Author Archives: jordanekstein

The Egg

Posted on May 2, 2022 by jordanekstein

A man named Andy Weir, created an idea of life and the universe called, The Egg. The story starts out with a man dying in a car crash and coming face to face with what seems to be God. Immediately this person begins asking about their family and the life they left behind along with […] Continue reading →

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The Fermi Paradox

Posted on May 2, 2022 by jordanekstein

The Fermi Paradox attempts to describe why we have not made contact/found any intelligent life although the conservative estimate for how many intelligent civilizations there are throughout the universe is ten million billion. This theory is completely based on speculative math using the data we know about our universe. The paradox also describes Types of […] Continue reading →

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Kepler-16b – The Existence of Tatooine

Posted on April 17, 2022 by jordanekstein

Kepler-16b was discovered when looking for exoplanets using the transit method from the Kepler mission of 2011. While looking at this data two stars were discovered to be in orbiting each other due to the dip in brightness of the system when they eclipsed. What was strange was even when they were not eclipsing each […] Continue reading →

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Hot Jupiters: Migration and Orbital Changes

Posted on April 17, 2022 by jordanekstein

Hot Jupiters are gas giants that have orbital periods that are very close to their stars; often less than 10 days. Usually this means they are less than 0.1AU away from their stars which is one tenth the distance between earth and the sun. While scientists originally did not think giant planets could exist this […] Continue reading →

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Let’s Talk About Super-Earths

Posted on March 21, 2022 by jordanekstein

Super-Earths refer to planets discovered that are more massive than earth, yet lighter than ice giants like Neptune or Uranus. These super-earths can be composed of rock, gas or both and they must be between can be between 2 and ten times the size of earth. Despite their category name, this type of planet is […] Continue reading →

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The Different Atmospheres in our Solar System

Posted on March 21, 2022 by jordanekstein

An atmosphere consists of the gases surrounding a planet. Atmospheres are created by volcanism (outgassing of volcanoes involves eruptions that take gasses from the earth’s interior and put them into the atmosphere), evaporation (of compounds such as water), and life (outgassing of carbon dioxide and oxygen). Life is an interesting component of an atmosphere as […] Continue reading →

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Hypatia of Alexandria

Posted on February 20, 2022 by jordanekstein

Hypatia of Alexandria (335 CE – 415 CE) was an important mathematician and astronomer often credited as the first female astronomer and the last head librarian of the Library of Alexandria. Her father, Theos, was also an astronomer and mathematician and was the last official member of the Library of Alexandria. He also played a […] Continue reading →

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Johannes Kepler in Context

Posted on February 10, 2022 by jordanekstein

Johannes Kepler was born December 27th 1571 and died November 15th 1630. Some of his most prolific discoveries lied in the three major laws of planetary motion. The first law concluded that planets move around the sun in an elliptical orbit. The second is that the time it takes for a planet to move around […] Continue reading →

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The Cosmic Calendar

Posted on February 1, 2022 by jordanekstein

The Cosmic Calendar is a mechanism to help us understand the history of the universe relative to something we can comprehend more easily. This method puts the history of the universe into one calendar year proportionately. Through this it can help us understand in a more conceptual way how long, for example, humans have existed […] Continue reading →

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About Me – Jordan Ekstein

Posted on January 25, 2022 by jordanekstein

Hi I’m Jordan! A fun fact I always like to tell about myself is that I am a twin. This is a picture of me and my twin brother Tyler. Do you think we look alike? “By Me” I also love music. My favorite bands are Greta Van Fleet, Muna a… Continue reading →

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