astrophysics

Gravity In The Mind Of God

“I have not as yet been able to deduce from phenomena the reason for these properties of gravity, and I do not feign hypotheses. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental […]

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Sagittarius A*

This Acrostic poem spells Milky Way Galaxy down the left margin, to commemorate finding the super massive black hole at our own galaxy’s center, called Sagittarius A (and here, the word “Star” is what’s spoken, but it’s written as:) “*.” So the title is “Sagittarius A* , pronounced Sagittarius-A-Star (stop looking for the footnote). The […]

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Singularity

 SINGULARITY I’m always fascinated when two distinct time frames occur “simultaneously.” Looking from the outside at Alice disappearing into a black hole seems to take forever, thinks Bob, who stays on Earth to observe. Eventually, her light red shifts and fades to the point where it’s indistinguishable from the background of space and the black […]

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Pent Sills

What stories are held inside a black hole?  Is information even stored inside or is it lost entirely in the quantum, slow-motion evaporation that occurs randomly at its boundary? Noticing the sharpened point of my pencil, it seemed to me that information stored in the graphene was slowly and tediously in fits and starts, in […]

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Late Heavy Bombardment

  Four billion years ago, the solar system was a shooting gallery.  However, without these asteroids and comets bringing Earth the necessary raw materials, life may never have begun.  Once life is present, these gifts from space are an entirely different matter.  Just ask the dinosaurs, well look to their fossils, that is.  

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Sidereal Atlas

It would be possible to chart a course for a planet in another galaxy, only to find out its star had already gone supernova before we had even begun our journey.  Since, at present, we have no hope of traveling faster than light, we can only obtain distant information at the speed of light, so […]

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