Starstuff Squared

This post presents the supplemental readings for the fourth (I) and fifth (II) episodes of the Cosmos reboot. These materials are cross-posted to Tumbld Thoughts.

I. Stellar Evolution is Six Points the Natural Law

Here are the supplemental readings for Cosmos, episode IV: "A Sky Full of Ghosts". The readings are organized by theme, and relate to scenes in the episode.

1. The Speed of Light is Not Attainable:
Life's Little Mysteries Staff   Can Matter Travel at Light Speed? LiveScience, September 27 (2012).

Variable Speed of Light: Einstein's theory of General Relativity. Speed of Light in Gravity blog.

2. Relativity Is Not Rocket Science -- it's much harder:
Minute Physics   Relativity Isn't Relative. YouTube, March 28 (2013).

Wolfson, R.   Simply Einstein: Relativity Demystified. W.W. Norton (2003).

3. The Earth is Not a Sphere (and the horizon is an illusion):
Choi, C.Q.   Strange but true: Earth is not a sphere. Scientific American, April 12 (2007).

Tyson, N.D.   On Being Round. Natural History Magazine, March (1997).

4. The Universe is Not Flat:
Archive of images from the Hubble telescope (Hubblesite).

Weiss, M.   What Causes the Hubble Redshift? Original Usenet Physics FAQ (1994).

5. Life in Space is Not Easy to Understand:
Loftin, R.B. and Kenney, P.   Training the Hubble space telescope flight team. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 15(5), 31-37 (1995).

COURTESY: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Halpern, P.   How large is the observable universe? The Nature of Reality blog, October 10 (2012).

Ceurstemont, S.   What a trip through a wormhole would look like. New Scientist TV, March 13 (2012).

6. Other Things that are Not Well-known:

History of Cyanotype. COURTESY: Alternative Photography and John Herschel.

II. The Lightness of Starstuff

Here are the supplementary readings for the fifth episode of the Cosmos reboot. The readings are organized by theme and observation. These relate loosely to scene and observation.

This Style of Popularization is Frustrating:

Orzel, C.   Cosmos F*$&ing Loves Science. Uncertain Principles blog, March 31 (2014).

Camera Obscura:

How to Make a Pinhole Camera, Instructables.

Mo Tse and Questioning Cultural Convention:

Fraser, C.   Mohism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2010).

Chinese Tradition of Legalism. Wikipedia.

Chinese Culture, Strategy, and Innovation. Chapter 2 of "Innovative China", T.C.R. van Someren and S. van Someren-Wang. Springer-Verlag (2013).

Al-Hazen's Book of Optics.

Replacing the Extramission Theory of Vision:

Madan, U.   The Beginnings of Sight. The Weekend Historian blog, May 26 (2009).

Graziano, M.   How Consciousness Works. Aeon Magazine, August 23 (2013).

The Strange World of Light:

Dzierba, A.   QCD with a light touch. American Scientist, April (2009). Book Review of "The Lightness of Being" by Frank Wilczek.

The Standard Model, Part 2: QCD. Spontaneous Symmetry blog, June 27 (2009).

Electromagnetic Spectrum. xkcd blog.

Electromagnetic Spectrum Introduction and Electromagnetic Spectrum Tour. NASA's Imagine the Universe!

Siegel, E.   The Cosmic Speed Limit. Starts with a Bang! blog, April 26 (2013).