Dating advice from the multiverse...
[video: 60 sec]

tiktok.com/@neildegrasset…

Might this be you?

“I always voted at my party’s call. And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.”
-Sir Joseph Porter’s Song, 1878
Gilbert & Sullivan (HMS Pinafore)

Cosmic Perspectives in pop culture:
A scientifically literate lyric…

“We are star dust, billion year old carbon”
-Joni Mitchell, Woodstock (1969)

Though I'm Bronx native, as an astrophysicist I can't hate a team named after space exploration.

Congratulations to the Houston @Astros for defeating my hometown New York New York Yankees in the MLB ALCS.

Back in 1965, NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center, located in Houston, Texas, inspired the name of the Astrodome, the Astroturf it contained, and the baseball team that played on it

Not a big book buyer, but have nothing else to do when stuck in morning traffic?

If interested, Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization also lives as an audio book, which I narrated.

Here’s a free sample, the entire Preface.

[Audio: 3 min]
on.soundcloud.com/MtbUh

Sometimes I wonder whether the real discomfort in Hell comes not from the heat, but from the humidity.

As stunning an image of our nearby universe as I have seen. Deep within the Eagle Nebula, find the “Pillars of Creation,” a stellar nursery made famous by the Hubble Telescope. Now laid bare by the infrared cameras of the NASA Webb Telescope telescope.

This season, the salaries of the two highest paid New York New York Yankees players combined is about the same as the entire payroll of the Cleveland Guardians.

Looks like Halloween anticipation began early this year. A full month of it. If that’s the new normal, it means going forward we’ll be thinking about spooky, scary stuff for 1/12 of our lives.

Very last Mach-talk...

The top speed of Speed Racer’s car, the Mach 5 was Mach 0.33

Last Mach-talk...

The top speed of the Ford Mustang, 5-Liter, V-8 car they call “Mach 1” is Mach 0.2

Even more Mach-talk…

The NASA orbiting International International Space Station travels 17,000 mph in the near-vacuum of space. While that’s 22x the speed of sound (at sea-level & room temperature), it’s not Mach-anything.

The ISS is not traveling through a medium that has a sound-speed.

More Mach-talk…

“Mach,” in reference to speeds relative to sound, is named for the nineteenth-century Austrian philosopher-physicist Ernst Mach who, among other subjects, researched shock waves in air, which we more commonly call sonic booms.

Mach-Talk...

Your speed relative to the speed of sound in the medium you are traveling is called your Mach Number. Mach-1 is the speed of sound. Mach-2 is 2x the speed of sound, etc. At Mach-1 and higher you create a sonic boom. High Mach numbers cause more energetic booms.

A rare, extended conversation on the @ColbertLateShow.

…on JWST Images, cosmic discovery, science literacy, and life.

[View: 17min}
haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/conversa…

What the last Ice Age has to do with Christopher Columbus…

[Video: 7m30s]
youtube.com/watch?v=vGc4mg…

If you need another reason for thinking Christopher Columbus was a dick...

[Video: 4m30s]
youtube.com/watch?v=vGc4mg…

October 9, 2022

Full Moon tonight -- rising at sunset, setting at sunrise.

Had this October Moon occurred three days earlier, it would have fallen closer to the September equinox than did the September Full Moon, and would have then earned this year’s title of Harvest Moon.