http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress If you aren't going to care about something, may as well not care about astronomy Wed, 03 Dec 2008 06:14:33 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Hey, all. Long time listener... first time caller (so it seems)... As listeners know, I like to critique poor astronomy press releases. Part of the problem stems from writers who base entire articles on those press releases, with doing no vetting on their own. Can you imagine if political writers did ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/12/props-where-props-are-due/ We've mentioned The 365 Days of Astronomy podcast -- they are trying to find eight (8) people to make a podcast for them in January. Do you like astronomy? You could make a nice little 5-10 minute podcast about astronomy and you'd probably enjoy doing it! Listen to the sample ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/11/make-an-astronomy-podcast/ Michael and Doug ramble through a random selection of topics including Mars Phoenix, Hubble and iPhone rockets. Then the main event -- a great interview with Dr. JJ Kavelaars about Kuiper Belt objects and specifically the discovery of 2008 KV42, "the first ever trans-neptunian object known to orbit backwards around ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/11/podcast-interview-jj-kavelaars-and-2008-kv42/ This really is big news and Phil sums it up beautifully. We have unequivocally imaged other planets. Most of us were born in a world where we knew of no other planets besides our solar system. Now we have pictures of them. Our children will grow up in a world ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/11/images-of-other-worlds/ iPhone Rocket Launch and Interview (from MobileOrchard.com) from Mobile Orchard on Vimeo. This is a little video from a project I've been working on. It's, um, kinda-sorta related to space and stuff? http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/11/the-iphone-rocket/ Eta Carinae is one of the most interesting stars that we know of. It has an annual a recurring "event" that occurs every 5.5 years and it just happens to be occurring right now. A lot is known about the event but much mystery remains. We know that there is ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/10/eta-car-does-its-thing/ We have a new podcast on the feed, recorded on lovely Nantucket island during the fall AAVSO meeting. Aaron, Doug and I have a casual chat about a myriad of astronomical topics. Then we join Doug Welch as he interviews his old friend Dr. Geoff Clayton, an expert on R ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/10/new-podcast-interview/ Stephen Hawking is retiring from his position as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University. I hope he is doing OK. A friend in my local astronomy club forwarded along a list of all of the previous Lucasian Professors: * 1664 Isaac Barrow * 1669 Sir ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/10/stephen-hawking-to-leave-prestigious-position/ Fall is a great time to get outside and observe the stars with your naked eyes. The air is crisp. The bugs are gone. And now you have another reason -- the Great Worldwide Star Count From October 20 to November 3 (all dates 2008), go outside and see stars. ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/10/great-worldwide-star-count-oct-20-to-nov-3/ If you like astronomy and you like listening to podcasts then 2009 is going to be a very, very good year for you. Slacker Astronomy is going to be a strong supporter and contributor to The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast, the Daily Podcast of the IYA. The 365 Days ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/10/coming-soon-to-a-year-near-you/ We posted a new podcast to the feed a few days ago, full of fascinating insights, knee-slapping humor and Nobel-prize worthy oratory. You can't miss this episode! If you never listen to a podcast again in your life, it will be OK if you listen to this episode. This is ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/09/podcast-another-slacker-chat/ Oh noes! Hubble Space Telescope malfunctions, space shuttle repair mission uncertain, NASA says http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/09/hubble-hosed/ From xkcd. I wanted to post the cartoon in this post but they probably don't like that. The 46 billion year part is only off by a factor of 4 or so. http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/09/the-universe-concise-and-illustrated/ We recorded a great show last Tuesday, which I would have posted by now except I had a hard drive fail in my Mac mini and the show was lost. I tried various data recovery options to no avail. I'm bummed -- it was a nice show with Doug, Aaron ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/09/the-lost-episode/ Check out the latest from Cassini: Cassini images reveal the existence of a faint arc of material orbiting with Saturn's small moon Anthe. The moon is moving downward and to the right in this perspective. In this image, most of the visible material in the arc lies ahead of Anthe (2 kilometers, ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/09/the-anthe-arc-is-pretty-cool/ Brief discussions about Sophia and the upcoming Hubble servicing mission from the AAS meeting in Saint Louis. Cameos by Phil Plait (Bad Astronomy) and Mike Simonson (AAVSO). Also available in MP4 format. http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/09/video-sofia-and-hubble/ Andrew Fraknoi over at the ASP has put together a nice collection about women in astronomy. He describes it as "...a resource for those educators and students who wish to