Category Archives: Light

Light in the Universe

Posted on February 16, 2014 by Chad F

Light is a very meaningful aspect of the universe that allowed us to make the observations about space that we have made so far.  The light that stars produce allows us to determine many things about them.  Their absorption line spectra allow us to determine their composition and the Doppler effect allows us to determine […] Continue reading →

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Travel Inside a Black Hole

Posted on February 16, 2014 by gradytlynch

Although we usually think of black holes as extremely massive objects, anything in the universe with mass can theoretically become a black hole. As this video discusses, it is mathematically possible for a black hole to form with the mass of the earth, or even Mount Everest. However, the object’s Schwarzschild radius, the size it […] Continue reading →

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A Slower Speed of Light

Posted on January 27, 2014 by gradytlynch

The open source MIT game “A Slower Speed of Light” is a first person game in which the player collects orbs that slow down time. As the game progresses, the user will find that the game becomes harder as the speed of light decreases, approaching the player’s own speed of movement. This brings many strange […] Continue reading →

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Light Travel Time: An Impediment to our Knowledge of the Universe

Posted on January 27, 2014 by Leigh

Despite common misperceptions, a light year is a measure of distance, not time. It is the only feasible way to measure distances in the universe because the universe is so vast that measurements of distance used on earth would quickly … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Faster than you can say, “3.0 times ten to the eighth meters per second”

Posted on January 27, 2014 by thegarrettnondorf

  photo from here When I was young, I read a biography of Einstein’s life. (If he wasn’t so brilliant, we might know him as Honest Al). In this book, a story was told about young Albert at the ship docks. A worker had Al stand 50 yards away from him and swung a hammer at … Continue reading Faster than you can say, “3.0 times ten to the eighth meters per second” → Continue reading →

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Beyond The Speed of Light?

Posted on January 27, 2014 by joshkphilips

How concrete are our laws of physics? Could there be a way to bend the laws and essentially travel beyond the speed of light? Could such an ability open the possibilities for interstellar space travel? These are some of the questions that surround the intriguing idea of wormholes. Two wormholes could in theory act as […] Continue reading →

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The Speed of Light is Pretty Speedy

Posted on January 27, 2014 by hughavanheesewijk

Everyone appreciates illustrations of any sort that put very large things into perspective. These illustrations can come in many different forms, but I think that the most effective ones are the ones that use comparisons. These comparison illustrations can take something that is absolutely massive and crunch it into something almost manageable. This is a […] Continue reading →

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Different speeds of light

Posted on January 26, 2014 by drewhamilton0

Although we often refer to “the speed of light” as a singular value (c = 299,792,458 m/s), the truth is that when we see light, it is actually moving slower than this speed. This is because the light we see is not moving in a vacuum, but through our atmosphere instead. Light moves at different speeds… Continue reading →

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The Grandest Experiment

Posted on January 24, 2014 by jblubin

The majority of physics experiments take place in a small lab found in the basement of a university science building. However, for a grand hypothesis, one needs a grand experiment. The year was 1919 and a nervous Albert Einstein awaited the results of an experiment on the scale never before seen nor bested up to … Continue reading The Grandest Experiment → Continue reading →

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The Cosmic Speed Limit

Posted on January 19, 2014 by jblubin

It was Einstein who only came up with his Theory of Special Relativity after having been inspired by a daydream of himself riding on a beam of light across the cosmos. What a journey that must have been, despite its fantasy; our only idea of what travelling at the speed of light may look like […] Continue reading →

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