Monthly Archives: March 2015

Venus’s Atmosphere

In my opinion, one of the most interesting things in the readings was the section about Venus and its atmosphere in Chapter 10. What I found so interesting about it was the fact that Venus and Earth are so alike in terms of size and mass, but the difference that distance from the Sun made […] Continue reading

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The Future of the Sun and What It Means for Earth

Right now, the Sun is about halfway through its main sequence stage. It has always intrigued me how the Sun will evolve once it is past this phase. How will the Sun change? What will happen to Earth and the other planets? In approximately 5.4 billion years, the Sun will have exhausted all of its […] Continue reading

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A trip to Venus?

video from phys.org It seems like all of the talk in the field of space travel these days has been too focused on a trip to one single location…Mars.  But noticing while studying these past few chapters that Venus is actually a bit closer to Earth than Mars, that brought up a question in my […] Continue reading

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Could the sun live for over a trillion years?

Sun and hydrogen burning: Thinking outside the bubble Yes it can! But not except under unusual circumstances which do not naturally occur in G-type stars as our sun. This is due to the fact that the core is the only part of the sun in which temperatures and pressure are high enough to fuse helium […] Continue reading

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Blog Post #6: Gas Giant Rings

Universe Today Very few people know that Saturn is not the only planet in our solar system that has rings. …

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Space Movies – Fact or Fiction?

Our in class discussion about some space movies had me venturing down a rabbit hole about Hollywood’s misconceptions about space. The most entertaining aspect for me is how movies portray character deaths in space. Movies always find creative and dramatic ways for their characters to die in space – none of which are accurate. In […] Continue reading

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Dark matter

Dark matter is a hypothetical matter that neither emits nor absorbs light or any other electromagnetic radiations so that it cannot be seen with any telescopes nowadays. However, dark matter accounts for most of the matter in the universe, and it should be responsible for many phenomena occurring in the universe. According to the standard… Continue reading

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The Aurora Phenomenom

Auroras are caused when particles from the sun become trapped in a planet’s magnetosphere. These particles gain energy and travel down the magnetic field and collide with atmospheric atoms and molecules. This collision is what produces the light that we see in an aurora. We have all probably seen pictures of auroras on Earth. Do […] Continue reading

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Climate Change

Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns when that change lasts for an extended period of time (i.e., decades to millions of years). (Definition from Wikipedia) Climate change is caused by biotic processes, variations in solar radiation, plate tectonics and volcanic eruptions. Human activities have also been regarded as a cause of recent… Continue reading

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The Biggest Volcano in the Solar System

The biggest volcano in the solar system was discovered in 1971 by the space probe Mariner 9, though it is …

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