.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Animals and Phones in Space
There where two interesting little blurbs in the Science Tuesday section of the Times yesterday. The first was about sending animals into space, the other was about sending smart phones into space.
The smart phone one was pretty cool. They sent up standard Google Nexus One phones ups and had them send images back to determine whether this technology can be used in satellites. The phones are named Alexander, Graham and Bell. Which is a nice coincidence considering they just released recording of Alexander Graham Bell's voice that had been lost for over a century.
The animals flight was much more interesting. They sent up gerbils, mice, geckos and snails to test the effects of prolonged space flight on living creatures. The best part is that they will be studying the sperm of the mice to try and determine how possible it would be for people to re-produce in space. This means we're one step closer to the a "space arc".
The Times makes a point of noting that the animals are expected to survive re-entry, the phones will not.
The smart phone one was pretty cool. They sent up standard Google Nexus One phones ups and had them send images back to determine whether this technology can be used in satellites. The phones are named Alexander, Graham and Bell. Which is a nice coincidence considering they just released recording of Alexander Graham Bell's voice that had been lost for over a century.
The animals flight was much more interesting. They sent up gerbils, mice, geckos and snails to test the effects of prolonged space flight on living creatures. The best part is that they will be studying the sperm of the mice to try and determine how possible it would be for people to re-produce in space. This means we're one step closer to the a "space arc".
The Times makes a point of noting that the animals are expected to survive re-entry, the phones will not.
Monday, April 29, 2013
Stars on Film
I've been having a little bit of a hard time getting my head around some of the concepts in the life of a star so I figured I'd watch a few videos about it.
The first one to come up was this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM9CQDlQI0A&feature=player_embedded
It was actually pretty helpful. I think the only part I was really having trouble with was understanding the shift from hydrogen to helium fusion. I get it better now that I've seen some visual models of it. It was aslo cool to see some images of planetary nebulae which are pretty bad ass.
I think this one was my favorite
The second video I watched (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mzE7VZMT1z8) was pretty ridiculous. It covered pretty much the same exact material but in twice the time because it needed to do things like show an image of someone skiing or climbing a rock every time it mentioned gravity. For some reason it's creators also felt that in order to understand a galaxy filled with stars it needed to show us Las Vegas. I'm still unclear on the connection here.
The one cool thing it did talk about was the "Pillars of Creation" I'm going to look into those thing some more.
The first one to come up was this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM9CQDlQI0A&feature=player_embedded
It was actually pretty helpful. I think the only part I was really having trouble with was understanding the shift from hydrogen to helium fusion. I get it better now that I've seen some visual models of it. It was aslo cool to see some images of planetary nebulae which are pretty bad ass.
I think this one was my favorite
The one cool thing it did talk about was the "Pillars of Creation" I'm going to look into those thing some more.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Logicomix
Just finished reading the graphic novel Logicomix about Bertrand Russel and the search for truth in logic. It was a decent comic. In truth they made a bit too much of an effort to make it accessible. They left out most of the math and technical jargon and tried to make it a story about people. By doing this I didn't feel like I could make a connection to any of their breakthroughs.
It didn't have anything specifically to do with Astronomy but it did help me come to terms with the idea mathematics as a tool for modeling the universe. I've always bristled a little bit at the idea that something we can't observe is true because the math works. Now that we've seen so many cosmic things that where described first by mathematics I'm a little more comfortable with it but I can't say I understand it. I could never accept the idea of axioms. If these are the foundation of math and logic and we are expected to believe them a priori, doesn't this require a sort of faith that logic would naturally find repellant.
This book didn't really clear up all that but it did make me feel happy that other very smart people are worried about the same thing. The book has Russel say that he's "written a 365 page book that proved that 1 + 1 = 2". I'll never read this book, apparently very few have, but I feel a little better knowing someone wrote it.
It didn't have anything specifically to do with Astronomy but it did help me come to terms with the idea mathematics as a tool for modeling the universe. I've always bristled a little bit at the idea that something we can't observe is true because the math works. Now that we've seen so many cosmic things that where described first by mathematics I'm a little more comfortable with it but I can't say I understand it. I could never accept the idea of axioms. If these are the foundation of math and logic and we are expected to believe them a priori, doesn't this require a sort of faith that logic would naturally find repellant.
This book didn't really clear up all that but it did make me feel happy that other very smart people are worried about the same thing. The book has Russel say that he's "written a 365 page book that proved that 1 + 1 = 2". I'll never read this book, apparently very few have, but I feel a little better knowing someone wrote it.
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