Author Archives: wherrysg

And It All Leads Up To The Now

Posted on April 21, 2013 by wherrysg

This semester we have studied everything from the creation of the universe to black holes to microscopic bacteria living on the bottom of the ocean floor. The range of topics covered in this class has helped round my view of the beginnings of time up until now and clarified many common misconceptions ranging from tides […] Continue reading →

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Solving a ‘Universal’ Delimma

Posted on April 21, 2013 by wherrysg

For those of you who are not familiar with the Fermi Paradox, it is “the apparent contradiction between the high probability extraterrestrial civilizations’ existence, and the lack of contact with such civilizations”.  There are many people out there convinced that life on other worlds doesn’t exist, but let me ask you this: what makes us […] Continue reading →

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Green Peas Shed Light On Universe Beginnings

Posted on April 7, 2013 by wherrysg

Image Source In 2007, astronomers made a discovery of what they called the Green Pea galaxies. These galaxies are those that are undergoing high rates of star formation and help us understand reionization–which is an extremely important process in the development of our universe. Reionization by definition is “the process that reionized matter in the […] Continue reading →

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A Black Hole’s Diet

Posted on April 7, 2013 by wherrysg

Source Incredible! While studying a distant galaxy, astronomers noticed a bright flare of X-rays coming from another galaxy that happened to be in their field of view. Upon closer look, they discovered that it was actually a black hole ‘eating up’ what they believe to be either an extremely large planet or a smaller brown […] Continue reading →

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“The Incandescent Sun”

Posted on March 20, 2013 by wherrysg

Source Check out this video from NASA of the Sun over a 24-hour period of time! The video frames are measuring output in extreme ultraviolet. According to this article, viewing the Sun in this wavelength allows us to view the plasma in its atmosphere (called Corona). But what is interesting is that the same magnetic […] Continue reading →

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Who Needs Telescopes When You Have Dry-Cleaning Fluid?

Posted on February 19, 2013 by wherrysg

Image Source For Raymond Davis Jr, this was a legitimate question that he proposed to the science community in the 1960s with his Homestake Experiment. This experiment was Davis’s quest to learn about neutrinos–a neutral subatomic particle with an almost-zero mass and that also rarely reacts with normal matter. According to this article, Davis’s research […] Continue reading →

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Aliens Don’t Exist! Or Do they….

Posted on February 19, 2013 by wherrysg

Image Source I’m sure at some point we have all considered the possibility of life on other planets. What would they look like? How would they communicate? How advanced or primitive would they be compared to us? And most importantly, where/what would they call home? Like many kids, I was one whose view of aliens […] Continue reading →

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Historical Astronomers in Context

Posted on February 6, 2013 by wherrysg

Image Source Isaac Newton was very prominent and highly respected for his work in physics and mathematics. He was born the 4th of January 1643 and died the 31st of March 1727, and is important to Astronomy for several reasons: of those reasons, arguably the most relevant is his contributions to the science through his […] Continue reading →

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A Light Perspective

Posted on January 27, 2013 by wherrysg

Source The fact that I have been unable to truly grasp the size of the universe–much less be able to put into perspective things like the speed of sound and light–I believe is largely attributed to this topic (Astronomy) involving surreal and almost unimaginable concepts. Much of my experience with the concept of the speed […] Continue reading →

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Welcome To My Blog

Posted on January 16, 2013 by wherrysg

Hi guys! As you can probably see from my tag line above, I’m a goof that loves alliteration. I’m a junior here at Vanderbilt and am pretty stoked on my Solar System class. I’ve had a rough start to the semester (missing several first days due to illness) but am getting back on track so […] Continue reading →

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