Monthly Archives: January 2014

Light Travel Time: An Impediment to our Knowledge of the Universe

Despite common misperceptions, a light year is a measure of distance, not time. It is the only feasible way to measure distances in the universe because the universe is so vast that measurements of distance used on earth would quickly … Continue reading Continue reading

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Is Light The Limit?

Albert Einstein once theorized that speed of light serves as somewhat of a global speed limit. It is assumed that nothing in the universe is capable of traveling faster than the speed of electromagnetic radiation. According to his observations, this makes sense. How could something composed of atoms of mass travel faster than a beam […] Continue reading

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Thinking and Observing

I think it’s fun to simply look up at the stars sometimes and think about what might be out there. There’s so much we don’t yet know, so much to be discovered. We thought we had conquered the final frontier when Amundsen had finally reached the South Pole at the beginning of the 20th century, … Continue reading Thinking and Observing Continue reading

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Blurry Telescope

This is a picture captured by the famous Hubble space telescope. It looks blurry, because the team that designed the giant main lens didn’t properly account for the effects of gravity, causing the light to be refracted improperly. It took many years and many expensive maintenance trips to fix this error, but in the meantime, … Continue reading Blurry Telescope Continue reading

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Balancing eggs on the spring equinox

It is a popular myth that the spring equinox is the one day of the year that raw eggs can be perfectly balanced on end. When I was in elementary school, entire classes at my school would go outside with a bunch of eggs and try to balance them in a row. More often than… Continue reading

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The powers of ten Blog 01

The powers of ten Blog 01 The powers of ten video is an astounding acheivment in film and a huge eye opener in scale comparison. The video takes the viewer from the interior of the atom all the way to the edge of the known universe in a matter of minutes. The powers of ten […] Continue reading

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Sky and Telescope

Sky and Telescope This website is very cool!  It shows an easy to understand layout of what planets, stars, etc. you will be viewing in the night sky and where they will be moving throughout the night and week.  It also gives you categories of different celestial objects you can try to search for in … Continue reading Sky and Telescope Continue reading

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Star Chart: An iPhone App Review

Recently, I downloaded the Star Chart App for iPhone and iPad (free in the app store). This app allows you to see the stars that are visible in your area through your phone.  The app uses GPS technology to create a 3D image on the phone of the stars, planets, and other objects in the… Continue reading

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Spiral Galaxy

We’re used to being the big guys. When we think of something larger than us, we might think of whales or elephants, but we don’t deal with those regularly. We usually think of things like buildings, but we were the ones who built those too. Few people take the time to think about the scale […] Continue reading

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Neil Armstrong

Admittedly, I had pinned this image on my Pinterest a while back. I think it is so fascinating and really puts the whole scale of our world and the universe into perspective. Neil Armstrong had the insane privilege to view the Earth in a way the no other human, animal, insect has been able to. […] Continue reading

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