Tidbits:
Stories, Quotes, and FAQs.
The wisdom builder tidbits that feed the columns, articles, and trainer.
COSMOLOGY
Featured Story
Science
Story
Galaxies are Born
Expanding Universe
Galaxies emerged quickly from an initially simple universe. They started within a few hundred million years of the Big Bang. 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
Did Fred Hoyle coin the term Big Bang as an insult?
Big Bang
Even brilliant minds can cling to comforting ideas. Truth does not care what we prefer. It simply waits for evidence. Fred Hoyle meant “Big Bang” as a jab. The universe turned it into a headline.
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
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.
The Universe Before the Telescope
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 ...
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 ...
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
29 Dec 2024
Debut
Philosophy
Article
The Fermi Paradox is Too Anthropocentric
Fermi Paradox
Sun 29 Dec 2024
(2 years ago)
Updated 3 months ago.
TST COLUMN
21 Jan 2026
History
Article
The Universe Before the Telescope
Astronomy
Thu 11 Apr 2024
(2 years ago)
Updated 5 months ago.