Author Archives: Jack Walton

Blog 8 – Evidence for a Europan Ocean

Posted on May 5, 2022 by Jack Walton

Europa, Jupiter’s 4th largest and 2nd closest Galilean moon, is thought to have a large saltwater ocean covered by a layer of ice. An article from Nasa details the evidence for the existence of this ocean. The first piece of evidence is the matching zig-zagging cracks on the surface that indicate that the surface was […] Continue reading →

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Blog 7 – The Dark Forest Solution to Fermi’s Paradox

Posted on May 5, 2022 by Jack Walton

Fermi’s paradox is that based on the number of stars in our galaxy and estimates on the likelihood of intelligent, space-faring civilizations to develop in a star system, we should expect to see some signs of alien life in our galaxy. Some possible solutions to the paradox are that Life is more rare than we […] Continue reading →

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Humanity’s Long-Term Future

Posted on March 22, 2022 by Jack Walton

For my third blog post, I wanted to research the future of Humanity. In about 5 billion years the Sun will run out of Hydrogen to fuse in the core, causing the sun to increase in size and become a Red Giant. It will get so large that it will swallow up Mercury, Venus, and […] Continue reading →

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Gyroscopes in Space – Angular momentum

Posted on February 21, 2022 by Jack Walton

In this 2016 demonstration aboard the ISS, the ESA astronaut Tim Peake demonstrates how a gyroscope spinning in space maintains its orientation even when a rotational force is applied. While, this video was published in 2016, the physics of rotation have not changed since then! In the video, Peake demonstrates how once a gyroscope gets […] Continue reading →

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Historical Astronomers in Context

Posted on February 10, 2022 by Jack Walton

I chose to learn more about Galileo (February 15, 1564 – January 8, 1642). Two major historical events that happened during Galileo’s lifetime were: On May 14, 1607, when Galileo was around 43, the colony of Jamestown was founded in what is now Virginia. Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in North America. In […] Continue reading →

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Blog 1 – Initial Review of SkyView Lite

Posted on January 31, 2022 by Jack Walton

SkyView Lite is an iPhone application that allows the user to point their phone at different parts of the sky and see an overlay of constellations in the direction that they point. I downloaded the app and tried it out. This post is going to be about my experience using the app. The app works […] Continue reading →

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Hello World!

Posted on January 25, 2022 by Jack Walton

Hello! This is my first post! My name is Jack and this is a picture of me at Cheekwood next to a very frightening bunny statue. Continue reading →

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