All posts tagged: Ethan

Ask Ethan: Do signals degrade as they travel through space?

Ask Ethan: Do signals degrade as they travel through space?

Published by Jenni Sidey

Here on Earth, signal degradation is a real problem whenever we transmit information to one another. Signals like sound, light, and gravity spread out through space in three dimensions, becoming weaker and weaker as you travel farther from the source. The medium that the signal travels through alters the signal’s properties as well, as an oncoming train sounds different from the air, with your ear to the ground, or from submerged in a body of water. And if there are interfering signals to contend with — like sound or light from additional sources — that “noise” can also degrade the quality of the signal, at least from the perception of the signal’s recipient. Surely these factors, as well as potential other factors, that affect signals as they travel through the expanding Universe, particularly across billions of light-years. But how severe is it? How big of a problem is signal degradation, and is there anything we can do to improve the information we can glean about the original source that generated it? That’s the question of …

Ask Ethan: Can quantum entanglement survive a black hole?

Ask Ethan: Can quantum entanglement survive a black hole?

Published by Jenni Sidey

Here in our Universe, there’s a big puzzle at the heart of every black hole. According to Einstein’s General Relativity, for every black hole that exists within the Universe, there are only three properties that go into it that matter in any way: the black hole’s total mass, the black hole’s net electric charge, and the black hole’s intrinsic angular momentum, and that’s it. It doesn’t matter what type of matter (or antimatter, or dark matter) went into the black hole in order to form it; all that matters is its mass, charge, and angular momentum. But in addition to a Universe governed by Einstein’s General Relativity, we also live in an inherently quantum Universe. Quantum mechanically, there are all sorts of bizarre phenomena that cannot be avoided, from uncertainty to entanglement. It’s that latter property, entanglement, that led to this week’s big question, coming from Patreon supporter Jeff Bonwick, who wants to know: “If two particles are entangled, and one of them crosses a black hole’s event horizon, does that break the entanglement? Or …

Ethan Hawke’s on Why ’Blue Moon’ Was His Hardest Role

Ethan Hawke’s on Why ’Blue Moon’ Was His Hardest Role

Published by Daniella Wilson

After getting an Oscar nomination for his role as famed Broadway composer Lorenz Hart in Blue Moon, Ethan Hawke couldn’t help but reminisce on his long-lasting friendship with the film’s director, Richard Linklater. “I have to express my gratitude to Linklater because my first acting award I ever won was a bong from High Times magazine for my performance in Tape as the best stoned performance of the year. And, Rick just keeps giving me these things, so I’m incredibly grateful,” Hawke says. In the indie film, Hawke transforms himself into the diminutive composer, who regales attendees at Sardi’s bar with anecdotes about his career highs in the theater and bemoans the loss of his former partnership with Richard Rodgers. Set during the opening-night party for Oklahoma!, the film almost always trains the camera on Hawke as he vacillates between charm and pleas for continued relevance in the theater world. Hawke, who calls the role one of the hardest he’s taken on in his long career, speaks about becoming Hart and why the physical transformation …

Ask Ethan: Will anything persist when the Universe dies?

Ask Ethan: Will anything persist when the Universe dies?

Published by Jenni Sidey

If we’re willing to think about the future, the farther ahead we extrapolate, the farther along the inevitable path toward our thermodynamic end state: the heat death of the Universe. Star-formation will eventually end, and then the last shining stars will burn out. Galaxies will dissociate due to gravitational interactions, ejecting all masses and leaving only supermassive black holes behind. And then those black holes will decay via Hawking radiation, leaving only cold, stable, isolated bodies, from which no further energy can be extracted, all accelerating away from us within our dark energy-dominated Universe. At least, that’s what will happen in our far future based on our current cosmic picture: the best one we’ve figured out as of 2026. But this troubles a great many people, including our reader Mary Luce, who writes in to inquire: “I know I’ll be long dead and the Earth long gone, but it still makes me sad to think the Universe will die. That there will arise a time when everything that came before is meaningless. Instead of our …

Ethan Hawke Talks Politics, Fascism & New Film The Weight at Berlinale

Ethan Hawke Talks Politics, Fascism & New Film The Weight at Berlinale

Published by Daniella Wilson

Ethan Hawke embraced politics head-on at the Berlin Film Festival on Tuesday ahead of the premiere of his latest movie, The Weight. “Anything that fights fascism, I’m all for it,” the Blue Moon star told a Berlinale presser when asked about the role of “famous artists” during a time when “fascism is on the rise in Europe and the U.S.” Hawke started his response by cautioning “the last place you probably want to look for advice in your spiritual counsel is a bunch of jet-lagged drunk artists talking about their film.” But Hawke then referenced director Padraic McKinley’s historical drama, set in 1930s Oregon and about gold rush greed and survival. “It’s about a group of people who don’t think they have anything in common, who band together to fight institutional greed and malevolence to realize that they have so much more in common, and that’s worth fighting for. So I love that that is what we’re offering the world in response,” he continued. European journalists at the Berlinale have expressed disapproval about film talent and festival …

Maya Hawke’s wedding: Stranger Things star marries with dad Ethan Hawke and mom Uma Thurman — see photos

