Time again to reach into the “Ask Mr. Cosmology” mailbag and see what readers want to know about . . . The Wonders of the Universe! Q: Does the word “creation” imply a Creator? Mr. Cosmology: No, thank God. Q: What does Mr. Cosmology think of the theorists who argue for the anthropic principle? Mr. Cosmology: They’re […]
Physics
This essay originally ran in 2011. Back then, the Hubble Space Telescope was the exemplar of non-Earth astronomical observation. Its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, launched in December 2021. This anecdote, however, might be timeless. In 1984, David Soderblom was a new hire at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and one day […]
This post began with a question from my dear friend, the novelist and documentary filmmaker George Lerner. Looking over two years of footage from South Texas, I noticed something striking: I have lots and lots of glorious images filmed around sunset, but scant few decent shots at sunrise. Why is this, I wondered — is […]
Cosmology is timeless, perhaps literally—as this post argued on January 23, 2015. In the 1992 documentary A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking describes what we would see if we were observing an astronaut nearing a black hole’s event horizon—the barrier beyond which gravitation is so great that not even light can escape. He invites […]
On October 25, 2010, LWON welcomed a new occasional feature, “Ask Mr. Cosmology,” which invites readers to contribute to a mailbag full of questions about…The Wonders of the Universe! This entry comes from March 26, 2012. Q: Can neutrinos travel faster than light? Mr. Cosmology: Depends what you mean by “light.” Light, as in light rail? Yes. Light, […]
On September 4, 2014, LWON welcomed a new occasional contributor, Bad Science Poet. (Motto: “It’s not the science that’s bad—it’s the poetry!”™) The initial post (below) as well as subsequent contributions survive online. To this day, LWON hasn’t disavowed them. MAYBE, MAYBE NOT Is that uncertainty I see? Its position known to only me? Is […]
By the time you read this post, 2020 will have already arrived at the South Pole. Even if you read it the instant it pops up on the Internet, at 7 a.m. EST December 31, 2019, the New Year will already be an hour old. You don’t have to go to the South Pole to […]
The world of science entered November 6, 1919, as gray as a doughboy and exited it dancing like a flapper. That afternoon, British Astronomer Royal Sir Frank Dyson announced at a special meeting of the Royal Society in London that a recent experiment had validated a new theory of relativity. The occasion provided one of […]
