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Daily Archives: March 12, 2019
Terraforming
Considering all the horrible ways that either humans or otherwise could end life on Earth, the idea of inhabiting another world seems pretty nifty. The only issue with that is we need oxygen and for our soft squishy skin to not get fried by intense sunlight. So, the prospects of getting off our planet for … Continue reading Terraforming Continue reading
Spirit and Opportunity
In 2003, NASA launched the Mars Exploration Rover mission, dropping the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars in January 2004. Although their planned mission lifetime was 90 days, both rovers far exceeded this. Spirit lasted 20 times longer than this, traveling almost 5 miles before sending its final message to Earth on March 22, 2010. […] Continue reading
Titan
Titan is one of the biggest moons in the solar system, and is the most similar object to Earth. The icy world is second in size to Jupiter’s Ganymede and is larger than the planet Mercury. Titan is very unique in that it is the only moon to have a dense atmosphere. Like Earth, the … Continue reading Titan → Continue reading
Stars: How to Make Just About Everything
You may be familiar with the Periodic Table, which lists every type of atom (referred to as ‘elements’) in the universe. Each of the elements is formed by combining subatomic building blocks in different ways. One of the most important element-creating events in the Universe was Big Bang nucleosynthesis, the period about 10 seconds to … Continue reading Stars: How to Make Just About Everything → Continue reading
Reducing Sky Glow
Stargazing is awesome! But sometimes, the night sky is not visible due to light pollution. In cities like Nashville, a common type of light pollution is “sky glow”. Sky glow is the brightening of the entire night sky, especially in populated areas. The light pollution around Nashville inhibits our view of zodiacal light, airglow, and … Continue reading Reducing Sky Glow → Continue reading
Climate Change: Debunked
Contrary to popular belief, Earth’s climate has not always been the same; just in the last 650,000 years there has been several cycles of temperature rise and fall due to small changes in Earth’s orbit and the amount of energy Earth receives from the Sun. However, in the past 50 years, Earth’s climate has changed … Continue reading Climate Change: Debunked Continue reading
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Nuclear Fusion
The Sun generates energy by fusing hydrogen into helium due to a process known as nuclear fusion. Fusion occurs within the Sun because the plasma in the solar core is full of hot gases that collide with one another at extremely high speeds. In most cases, electromagnetic repulsion forces deflect the nuclei of the two … Continue reading Nuclear Fusion Continue reading
Voyager: The End of the Road
Voyager 1 is the only human made object existing outside of the heliosphere of Earth. The Voyager space probes represent a level of exploration not seen since the era of European explorers, and in many ways exceed the ambition of those brave individuals. Aspects of the Voyager mission have been designed to last for an … Continue reading Voyager: The End of the Road Continue reading
Aurora Borealis
The Aurora Borealis is one of the most beautiful phenomena in the world, but how does it actually come to be? It all starts with the Sun. As the Sun rotates on its axis, magnetic field lines are twisted and jumbled around which cause sun spots, or regions on the suns surface of cooler temperature … Continue reading Aurora Borealis → Continue reading
Oort Cloud!
I kept hearing about the Oort Cloud during this unit, so I wanted to do some more research on it. The Oort Cloud intrigues me because it is theoretical, meaning that we have not actually observed it empirically. In my last post, I talked about the Voyager missions. In another 300 years, the Voyager space … Continue reading Oort Cloud! → Continue reading