Author Archives: Marissa LePore

Pluto and I

Posted on April 17, 2015 by Marissa LePore

This is the first-full color photo  taken of Pluto ever that NASA published yesterday. The space probe New Horizons took the image about 71 million miles away as it nears the “dwarf” planet. New Horizons is the fastest spacecraft ever launched and the first in history to visit Pluto. The unprecedented flyby is expected to take […] Continue reading →

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Liquid Confidence

Posted on April 16, 2015 by Marissa LePore

“I believe we are going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth in the next decade and definitive evidence in the next 10 to 20 years,” Ellen Stofan, chief scientist for NASA. “It’s definitely not an if, it’s a when,” said Jeffery Newmark, one of Stofan’s colleagues. NASA made these bold claims at a […] Continue reading →

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United States Space Force

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Marissa LePore

It’s actually called the Air Force Space Command, and it has its headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado. Space Command is relatively new, and the programs it has consolidated and eradicated to get to this point is impressive and a bit dizzying, but I think important to understand how the Air Force came to […] Continue reading →

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Mercurial Art

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Marissa LePore

“It appears that Mercury may well be a painted planet,” said Prof Peter Schultz, a co-author from Brown University. Mercury’s dull surface has long been a point of perplexion in the field of planetary geology. Scientists have thought that there must be a mystery darkening agent contributing to the planet’s low reflectance. A new study has given […] Continue reading →

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Northern Lights

Posted on March 11, 2015 by Marissa LePore

Auroras happen when charged particles from the magnetosphere travel to the Earth’s atmosphere and collide with its atoms and molecules, emitting the moving lights.But, the collisions of the charged particles do more than produce this incredible vision. Two operators of the American Telegraph Line between Boston and Maine held a conversation without battery power for two […] Continue reading →

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Serious About Ceres

Posted on March 11, 2015 by Marissa LePore

NASA’s Dawn started orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres last Friday, making it the first spacecraft to ever orbit a dwarf planet. After a seven and a half year, 3.1 billion mile journey, Dawn reached the small, icy protoplanet that orbits the Sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Ceres has been a bit […] Continue reading →

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Project Blue Book

Posted on February 6, 2015 by Marissa LePore

Conspiracists, rejoice. After two decades of filing Freedom of Information Act requests for any information the US government has on UFOs and other weird sightings, the efforts of proclaimed UFO enthusiast John Greenwald have been fruitful. Last month the files were released and Greenwald posted the 130,000 pages of declassified material on his website, The Black […] Continue reading →

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“Eppur si muove” … Maybe not

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Marissa LePore

“And yet it moves.” Legend has it that these were the words whispered by Galileo after he recanted his claim that the Earth orbits the Sun before the Catholic Church at his trial in 1633. The Church had threatened his life if he did not, so this story shows a 70 year old man not willing to […] Continue reading →

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Historical Astronomers in Context

Posted on February 2, 2015 by Marissa LePore

Galileo’s (1564-1642)  importance in astronomy lies in his solidification of the Copernican revolution by answering all three basic objections that were rooted in Aristotelian physics and ancient Greek beliefs. First, through experimentation, Galileo showed that an object in motion stays in motion unless a force acts to stop it, which explains why objects that share […] Continue reading →

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Want to know your real sign?

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Marissa LePore

Cosmo magazine may be giving the cosmos the best PR around, thanks to the back of their magazine. Every Cosmopolitan has a section near the back dedicated to the astrological horizon- i.e., horoscopes. Whether we think it’s a sham or not, it’s fun to read about what the month will supposedly hold according to the […] Continue reading →

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