Monthly Archives: February 2015

The Continual Search for Planets

Posted on February 14, 2015 by conorastr201

The discovery of new life-harboring planets has been a hot topic in the last century, but there has always been a limitation: we couldn’t see other planets. However, observational technologies and techniques have progressed to the point where we may be able to find more Earth-like planets within a few short years. The main problems […] Continue reading →

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Gravitational Redshift

Posted on February 14, 2015 by farhannshabab

Most of us know about redshifting, a phenomenon of the Doppler effect. This is the change in frequency of a wave, both mechanical and electromagnetic, for an observer when there is relative motion between the source and the observer. For example, when an observer is moving closer to a wave source, each successive wave front […] Continue reading →

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The Scale of Atoms and Modern Processors

Posted on February 14, 2015 by conorastr201

Everyone knows that atoms are small, but exactly how small is small? This new video by Kurz Gesagt explores this question, and the sheer scale is mind boggling to try to imagine. Among the analogies used is that of filling rooms with rice grains; if the end of your finger was the size of the room, and […] Continue reading →

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Was Life on Earth Planted by Aliens?!?!

Posted on February 14, 2015 by leedd1

Scientists in the United Kingdom have discovered something astonishing: a tiny, metal globular object the width of a human hair captured by a team of researchers using a high-flying balloon in Earth’s stratosphere. According to University of Buckingham’s astrobiologist Milton Wainwright, the globular object “has filamentous life on the outside and a gooey biological material […] Continue reading →

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The Great Filter

Posted on February 14, 2015 by alephnulluniverse

When you think of the size of the universe, there must be life elsewhere. There are 100 – 400 billion stars just in our galaxy, and just as many galaxies in the universe. If we estimate that 5% of all stars are sun-like, which is on the low side. There should be 500 quintillion sun-like […] Continue reading →

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ESA’s Rosetta Mission

Posted on February 14, 2015 by bryancm1

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosetta mission is probably fresh in a lot of your minds as it came to fruition in November of last year. For those unaware, the Rosetta space probe is the first probe to orbit a comet – the Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The probe also came equipped with a lander, which touched down shortly […] Continue reading →

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The Early Telescopes

Posted on February 14, 2015 by alephnulluniverse

The earliest working telescopes was made around 1608 with many who claimed its discovery. The design was simple; a convex objective lens and a concave eyepiece allowed the user to see further. In 1655, astronomers had build more powerful telescopes using a design by Kepler. This design used a convex objective lens and a convex […] Continue reading →

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A Smiley Face in Space :)

Posted on February 14, 2015 by leedd1

A picture taken by Hubble shows what appears to be a face complete with two eyes, a nose, and a smile. The two eyes are actually galaxies while the smile is made up of curving light that forms a partial circle around the figure. However, the smile doesn’t exist. There is lots of immeasurable and […] Continue reading →

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The James Webb Space Telescope

Posted on February 13, 2015 by bryancm1

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb) is set to be the official successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, due to launch is 2018. In order to understand how the JWST will be improving on the Hubble, I think it is first important to understand some of the light aspects of space observation. Model […] Continue reading →

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Earth-Like Planets?

Posted on February 13, 2015 by abbeyrstephens

There was a journal article released last week from the Australian National University with the title, “Scientists Predict Earth-Like Planets around Most Stars”. To summarize, using the idea of the “Goldilocks zone” (the distance from a star where liquid water can exist) and applying it to the exoplanets discovered by the Kepler telescope, astronomers have […] Continue reading →

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