Page 4 - Ned Wright News Today

“Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.” -Laurence J. Peter This past week was a super busy one on Starts With A Bang, from dark energy to stars to a fabulous book review and more! Just in the last seven days, we’ve looked at:

“We are a singularity that makes music out of noise because we must hurry. We make a harvest of loneliness and desiring in the blank wasteland of the cosmos.” -Jack Gilbert Although you had lots to say, it came almost exclusively on two of our posts, so let's jump right in and see if we can expand what we've been talking about on your Comments of the Week!

"What do we mean by setting a man free? You cannot free a man who dwells in a desert and is an unfeeling brute. There is no liberty except the liberty of some one making his way towards something. Such a man can be set free if you will teach him the meaning of thirst, and how to trace a path to a well. Only then will he embark upon a course of action that will not be without significance. You could not liberate a stone if there were no law of gravity -- for where will the stone go, once it ...

"...it is reasonable to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star." -Arthur Eddington, 1926 (For Mike H., who wanted to know.) The Sun -- like nearly all stars -- burns bright through its nuclear reactions, sending light, heat and energy out into the Universe over a timespan of billions of years.

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before." -Edgar Allen Poe Earlier this week, the Nobel Prize in Physics was announced for the discovery that the Universe is not only expanding,

"You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in." -Arlo Guthrie You know the story. Every galaxy we look out at, with hardly any exceptions, appears to be moving away from us. Not only that, but the farther away a galaxy appears to be, the faster it appears to move away from us!

“The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.” -Bertolt Brecht One of the most frequent questions I get about the Universe -- as a cosmologist -- isn't quite about the Big Bang in and of itself.

"Science progresses best when observations force us to alter our preconceptions." -Vera Rubin I want you to think about the Universe. The whole thing; about everything that physically exists, both visible and invisible, about the laws of nature that they obey, and about your place in it. It's a daunting, terrifying, and simultaneously beautiful and wondrous thing, isn't it?

"But some of the greatest achievements in philosophy could only be compared with taking up some books which seemed to belong together, and putting them on different shelves; nothing more being final about their positions than that they no longer lie side by side. The onlooker who doesn't know the difficulty of the task might well think in such a case that nothing at all had been achieved." -Wittgenstein One of the most fundamental questions about the Universe that anyone can ask i...

"By now you must know that your father can never be turned from the Dark Side. So will it be with you." -Emperor Palpatine, Return of the Jedi You've heard about dark matter. It's the notion that the Universe is somehow very much different than the small corner of it that we're most familiar with.