explore the challenges and triumphs of women [in astronomy] of the past and present." There are tons of really smart, really ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/08/astro-chicks/ It's been a while since we had a chit-chat show. Doug, Aaron, Travis and I had a chance to catch up recently and here it is, 49 minutes of fun. As usual, we did the show from 4 locations scattered over the US and Canada, so there are moments of ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/08/podcast-slacker-chat-with-doug-michael-aaron-and-travis/ Emily sums it up perfectly: The longer I listened to the "great planet debate" last week, the more strongly I felt that if it were up to me, I would define "planet" to mean "everything in the universe that's smaller than a star." The fact of the matter is, every time ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/08/what-is-a-planet/ The ecplising binary system Beta Lyrae has been imaged with interferometry. From the abstract: We present the first resolved images of the eclipsing binary Beta Lyrae, obtained with the CHARA Array interferometer and the MIRC combiner in the H band. The images clearly show the mass donor and the thick disk ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/08/eclipsing-binary-imaged/ Astronomers spend a lot of time and money getting telescopes with bigger apertures to try to collect more photons. The BIPH (Binocular Photon Machine) is a device which makes better use of the photons you do get, multiplying the signal 50,000 times, effectively tripling your aperture. Doug Welch and I interview ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/08/doug-baum-biph/ We have another interview up on the feed! Doug interviews Dr. Ethan Vishniac, a theoretical astrophysicist and editor-in-chief of The Astrophysical Journal, "a prestigious international journal founded in 1890 at the University of Chicago. Vishniac is only the third editor since its inception." ApJ, as it is known, is one of ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/07/interview-ethan-vishniac/ Well, we created a monster in Mike Simonsen, the AAVSO person who runs CVNet and Simostronomy. He has now created a very cool site which aggregates astronomy blogging, especially those blogs and posts which relate to stellar astrophysics and variables stars. It's called the AAVSO Writer's Bureau and the intent ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/07/variable-star-blogging/ (For the grammar nerds, my understanding is, if a proper name ends with an 's' you still put an apostrophe 's' after it. The only case where you put only the apostrophe after the 's' is when the word is plural e.g. "our clients' best interests".) I was going to write ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/07/polariss-pulsation/ I upgraded Wordpress and it screwed up the permalinks. I didn't like the format anyway so I have changed the permalink structure. This might create some problems for bookmarks and links from other sites. I'm going to fix that up when I get back home later this week. Thanks for ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/07/permalinks/ The right-hand column of the web site now includes a Donate button. We also recently added Google ads to the site. 100% of all income from these activities will be used to provide travel and technology opportunities for Slacker Astronomy so we can provide fun stuff for you to watch, ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/07/tip-jar/ http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/07/milky-way-galaxy-seeks-new-dwarf-companion/ The official trailer for the International Year of Astronomy (IYA) in 2009 is out! Check it out on YouTube by clicking here. Let's just say that "The Dark Night" is opening in skies all over the planet! http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/07/official-trailer-for-iya-2009/ You've maybe heard of cataclysmic variable stars. They are binary systems where one of the stars is stealing material from the other star due to their close proximity. This material forms a pancake around the star called an accretion disk. We've never imaged one of these systems but we have ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/07/superhumping/ We have a new podcast on the feed featuring an interview with Ben Wiehe of WGBH on how he conducts science cafes. Subscribe to the feed or click below to listen. You can also watch the video of just the interview portion. Interview: Science Cafes (MP3, 14.5MB, 15:27, Show Notes) http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/07/interview-ben-wiehe-on-science-cafes/ The AAVSO has posted their Variable Star of the Season and this time around it's FG Sagittae, a star that has given us an opportunity to watch it evolve over human timescales, something very rare in stellar evolution. ...many papers have detailed the remarkable evolution of FG Sge from a ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/07/a-white-dwarf-in-the-making/ OK, we gave in and added Google AdSense ads to the site. If you want to support Slacker Astronomy and help us do interviews, video and podcasts, please click the ads once in a while support our advertisers with your honest and heartfelt patronage. The more you click support our ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/07/support-slacker-astronomy-with-your-clicks/ Here's your weekly astronomy and space science fix at Carnival of Space #61. I could not get my sh*t together this week but I'm hoping to contribute to future carnivals. Weekly is a daunting thing for slackers. Go read up and tell us what you think! http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/07/carnival-of-space/ Slacker Astronomy founder and Tufts grad student Aaron Price has won a Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Award for his poster on BZ UMa. I stopped by Aaron's poster at AAS in St. Louis and he explained the work he presented while I grabbed it on video. Here you go -- enjoy! Aaron Price ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/06/slacker-wins-award/ Hear ye, hear ye! Assembled here is the official Carnival of Space No. 60 wherein the written assemblage of the musings of many eminent natural philosophers are here provided for your amusement and betterment. In order of receipt by yours truly and in the own very words of the author, notwithstanding ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/06/carnival-of-space-no-60/ Looking out at the night sky, it is easy to believe that we've learned everything there is to know about the brightest stars. Fortunately, they keep surprising us! A delightful paper has just appeared on the astro-ph preprint server which combines many elements of a great story. Regulus is the 22nd ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/06/regulus-just-when-you-think-you-know-a-star/ Hey, bloggers, writers and astronomy/space enthusiasts! We're hosting the next Carnival of Space right here at Slacker Astronomy. Here's Fraser's standard blurb: If you've got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it. It will help ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/06/space-out/ We bring you another fascinating cosmology interview with a genius over at the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics. This time we speak to Juan Collar, a name that I am, apparently, incapable of saying. He leads a group at Kavli which is pursuing several experimental approaches to detecting dark matter ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/06/interview-juan-collar-and-detecting-dark-matter/ Here is a short interview with Susana Deustua of the Space Telescope Science Institute about the International Year of Astronomy, with a brief cameo by Mike Simonson of the AAVSO. I caught them at the opening reception of the American Astronomical Society meeting in St. Louis. Interview: Susana Deustua of the ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/06/interview-susana-deustua/ I don't know if you noticed that Slacker Astronomy does not have advertising. We did have a sponsor or two in the early days. But the web site is entirely devoid of ads and we do no advertising in the more recent podcasts. What do you think of this? We are entering ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/06/not-ad-supported/ I had heard of Chris Lintott but I didn't really know why. It turns out he is an astronomical celebrity in the UK due to his work on The Sky At Night. He is also one of the main people behind the very clever crowdsourcing project called Galaxy Zoo. To the ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/06/chris-lintott/ Mike Simonson is a friend of mine and he is the creator of CVnet, a web site and email list that discusses cataclysmic variable stars. He's also an avid amateur observer and has been a great supporter of the AAVSO. In fact, he was recently hired by the AAVSO to ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/06/simostronomy-an-astronomy-blog-is-born/ Our friends Pamela Gay, Nancy Atkinson and Phil Plait have all the latest from this week's meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Saint Louis. I have a whole bunch of great video that I'll be uploading in the next few days or weeks as well. http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/06/aas-updates-at-astronomy-cast/ Here is a short interview with Rick Fienberg of Sky and Telescope magazine. I edited this and added some nice Slacker graphics but the new iMovie sucks and I couldn't get it to export properly. So this is the raw footage, taken at the American Astronomical Society meeting in St. ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/06/interview-rick-fienberg-of-sky-and-telescope/ There is a cool documentary coming out called 400 Years of the Telescope. We saw a preview of the trailer last night and it looked very nicely done. In addition, they had a special Sierra Nevada beer called Galileo's Astronomical Ale. It was quite good! http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/06/400-years-of-the-telescope-beer/ Hi. I just came back from the astro-drinking-blogger meetup. It was a lot of fun. With apologies to the people my brain is too dim to name individually, there was a very nice group of people there including Phil, Pamela, Chris, Sean, Nick and Nancy. I've had a couple of beers, if ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/06/the-life-astronomy-improves/ From AAS in St. Louis. http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/06/iya-new-media-overview/ This is a walk through Pamela Gay's very lovely house during a party she threw for astronomers in town for the AAS meeting. Who can you spot? http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/06/astro-bbq-at-pamelas/ I've been informed that there will be some serious astronomy blogger congregation in St. Louis, MO. Phil "Bad Astrology" Plait will be there along with Pamela Gay and some other people I haven't met but are soon to be my friends for life. Like you! So limber up your pint lifting ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/05/astro-drinking-in-st-louis/ Slacker Astronomy has been delinquent in promoting the Carnival of Space. I've always been a little wary of the word "space". It's a really odd and not that useful word to explain the universe beyond our little planet here. But people use the word "space" and we all