Maya Hawke’s wedding: Stranger Things star marries with dad Ethan Hawke and mom Uma Thurman — see photos

Published by Daniella Wilson

Congratulations are in order for Maya Hawke and Christian Lee Hutson! The couple are officially married, having tied the knot on Valentine’s Day in New York City. For their special day, the Stranger Things star, 27, and her musician husband were supported by the former’s famous parents, exes Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, as well as celebrity friends like her Stranger Things co-star Finn Wolfhard, plus Iris Apatow with her boyfriend  Sam Nivola, among others. Photos of the special day see Maya, who is often dressed by Prada, in a sleeveless white gown with a boat neckline and a drop-waist adorned with a simple flat bow.  The couple tied the knot at St. George’s Episcopal on Stuyvesant Square in Manhattan, and following the wedding ceremony, guests walked from the chapel to the reception at The Players, a private members club in Gramercy Park. See photos below.  © KONY / BACKGRID A winter wedding Maya was seen walking the New York City streets in her wedding dress alongside her dad. © KONY / BACKGRID Stranger Things …

Ask Ethan: Can we see the expanding Universe changing?

Ask Ethan: Can we see the expanding Universe changing?

Published by Jenni Sidey

One of the most mind-bending concepts about the Universe is the idea that the very fabric of space itself is expanding. It was proven, way back in 1922, that this is an inevitable consequence of having a Universe that’s filled, in a near-uniform fashion, with any type (or types) of energy at all. Such a Universe cannot be static and stable, but must, in the context of General Relativity, either expand or contract. When this theoretical framework was combined with observational data measuring the distance to, and redshift of, galaxies external to our own Milky Way, the fact of the expanding Universe was established observationally. It’s now a full century later, and we’ve learned — to a great degree of accuracy — how quickly the Universe itself is expanding, as well as what forms of energy drive that expansion and how the cosmic expansion has changed over time. Yet, we can only draw these conclusions by examining many different objects at many different cosmic distances, and combining all of that data together. Could we ever …

Ethan Hawke, 55, joined by rarely-seen teen daughters for red carpet

Ethan Hawke, 55, joined by rarely-seen teen daughters for red carpet

Published by Daniella Wilson

Ethan Hawke was honored at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Friday February 6, with the American Riviera Award, and to help him celebrate, he was joined by his rarely-seen teen daughters. The award recognizes outstanding achievement in American film and was presented by Academy Award and Golden Globe Award-winner Jeff Bridges, who walked the red carpet alongside Ethan, wife Ryan, and daughters Clementine and Indiana. © Getty Images for Santa Barbara IIndiana, Ryan , honoree Ethan and Clementine attend the American Riviera Award Tribute during 41st Santa Barbara International Film Festival Clementine, 17, wore a white floral slip dress with a white cardigan for the evening out in Santa Barbara, while 14-year-old sister Indiana rocked a short navy blue slip dress with lace detailing. Mom Ryan wore a gorgeous gold metallic bodycon gown with art deco design. Ethan met Ryan when she was a nanny for his eldest children, Maya and Levon, whom he welcomed with ex-wife Uma Thurman. Ethan has always insisted that their relationship began a year after his divorce from …

Ask Ethan: How long can the longest-lived star shine?

Ask Ethan: How long can the longest-lived star shine?

Published by Jenni Sidey

If there’s one thing we can be certain of when we look out at the glittering canopy of the night sky, it’s this: that someday, all of those luminous points of light, including every star and every galaxy, will someday fade away and cease to shine. The stars and stellar remnants, the primary sources of light and heat and energy that propagate throughout the Universe, are only powered by finite sources of fuel: whether through nuclear fusion, gravitation, or any other mechanism. At some point, those fuel sources will be exhausted, no further energy will be naturally extracted from what remains within them, and those once-brilliant objects will fade away into darkness. Some stars live only briefly, others will continue to shine long into the future, with lifetimes far exceeding our Universe’s current 13.8 billion year age. That brings us to the question of James D, who was curious about the longest-lived stars of all, and wrote in to ask: “I was reading one of your articles about the lifespan of red dwarf stars, with …

Ask Ethan: How much damage could a cosmic ray do to a human?

Ask Ethan: How much damage could a cosmic ray do to a human?

Published by Jenni Sidey

Here in our isolated corner of the Universe, we don’t normally think about all the objects, particles, and photons that miss us, even though we know they’re ubiquitous out there. Instead, all that we observe are the ones that arrive here: on Earth, in our detectors, in our telescopes, and even in our eyes. There are plenty of objects out there whose light is on the way, but hasn’t reached us just yet: objects beyond our current cosmic horizon, but not our future visibility limit. Additionally, there are massive engines out there — black holes and neutron stars chief among them — that accelerate particles to incredible energies: energies far greater than we could ever hope to produce in terrestrial laboratories. But only very rarely do they interact with Earth, and produce signatures that we can actually observe. Back in 1991, the Fly’s Eye camera in Utah detected what was, at the time, a uniquely energetic event: a signature of an ultra-high-energy cosmic ray that was so far above the theoretical maximum, it created a …