crwn-lore

[crwn-lore]

I’m in between semesters right now and getting restless—I really want to dive into some kind of independent research project. The problem is I’ve never done anything like this before.

For now, I’ve started reading review papers on cosmology (which has been super exciting), but I’d love tips on how to actually start an independent research project—things like choosing a topic, narrowing it down, finding resources, or just not getting lost in the chaos. I'm all ears!

[crwn-lore]

So I'm taking this class called molecular driving forces and it's something like stat mech for chemistry and it blows my mind like every week. Today the professor asked us why heat flows from warm objects to cold objects and everyone was like entropy! Temperature! Equilibrium! and he was like yeah yeah but what's it really about when you get to the bottom of it? And the answer was statistics - because the number of states in which these two bodies are in a thermal equilibrium is much (like, much) greater than the number of states in which they aren't, and so thermal equilibrium is the most probable outcome. And the thing that decks me every time is that it's always statistics, it's all statistics.

So anyway, every week I'm like WHOA THIS IS WHY I CHOSE A SCIENCE DEGREE and if you're also a science student (or used to be one) please reblog and add your moments of awe at the beautiful complexity of our universe pretty please!! I want to read your stories! Science appreciation chain!!

[crwn-lore]

I love the annual fall reawakening of the studyblr community. I'm invigorated. I could write an essay. The urge to rewrite my class notes is strong. I'm making my plots pretty again.

[crwn-lore]

to be seen without performing. to be heard without screaming. to be missed without disappearing. to be enough without proving it. to be held without falling apart. to be understood without explaining. to be wanted without conditions. to be. to be.

[crwn-lore]

I look at this one uh from time to time -

[crwn-lore]

‘Love is the one thing that we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.’

“Eulogy from a Physicist” by Aaron Freeman, with quotes from Interstellar by Christopher Nolan, and images from NASA, Interstellar, Getty, Petrichara, and Reuters.

1- NASA: GOODS-South.

2- NASA: NGC 1850.

3- NASA: Iberian Peninsula.

4- Christopher Nolan: Interstellar.

5- NASA: From the Earth to the Moon.

6- Hannah La Folette Ryan: Subway Hands.

7- Adams Evans: Heart Nebula.

8- NASA: Exploring the Antennae.

9- NASA: Crescent Moon from the International Space Station.

10- Petrichara.

11- Getty Images.

12- NASA: SMACS 0723.

13- Reuters

[crwn-lore]

having to pack up your dorm room every semester should be illegal. just let me crawl into the walls like a hermit and live in peace

[crwn-lore]

what's your favorite ancient history and/or space fact?

Thank you so much for the ask! (Even though it's taken me a while to respond because exam season has been kicking my ass. Whoops!)

So, I’ve always been hooked on Greek history—especially the so-called “Greek Dark Ages” that followed the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization. This period of instability and socioeconomic decline gave way to adaptation and transformation, eventually shaping Classical Greece. I could go and on about this, but my favorite part is that the Homeric epics — The Iliad and The Odyssey — emerged from this period. They told legendary stories of heroes from the Mycenaean age, preserving the memory of an empire we still know surprisingly little about.

My favorite space fact has to be that when you stare at the night sky, you’re not only looking into the vastness of space — you’re looking backward in time. Light moves incredibly fast, but the universe is so vast that it can take years, centuries, or even billions of years to reach us. Sun light takes just over eight minutes to reach Earth. The glow from some galaxies began its journey long before Earth even existed. When the light from these distant galaxies finally does reach our little corner of the universe, we are seeing that galaxy years "in the past" when the light first left it.

This means we can see galaxies far older than the Milky Way itself — and even glimpse the faint afterglow of the Big Bang, the cosmic microwave background. It’s absolutely bonkers to comprehend.

And it's what I love about both astrophysics and ancient history that it flips our world view right onto its head and gives us this wishy washy perspective on time and space.

[crwn-lore]

But I wonder if we also ignore illness because of our bias toward agency and control. We would like to imagine that we captain the ships of our lives, that human history is largely the story of human choice. Perhaps this is why rumors have swirled for millennia that Alexander the Great died of poisoning even though he almost certainly died of typhoid or malaria. We simply don’t want a world where even the most powerful emperor can be felled by mere infection.

John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

[crwn-lore]

Current mood: drowning in derivations 📉📝

No offense to math majors, but why do I need to know how these stats formulas were derived?? Like… it works. That’s enough for me. God didn’t create statistics, man did — and once someone derived it once, why do I, a humble physics student, have to suffer through it again??

Anyway, here’s my whiteboard wall of pain.

[crwn-lore]

Final exam season ☕📚

Which means hopping between study cafés like I’m on an academic coffee crawl. Same notes, different lattes.

[crwn-lore]

the cultural object of the black hole is kind of remarkable. It's almost an anti-God in a sense, a negative infinity. Yeah there's this kind of dead sun that's collapsed into an infinitely dense point, and if you fall past its event horizon you're fucked. Every schoolchild knows this. A black hole can be introduced in a superhero blockbuster without any explanation except for its established look and the name "black hole", and this will be understood as the ultimate natural disaster, which even superman could not hope to defeat. truly S-tier cosmic object

[crwn-lore]

People don’t realize how much we sound like other things because we are created from the same laws of physics. “That potato in the microwave sounds like it’s screaming” is funny because it really is, air is vibrating out of a small hole which is how our throat works too. The babbling river that sounds like humans whispering, that’s because it’s a wet hollow cave with echo delivering the same functionality. The river doesn’t just sound like us, we sound like a river. They use a metal trashcan to create a lion’s roar for movie sound effects. But the truth is, not only does a trashcan sound like a lion, a lion sounds like a trashcan. Cars purr when you turn them on. Everything is like everything else. Inanimate objects are not so far away from life as it seems.

Remember the next time you feel more alone in the company of large buildings, or maybe less alone among the rocks of the river, that they are not completely unlike the parts of you.

[crwn-lore]

science side of tumblr, tell me your favorite fact or story about your discipline!

[crwn-lore]

you’re gonna get through this, even if right now you don’t have all the answers, even if it’s not going as fast as you wish it would. you’ve dealt with hard things before, and that means you are resilient and capable, and you will find a way. you’ve dealt will find away and this will be just one of those hardships that felt impossible to handle, but that you ended up managing. you will make it out of this.

[crwn-lore]

dont retreat emotionally. people like you and want you around. they like to talk to you, and you genuinely matter. you have to trust this through the hard times so you can get to the better times without sabotaging yourself. you are worth loving

[crwn-lore]

Fluctuating symptoms don’t make you fake. They're normal.