Happy Birthday to Stephen Hawking! The celebrated physicist is 71 years old today. One of our era’s most brilliant minds, he has contributed both to cosmological science as well as to the public’s understanding of the natural world. All this despite being diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease 50 years ago, a diagnosis that usually means one has years to live, not decades. He is an example of both the strength of the human spirit and the power of the human mind. Celebrate by watching his 1992 film A Brief History of Time, free in its entirety, at Open Culture. Oh, and it’s also Elvis Presley’s birthday or something.
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Happy Birthday to Stephen Hawking!

The celebrated physicist is 71 years old today. One of our era’s most brilliant minds, he has contributed both to cosmological science as well as to the public’s understanding of the natural world. All this despite being diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease 50 years ago, a diagnosis that usually means one has years to live, not decades. He is an example of both the strength of the human spirit and the power of the human mind.

Celebrate by watching his 1992 film A Brief History of Time, free in its entirety, at Open Culture.

Oh, and it’s also Elvis Presley’s birthday or something.

Happy Birthday NASA (and Neil deGrasse Tyson)!!

Neil deGrasse Tyson Testifies Before Senate on the Spirit of Exploration

Dr. Tyson and NASA share a birthday, more or less. Both were born in the first week of October, 1958. To celebrate NASA and Neil’s 54th year in existence, here is the inspirational astrophysicist’s appeal to the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on the utter necessity of space exploration … not only to the health of our economy and our technology, but also to our culture.

When he showed up in Washington earlier this year to talk to them, only about half the committee showed up to listen. But as a nation, we would all do well to turn our ears in the direction of people like Neil.

As a birthday present tot hem both, let’s keep doing what we can to push science forward with the coming generations.

(via Brain Pickings)

Source: brainpickings.org

Happy  22nd Birthday to the Hubble!! On April 24th, the Hubble Space Telescope marks its 22nd year in orbit. That means its mission has lasted longer than many of your lives, and it’s still churning out amazing work (no pressure though). Sources say that the Hubble promises that it’s not get all crazy like it did last year on its birthday. To celebrate, the Hubble folks have released this beautiful image of 30 Dor, a star factory in the Large Magellenic Cloud full of high-energy glowing gas. A fine piece of #starporn to decorate your dashboard with. But why stop there? We can do better than this picture. How about a super-huge 4,000 x 3,200 pixel version? Is that big enough for ya? No? Then how about an amazing zoomable version so you can dig deep down into the onion-like layers, a virtual rabbit hole of awesomeness? Still not enough? If you really must go bigger, I have to warn you … this is a pretty hefty link, and it probably won’t open in your browser. Better to right-click and save. Here is an image that laughs in the face of any adjective I try to place before it. Behold a 267-Mb 20,323 x 16,259 pixel smorgasbord of starry goodness, over 300 million pixels of HOLY CRAP. BONUS: How these amazing images are created and edited by master star pornagraphers. (↬ Bad Astronomy)
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Happy  22nd Birthday to the Hubble!!

On April 24th, the Hubble Space Telescope marks its 22nd year in orbit. That means its mission has lasted longer than many of your lives, and it’s still churning out amazing work (no pressure though). Sources say that the Hubble promises that it’s not get all crazy like it did last year on its birthday.

To celebrate, the Hubble folks have released this beautiful image of 30 Dor, a star factory in the Large Magellenic Cloud full of high-energy glowing gas. A fine piece of #starporn to decorate your dashboard with.

But why stop there? We can do better than this picture.

How about a super-huge 4,000 x 3,200 pixel version? Is that big enough for ya?

No? Then how about an amazing zoomable version so you can dig deep down into the onion-like layers, a virtual rabbit hole of awesomeness?

Still not enough? If you really must go bigger, I have to warn you … this is a pretty hefty link, and it probably won’t open in your browser. Better to right-click and save. Here is an image that laughs in the face of any adjective I try to place before it. Behold a 267-Mb 20,323 x 16,259 pixel smorgasbord of starry goodness, over 300 million pixels of HOLY CRAP.

BONUS: How these amazing images are created and edited by master star pornagraphers.

(↬ Bad Astronomy)

Source: blogs.discovermagazine.com

Albert Einstein: Why Light is Quantum, and Happy Birthday

Pi Day (3.14) is also Einstein’s birthday. While you marvel at the serendipitous nature of that quantum coincidence, let Minute Physics tell you about the amazing science he was doing at age 26, determining the quantum nature of light.

You’ll never look at your birthday candles the same way.

(ᔥ minutephysics)

Source: youtube.com

Stephen Hawking at 70: Fellow Scientists Pay Tribute His peers and colleagues offer tributes, including: He fits in as a person who dares to go out on the leading edge. One of the scientists today at this conference said, thank you Stephen for making life so difficult for us. What he meant by that was coming up with theories that send everybody scurrying, it just throws a spanner into the works. It challenges everybody all the time and that’s one of his greatest contributions. - Kitty Ferguson I think he is simply a miracle of nature and, of course, he did a lot of influential things that helped us theorists, from entropy in black holes to Hawking radiation. The combination of his handicapped position combined with his enormous psychological and rational state is fantastic. - Jiri Bicak It is amazing that [his work] came from somebody with his condition, but it’s even more amazing that it came from one person at all. - Steven Carlip (via The Guardian)
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Stephen Hawking at 70: Fellow Scientists Pay Tribute

His peers and colleagues offer tributes, including:

He fits in as a person who dares to go out on the leading edge. One of the scientists today at this conference said, thank you Stephen for making life so difficult for us. What he meant by that was coming up with theories that send everybody scurrying, it just throws a spanner into the works. It challenges everybody all the time and that’s one of his greatest contributions. - Kitty Ferguson

I think he is simply a miracle of nature and, of course, he did a lot of influential things that helped us theorists, from entropy in black holes to Hawking radiation. The combination of his handicapped position combined with his enormous psychological and rational state is fantastic. - Jiri Bicak

It is amazing that [his work] came from somebody with his condition, but it’s even more amazing that it came from one person at all. - Steven Carlip

(via The Guardian)