Interactive Scale of the Universe

Here's a nice interactive graphic attempting to help you visualize the massive range of scales of the universe.  As you zoom in and out, the scale is on the bottom, right (as an exponential).  There are a few inaccuracies (the galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field were NOT 12.7 billion light years away 12.7 billion years ago).  But the graphics are really nice.  Zoom out!  Our class deals with everything > 10^7 meters across. 

Prof.'s Research in the News

Here is the press release from the Space Telescope Science Institute (the place that runs the Hubble Space Telescope).

Einstein, Meet Canseco

Jose Canseco Just Explained Gravity to the Internet

As he said, he may not be 100% right.  Keep that in mind.

This is awesome.

Collective Motion of Moshers at Heavy Metal Concerts

"the measured speed distribution in mosh pits was well fit by the equilibrium speed distribution of classical 2D gasses otherwise known as the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution"

 

Google gives a shout out to Copernicus

Check out the google doodle today, celebrating Nicolaus Copernicus' birthday.  More info here.

An asteroid/meteor expert has written about her estimates of the size of the recent meteor over Chelyabinsk, Russia.  The estimate is that the object has a diameter of ~15 m and the blast had an energy equivalent to ~300 killatons of TNT.  Wow.  

Lucky Imaging

This is a nice little video of an amateur astronomer using a technique - "lucky imaging" - that astronomer's are using more and more.  The technique basically takes advantage of the fact that, if you take very short exposures (< 10 ms), occasionally the distortion from seeing is not large.  So if you can take a large number of exposures and only use the sharpest 5-10% of them, you can get an image that is much higher resolution.  Sometimes it can even approach the diffraction limit.  Of course, the method has a downside in that you have to throw away most of the images, most of the photons.  But if the objects you're photographing are bright, you can get away with it.