Author Archives: katie shapiro

Would humans survive without Jupiter?

“Our solar system is a cosmic dance of planets, moving together in perfect harmony.”-Unknown At the beginning of this course I understood that the solar system had planets and other objects, such as asteroids and comets, but I believed that they all acted independently of each other, with the exception of gravity. In other words, […] Continue reading

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Potential for Life on Europa

“Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”-Arthur C. Clarke In order for their to be the possibility of life, there needs to be liquid water. That is why life is so successful here on Earth; we have an abundance of liquid water in the […] Continue reading

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Differences Between the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt

There are as many comets in the sky as fishes in the ocean. -Johannes Kepler Going into this class I knew that comets came from the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud, however, I never put much thought into why comets are in these two areas. For some context, comets are considered “dirty snowballs” because […] Continue reading

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Titan’s Tremendous Atmosphere and its Striking Similarity to Earth

One of the most fascinating things that I have learned from this unit was the diversity that are the jovian moons. Originally, I believed moons to be rocky, non geologically active objects that orbited planets. Although this is the case for some moons, especially the smaller ones, some moons hold very unique characteristics, such as […] Continue reading

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Solar Flares and their Effect on Earth

~”All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them”~ Galileo Galilei In 1610, Galileo Galilei discovered sunspots on the sun in our solar system, showing that space was imperfect. However, little was known about these sun spots until the late 19th century. Astronomical researchers discovered that the sunspots […] Continue reading

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The Cataclysmic Creation of Earth’s Moon

~”We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard” ~ John F. Kennedy Earth’s moon is a vital factor for life on our planet, and it plays a major role for tides and tilt. However, the origin of our […] Continue reading

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Escape Velocity and Space Exploration

In our generation, space exploration has been an extremely valuable way to learn more about our solar system and our galaxy, the Milky Way. It is astounding that humans have been able to set foot on the moon, and that astronomical research centers have sent probes to a variety of astronomical objects within our galaxy, […] Continue reading

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Historical Astronomers in Context

Johannes Kepler “The diversity of the phenomena of Nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment”-Kepler HISTORICAL ASTRONOMER One of the most fascinating and revolutionary astronomers in history was Johannes Kepler. He was born in Weil […] Continue reading

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THE COSMIC CALENDAR

The Evolution of the Universe from the Big Bang to Modern Day Humans     When I first started this course, I knew that our universe was very old, however, I didn’t understand the depth to how long it really was. Our universe has evolved significantly from the original Big Bang that occurred approximately 14 billion […] Continue reading

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INTRODUCTORY POST

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