Ugh, Reinabelle Reyes is a Spurs fan too! All the love.
The Filipina who proved Einstein right
Meet Reinabelle Reyes, a 28-year-old astrophysicist who astounded scientists all over the world when she proved Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity on a cosmic scale. That was when she was only 26.
Einstein’s theories have been verified many times, but it took Reyes and her Princeton University collaborators to verify his Theory of General Relativity, beyond the confines of our solar system.
Led by Reyes, the research team made headlines back in 2010 when they showed how galaxies up to 3.5 billion light years away are clustered together in exactly the way General Relativity predicts. They came up with a new astronomical measurement, which indicates how galaxies are pulled together by gravity, just as Einstein theorized.
Her findings also support the existence of Dark Energy—a force greater than gravity once merely imagined by scientists. This is a big deal, because, even NASA tells us, pinning down the exact properties of Dark Energy is among the most significant problems facing science today. According to the NASA website, Dark Energy “is the deepest mystery in physics, and its resolution is likely to greatly advance our understanding of matter, space, and time.”
Reinabelle Reyes is among the scientists involved in unraveling this profound mystery.
So, I guess that Jacob Barnett has even more to disprove now? If he can. Either way, I love this news.
Source: rappler.com
Can I Help You?
As much as I’m not into space, I still love the people and humor who are.
Source: quantumaniac
The Physics of Straws
Straws, how complicated can they be? Most people have a few misconceptions about how straws work, but just like everything else - the answer lies with physics.
Upon placing the straw in a regular cup of water, the pressures inside and outside of the straw are equal! You can see this by noticing that the level of the water and in the glass are the same - both reach the same height of the straw.
When you suck on the straw, you are effectively decreasing the pressure in your mouth - and this lowers the pressure at the top of the straw. As soon as this happens, the force of the atmosphere pushing on the water in the glass is higher than the force of the gases inside the straw. Since pressure acts from high to low, the atmosphere forces the liquid water up the straw. In essence, you are not sucking the water into your mouth, but the atmosphere is pushing it!
Explain this to your friends the next time you’re out to eat - then write down a few bogus equations and they’ll think you’re a genius.
This makes me happy.
Source: quantumaniac
If you’re not going to be present when two of the most influential people to the STEM fields are there to present their 5 minute speeches, maybe you shouldn’t be on the damn Senate Science committee. I hope every one of those senators loses their job
A note, a signpost on our road to either Our Downfall or Our Intellectual Rebirth. Our choice.
“Preaching to the choir. Preaching to the preachers.” Go figure that there are only four “preachers” there. Really?
An aside: Neil deGrasse Tyson is a great American hero. Also: Why aren’t they getting the whole, “our culture needs to change” message?
Source: tumblrpigeon
A study of vultures at the Texas State University known as ‘the body farm’ is calling into question many of the benchmarks detectives have long relied on. For more than five weeks, a woman’s body lay undisturbed in a secluded Texas field before it skeletonized by a flock of vultures within hours. Experienced investigators would normally have interpreted the absence of flesh and the condition of the bones as evidence that the woman had been dead for six months, possibly even a year or more.
Photo credit: David J. Phillip / AP
I’m curious about the evidence that vultures would leave and why this hasn’t been looked into before.
(via theossuary)
Source: MSN
Physicist husband and future physicist baby.
LOOK AT THAT BABY. Socute. I normally just like biochemists, because I’m biased like that. But look at that expression. D’awwwwwww.
Source: lookslikescience
