Scattered around the periphery of our galaxy, the Milky Way, are upwards of 150 odd creatures called globular clusters. They’re little agglomerations of stars that are bound by gravity into a sphere and that inside it, are buzzing around like flies. They’re odd because 1) most stars come in singles or pairs, and globulars have […]
Astronomy
Q: What happened before the Big Bang? Mr. Cosmology: If I told you, God would have to kill you. Q: What is time? Mr. Cosmology: Is 9:30. Q: I just bought a telescope. Do you have any advice for a first-time sky watcher? Mr. Cosmology: What happens in Vega, stays in Vega. Q: How many […]
The coordinate grid was laid against the sky to fix the stars and for centuries it seemed to work as planned. Recently, slowly, almost asymptotically, the grid begins to move with respect to itself — abrading, degrading — and therefore deteriorates. In fact, Declination -14 now sags along its whole length so that Declination +14 […]
“The universe is what it is, and we’re trying to find out what it is,” John Huchra told me. “The explorers of the new world weren’t trying to prove theories, they were looking at what was out there.” Huchra was an observational astronomer, as opposed to a theorist. Theorists say that, given physics, the universe […]
I grant this is just straight-up astroporn but let’s try to make it legit. It’s a picture taken in 2009 by the Hubble Space Telescope of NGC 3372, the great nebula in the constellation Carina, which is in the sky over the southern hemisphere. “Nebula” is an old astronomical word that has referred to a […]
In 2007, the Galaxy Zooites — 100,000 housewives, high school students, helicopter pilots, physicians, school teachers, truck drivers, secretaries, and a mobile home park manager from all over the world – got together on the internet under the guidance of some astronomers and classified galaxies. Galaxies tend to be either spirals or ellipticals, computers are […]
Sublime: you don’t hear it much except as an adjective meaning really, really good, used the way “divine” or “glorious” “wonderful” are used, just another adjective, nothing to do with divinity or glory or wonder. But really, sublime describes something that takes you beyond the ordinary — Glenn Gould plays Bach sublimely — something […]
I’m not exactly sure what this is a picture of — I’ve seen it somewhere, maybe a graphic picture of noise? some computer thing? — but given his title, Abstruse Goose clearly means us to think of it as stars. #1. It looks real. #2. Abstruse Goose, if you’re out there, can you tell us […]
