Tidbits:
Stories, Quotes, and FAQs.
The wisdom builder tidbits that feed the columns, articles, and trainer.
COSMOLOGY
Featured Story
Science
Story
13.4 Billion Years Ago
Galaxies are Born
Verified. Empirically supported and rationally deduced.
Expanding Universe
Galaxies formed early in cosmic history, within a few hundred million years of the Big Bang. This shows that structure emerged quickly from an initially simple universe. Observations confirm that gravity wasted little time turning primordial gas into organized systems, even before features we now consider typical. Such as central supermassive black holes commonly found in galaxies.
Featured Quote
Philosophy
Quote
“We are all connected to each other biologically, to the Earth chemically, and to the rest of the universe atomically.”
- Carl Sagan
- circa 1980
We Are Stardust
Carl Sagan had many similar quotes to this.
Carl Sagan reminds us that we are intimately connected to the universe. The particles that form our bodies are borrowed from a cosmic pool of just 17 particles and four forces. Even more humbling, the molecules within us were forged in the hearts of stars, linking us directly to the vast cosmos that surrounds us.
Featured FAQ
Science
FAQ
Is Trump simply wrong when he says water destroys magnets?
Magnets
Water does nothing to magnets, not even temporary ones. And permanent magnets are only “permanent” on a human scale. Over time, the forces and interactions of the universe slowly change the alignment of their magnetic domains. Most permanent magnets last for decades or centuries unless you heat them, strike them, or expose them to a strong opposing magnetic field. In deep space, some might hold their magnetism for billions of year
Cosmology
The Universe
Our origin story.
The universe is a self-reconfiguring machine, with nothing being created from the void nor destroyed to nothing. At the core of reality are four forces guiding 17+ particles. We see these particles combine into atoms and molecules. Those molecules bundle into materials, and those materials evolve into life.
The Fermi Paradox is Too Anthropocentric
Michael Alan Prestwood
December 29, 2024
The Fermi Paradox is the common framework for thinking about the odds of alien life, but we need more data before it can become accurate enough to be useful.
Speculative Ideas in Science: Rip-Bang, Bigfoot, and Beyond
June 5, 2024
Speculation has a real place in science, but speculative ideas are not established truths. They are starting points, possibilities, or failed guesses that must eventually ...
The Universe Before the Telescope
April 11, 2024
Before instruments extended our vision, the universe was understood through naked-eye observation—the Sun, Moon, and five wandering planets set against a backdrop of stars that ...
Must-Reads
Big Bang
The End of the Universe Explained
We do not know the ultimate fate of the universe, but the leading ideas are that it expands forever, collapses and starts over, or ends ...
Astronomy
The Expanding Universe Explained
ΛCDM remains the leading cosmological model because our current best measurements indicate gravity is not strong enough to stop the universe’s expansion.
New Ideas
Structure
The Islands-of-Universes Idea
We often talk as if our universe is a self-contained whole, but beyond the limits of observation, we simply do not know what else may ...
Physics
Cosmocycles: A Proposed Cosmic Calendar Based on Cyclic Universe Model
If some version of the Big Crunch model ever returns to favor, we can picture one full cosmic cycle, a kind of cosmic year. Cosmocycles ...
Updated ARTICLES
TST COLUMN
05 Jun 2024
Philosophy
Article
Speculative Ideas in Science: Rip-Bang, Bigfoot, and Beyond
Idea Theory Framework
Wed 5 Jun 2024
(2 years ago)
Updated 1 week ago.
TST COLUMN
29 Dec 2024
Debut
Philosophy
Article
The Fermi Paradox is Too Anthropocentric
Fermi Paradox
Sun 29 Dec 2024
(1 year ago)
Updated 2 months ago.
TST COLUMN
21 Jan 2026
History
Article
The Universe Before the Telescope
Astronomy
Thu 11 Apr 2024
(2 years ago)
Updated 4 months ago.





