Every Dot Is a Galaxy

This is the kind of image editors tell me is not interesting, but editors in this case are as wrong as wrong can be.  This is a picture by the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory.  It’s of the universe clear back, close to its beginning.  The Herschel looked in far infrared wavelengths at a […]

Science Metaphors (cont.): Violent Relaxation

Science is not normally in the metaphor business, but occasionally when it crosses the cultural divide between it and the rest of us, it does so via metaphors.  Maybe the most common one is black holes.  To scientists, black holes are singularities so dense, so gravitationally powerful, that nothing falling into them can return.  To […]