Ethan Siegel

Yesterday

Sometimes I read The Straight Dope, which is usually full of interesting questions and (relatively) well-researched answers. But the message board is another story. Sometimes you get good questions with no good answers, like this one: How far could Superman hit a baseball? Let’s assume, for the purposes of answering this question, that Superman basically [...]

December 6

It’s dull, grey, and wintery in Portland right now, and will be for the next few months. It reminds me of a Dennis Leary conversation: My point of view in that chapter is about raising children a certain way, and this sort of glorification of victimhood. The idea of “I get depressed and like to [...]

December 5

Watch. Seriously, just watch this video first. It’s a video of the surface of Mars, and all the information on why it’s important is below. Wow. So it looks like sand dunes, or perhaps eroded sedimentary rock. Since we have those on Earth, I can show you what [...]

December 3

Everyone knows about our Sun; this large, massive, nuclear furnace that powers everything in our Solar System. It’s a sight to behold; even on a cloudy day like today it still illuminates the entire world. One of the most striking things about the Sun? It’s HUGE! With a diameter of 1,400,000 km, it’s [...]

December 1

My friend Lucas wrote a story about astronaut pens that I’d like to share with you: When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ball-point pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat this problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion developing a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, [...]

November 29

We hosted Thanksgiving this year, and our menu included both alcohol: Jameson’s Irish Whiskey Tanqueray Gin Newcastle Brown Ale Fat Tire Amber Ale Sierra Nevada Christmas Ale PBR As well as some amazing food: Mashed sweet potatoes and yams Cranberry relish with strawberries and pineapple Green bean casserole Oven baked dinner rolls White chocolate chip and craisin cookies Key lime pie Carrot Cake from scratch and the featured item: THE TURDUCKEN! But [...]

November 28

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite authors. He comes up with lots of interesting science-fiction scenarios, like instantaneous travel through space in Sirens of Titan, humans causing their own extinction by making the whole populace sterile in Galapagos, and perhaps most famously, freezing all the water on the planet in Cat’s Cradle. How did [...]

November 27

When SNL was funny for more than Tina Fey’s cameos in an opening skit: Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I’ll let you know how the turducken comes out…

November 26

And I don’t mean to single NASA out, either. (The National Science Foundation has the same problem.) But there’s something very, very wrong with the way that the business side of these endeavors are run. Let me explain. As scientists, our job is to learn about the Universe. To understand what the [...]

November 24

It’s 103 years after Einstein first formulated his Theory of Special Relativity, which explains what happens to objects near the speed of light. But SWAB reader Jacinth wants to do one better, and asks: What will happen if we can actually travel at the speed of light? It’s a great question, and provides a lot of [...]