I’ve been tremendously lucky to have the opportunity to work with BBC Earth and Pomona Pictures over the past few months, creating a series of animated videos to explain ideas in physics, astronomy, and even a little philosophy. Here they are:
Read more "Science videos!"I’m telling a story on Februay 4th, in Brooklyn, as part of a Story Collider show. Some of you might remember that I told a story with Story Collider once before and it was a blast. This time, I’ll be talking about a run-in I had with a (literally) crazy film crew; more than that I don’t want to say just yet.
Read more "Telling stories and teaching classes"Here’s some of what I’ve written and coded for New Scientist: Black holes, space brains, hunting for planets around distant suns, why honey is stringy, and more…
Read more "Black Holes, Lifeloggers, and Space Brains"Some of my friends and I use big computers to try to find out where stuff was — all of the stuff, in every place out in space — in the first tiny part of a second, at the beginning of time. We do this by looking at where all of the stuff in space is now, and trying to guess what that means about where stuff was before. But it is very hard to do that, even with a big computer….
Read more "Where were all of the things a long time ago? Can we find out by looking at things now?"For the first time, a part of the dark matter “skeleton” of the universe has revealed itself. The discovery strengthens our understanding of the universe’s history and tells us more about the formation of galaxies like our own, billions of years ago.
Current theories about the largest structures in the universe predict the existence of giant structures made of dark matter — the unseen substance that comprises over 80% of the matter in the universe — between most galaxy clusters. Now, for the first time, a team of cosmologists led by Jörg Dietrich at University Observatory Munich has found hard evidence that the long-sought-after strands of dark matter actually exist….
Read more "Seeing Strands in the Cosmic Web"