know what ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/05/carnival-of-space-no-56/ We have a new podcast on the feed. Doug and I discuss the Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory, supernovae light echos and buying a star. Check out the show notes for more details. Ice Cube (MP3, 23.4MB, 25:27) http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/05/podcast-ice-cube-neutrino-observatory/ Slackerpedes, I upgraded the wiki software that runs Slackerpedia Galactica. Everything seems to be working OK. We had problems before where people couldn't register as new users. I just tested that and it seems to work fine. Let me know if you have a different experience. Let me say, the Slackerpedia Galactica ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/05/slackerpedia-galactica-update/ Hey, all. Please forgive me for this non-astronomy interlude. Our old friend (and Slacker Astronomy cofounder) Travis Searle has some exciting news and needs your help. His band is going to be on a local Boston reality/talent show and he needs your vote. Travis is the vocalist/keyboardist. Even if you ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/05/support-an-old-friend/ Special Correspondent Julie Wilbert brings us a podcast report on light pollution with members of the Minnesota Astronomical Society. Light Pollution (MP3, 17.2MB, 18:40) Subscribe! http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/05/podcast-light-pollution/ Stuart over at Astronomy Blog tackles and tackles again the reasons why you should not pay to "name a star" for yourself or a loved one. While it can be heartfelt to want to memorialize someone by naming a star, you can do that without sending a check to shady ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/05/astronomy-blog-reminds-us-dont-name-a-star/ Here is a nice video from the KQED QUEST Science Video Podcast called Amateur Astronomers. It features John Dobson, Timothy Ferris and many others. Looks like a pretty cool podcast in general. http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/05/amateur-astronomers-from-kqed/ I posted this to the feed a while ago. It's a short-ish podcast which discusses the history of Slacker Astronomy with Aaron Price, the founder of Slacker Astronomy, and includes random musings by yours truly about the future of the podcast/blog. I marked this explicit in iTunes because I use ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/04/whatever-the-hell-is-slacker-astronomy/ Our own Doug Welch wrote a very nice article in the latest issue of Sky and Telescope called "How to Hunt for Supernova Fossils in the Milky Way". I can't find a link to the article itself but S&T has a post about the article. It's really cool stuff -- an ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/04/doug-shows-us-the-light/ I'm taking a class on Differential Equations. These are hard to explain but I'm going to give it a try. To do so I am going to try to explain differential calculus in a nutshell. Your driving down the road in an automobile. You have an odometer in the car which ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/04/differential-equations/ We've had a report that our comments weren't working on this blog. I tested it and it worked OK for me. Can you please try to comment and/or email us at info@slackerastronomy.org if you have problems? Thank you! We have a new show in the works. Michael http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/04/please-comment/ It pains me deep in my heart that I am not on my way to the joint AAVSO/BAA meeting in Cambridge, England. I believe our good friends Doug and Pamela are both there. I have been a loyal AAVSO member for quite a few years now and I have been ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/04/not-in-cambridge/ We have a new show! Doug and I had a great chat with Brant Robertson, who is a Spitzer Fellow doing research at The Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics. Brant is a theoretical astrophysicist involved with computer simulations of the evolution of galaxies. Check this sh!t out: Credit: Brant Robertson, Spitzer ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/03/podcast-interview-with-brant-robertson/ Phil "The Bad Astronomer" Plait has a nice article on new results from Cassini. Coupled together, these two items indicate that if there is an ocean beneath the frozen crust of the moon, then it’s reasonably warm, and rich in organic compounds. We don’t know how life started on Earth, ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/03/enceladus-has-gas/ The folks at the Pi in the Sky project imaged a recent gamma-ray burst and it looks like it got bright enough to be seen by the unaided eye. It looks like it would have been visible for only 10-20 seconds and it would have been about as bright as ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/03/naked-eye-gamma-ray-burst/ This is really cool: The North Polar Region of Enceladus http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/03/high-rez-enceladus/ Every year, the Globe at Night project asks people around the world to get outside and observe the constellation Orion. Report your location and which of the charts best matches what you saw. This is a great slacker project. It doesn't take much time or any tools. You can do it ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/03/avoid-the-light-do-globe-at-night/ I've always wanted to take a shot of the moon during a total eclipse because it is the only time you can get stars in the background. Usually the moon is so bright that it drowns out all the stars. So I snapped a few photos tonight with my wife's digital ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/02/lunar-eclipse-2008/ I loved Merit-bound Alley's post title so much that I just stole it entirely. So you owe it to Joe over there to go read his post: Angry gods to eat moon tomorrow. And then get out and experience the eclipse tomorrow! http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/02/angry-gods-to-eat-moon-tomorrow/ Thomas F. Droege, founder of The Amateur Sky Survey (TASS), died on Monday, February 4th, 2008. He had been battling cancer. Tom was a unique character and TASS was a project I got involved in early in my amateur astronomy days. He was recently awarded an honorary lifetime membership to the ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/02/amateur-sky-survey-founder-dies/ Check out CASSIE (Cassini at Saturn Interactive Explorer). It uses some weird plugin but once installed you can zoom around the Cassini timeline and watch the view from the spacecraft. (Thanks Ben!) http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/02/cassini-eye-view-of-saturn/ Via Cosmic Log: Ten years after supernovae provided the first evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, a survey of more than 10,000 galaxies has provided independent confirmation that the cosmic speed-up factor known as dark energy is for real. Cosmic Log provides a very nice analysis of this press ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/01/the-acceleration-of-the-expansion-of-the-universe-confirmed/ The Keck Interferometer combines light very carefully from the two 10m Keck telescope to do super high resolution imaging. They can run the interferometer in "nulling" mode to remove the effects of bright stars and study the much dimmer surrounding areas. It's complicated stuff but it looks like the technique ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/01/keck-images-dust-around-nova-rs-oph/ NASA's Messenger spacecraft flew close by Mercury on 14 January 2008. Of course, it was taking pictures and managed to give scientists views of areas of the planet not imaged when Mariner 10 flew by in 1974 and 1975. Check out this detailed image of a pockmarked Mercury. This page ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/01/viewing-more-of-mercury/ The American Astronomical Society (AAS) has released the audio and video of the invited and prize lectures from their recent meeting in Austin. Furthermore, they are also making it available (eventually) via iTunes. Kevin B. Marvel, Executive Officer The AAS is now making the invited and prize lectures at each AAS ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/01/astronomy-talks-from-aas-online/ The BBC is reporting on an announcement from last week's AAS meeting: A giant cloud of hydrogen gas is racing towards a collision with the Milky Way, astronomers have announced. Smith's Cloud, as it is known, may set off spectacular fireworks when it smacks into our galaxy in 20-40 million years. 30 million ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/01/duck-huge-gas-cloud-will-hit-milky-way/ Our friends Pamela Gay and Fraser Cain from Astronomy Cast, along with astronomer/sex symbol/author Phil "The Bad Astronomer" Plait have all the latest from this week's meeting of the American Astronomical Society. My personal favorite of their reports: Hubble Sees a Double Einstein Ring http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/01/aas-at-astronomy-cast/ We just posted a new podcast to the feed: Slackerpedia Galactica 8.0: A Brief History of the Universe. So if you subscribe to the feed, the audio is probably already on your box. Or you can check out the show notes or download the MP3 file directly: Slackerpedia Galactica 8.0: ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/01/new-podcast-slackerpedia-galactica-80/ Are you on facebook? If so, you can add a new, highly-useless application which lets you view a random Slackerpedia Galactica article in facebook. I wrote this just to test out facebook's developer API, and it has been a fun little project. There is some really funny stuff in Slackerpedia Galactica ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2008/01/sg-on-facebook/ Scientists on neighboring Earth have not issued an asteroid advisory for Mars on 30 January 2008. An asteroid advisory would mean that an asteroid impact is possible within the next 100 sols. It is issued planet-wide because an impact may have planetary effects. However, the Torino Impact Hazard Scale seems ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/12/asteroid-advisory-not-issued-for-mars/ In the beginning t equaled zero seconds (t=0). A Big Bang-like thing happened and the universe began expanding. It was very hot and very dense cold and empty[1]. The universe expanded exponentially in a period known as inflation. Inflation ended around t=0.000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds.The universe was so hot that everything was ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/12/a-brief-history-of-the-universe/ The Podfather Adam Curry mentioned us and a few other science podcasts in PodFinder Episode 32 :She Blinded Me With Science Podcasts. Thanks Adam! http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/12/podfinder-she-blinded-me-with-science-podcasts-2/ Well, we pulled our heads out of our slacker haze and managed to post a new podcast on the feed! It's a First Principles® episode about stars. First Principles 4.0 - Inside Stars (MP3 file, 26.7MB, 28:24) http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/11/first-principles-40-inside-stars/ The BBC is reporting that Science is reporting that scientists are reporting that:Black holes are the most likely source of the mysterious ultra high-energy cosmic rays that bombard the planet... Observations at the world's largest cosmic ray detector suggest the particles are emitted by huge black holes in the middle ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/11/black-holes-rays/ A nice time series of Comet Holmes from a fellow member of the Minnesota Astronomical Society. http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/10/the-comet-is-growing/ Where's the comet? Right here. http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/10/orbit/ The folks over at space.com are reporting on a comet that has brightened ridiculously and is now visible to the unaided eye. Comet Holmes...was no brighter than magnitude 17 in mid-October...But the comet's brightness has suddenly rocketed all the way up to 3rd-magnitude, brightening nearly 400,000-times in less than 24-hours! ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/10/naked-eye-comet/ Education and public outreach (EPO) is very important. If it interests you, you may want to check out the new issue of Astronomy Education Review, which describes itself as "a lively electronic compendium of research, news, resources and opinion". One article that looks interesting is entitled Teaching Scientific Logic: Theories ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/10/speaking-of-epo/ I've had a paper accepted for publication in the December, 2007 issue of PASP, a top tier astronomy journal. You can read it here. (Notice a fellow slackerpede in the coauthor list.) This is only my second primary authored paper in a major astronomy journal. My others have all been in ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/10/publishing/ I am taking a cosmology course, which explains my recent (and probably upcoming) posts on cosmology. One thing people ask often is whether cosmology is metaphysics or philosophy more so than a science. It is hard for people to comprehend that we can test our theories in cosmology even though ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/10/physical-cosmology/ Until I saw the movie "October Sky," I hadn't realized that people went out and saw Sputnik fly overhead 50 years ago. Now, we can watch the International Space Station (ISS) and a wide variety of artificial satellites fly by. I've taken pictures of the ISS and Space Shuttle flying side-by-side. ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/10/spotting-the-space-station/ "Dark energy" is the phrase we use to describe an observed phenomena. That phenomena is the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. Wikipedia explains: In 1998 observations of Type Ia supernovae suggested that the expansion of the universe is speeding up. In the past few years, these observations have been ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/10/dark-energy/ Check out these amazing photos of the recent space shuttle mission. http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/10/wow/ We recently passed the 50 year anniversary of Sputnik. The fact that we (the human race) were able to get an artificial satellite orbiting the planet represented a major leap forward. You need to understand physics and harness a lot of energy in just the right way to get out ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/10/a-question-of-design/ Continuing the where is theme... I am not gone, but graduate school has taken over my life. I had a ton of nice SA goals for the summer but almost none were accomplished thanks to the unexpected demand of graduate research during the summer (I foolishly thought I'd have summer ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/09/where-is-aaron/ The forums haven't gone anywhere -- they are right here, from which I quote: We are going to decommission this discussion area. We are doing it for a few reasons. One, there just isn't that much activity here and we don't really use it for much on an official basis. Two, ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/09/where-are-the-forums/ We've gotten some emails from over the pond due to a Slacker Astronomy mention over at the BBC. Webscape author Kate Russell writes: What makes this site such a good watch, or listen, or read, is that as well as being jokey and enthusiastic, there is a real depth of knowledge. Thanks, ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/09/welcome-brits/ A while back I wrote a post about energy. Here's another example of energy that I think is interesting. When you take an automobile which is initially at rest and get it going 55 miles per hour, it gains kinetic energy. KE = (1/2)mv^2. So a car that weighs 2000 lbs. ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/09/energy-part-2/ The BBC reports: Dark matter clues in oldest stars: "In cold dark matter the particles move very slowly; in warm dark matter they move very quickly," he explained. "We found that if the dark matter consists of these fast moving particles, then the first stars form in very long, thin filaments...Some of ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/09/strings-of-stars/ Finally, another exciting podcast installment from the slackers! This episode features chit-chat with Travis, Doug and Michael and an interview with Timothy Ferris. Listen now (MP3, 48:06, 33.2 MB) The show notes are on the Slackerpedia Galactica. http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/09/interview-timothy-ferris/ I've been playing with the look and organization of the blog a bit. Please let me know what you think! It's a bit of a work in progress but some attention has been long overdue. And really, in all seriousness, we truly do have a new show almost all set to ... http://www.slackerastronomy.org/wordpress/2007/09/new-look/