Category Archives: Class

A New Discovery in the World of Extremophiles

Geologists have recently discovered an entire new species of extremophiles among us on planet earth, and the location may shock you. More than 500 km away from nutrients and sunlight, these extremophiles have made a home beneath the Antarctic ice shelf (SOURCE). While this discovery was not meant to actually happen, scientists are pleasantly surprisedContinue reading “A New Discovery in the World of Extremophiles” Continue reading

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Gotta be Life out there

Today we will be talking about extremophiles. After learning about all of the potential life that can survive in the harshest of environments, it made me think that there must be life out there. What may seem like a super hot, extremely pressurized environment to us on Venus, may seem like the ideal conditions forContinue reading “Gotta be Life out there” Continue reading

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Life In The Extremes

If there’s anything I’ve learned in my studies of biology over my education, it’s that life is precarious, delicate, and precious. However, now that I’ve learned more about astrobiology through this course, I’ve also come to know that life is hardy and determined. As Ian Malcom so astutely notes in Jurassic Park, “Life finds a … Continue reading Life In The Extremes Continue reading

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Keeping Up With The Kardashev Scale

Feel free to take a few seconds out of your day to fully appreciate the genius title I came up with for this post. I’ll even give you some scrolling to do while you appreciate it! The Kardashev scale was designed in 1964 by Nikolai Kardashev to measure a civilization’s level of technological capability based… Continue reading

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I Want To Believe!

Forget Fermi’s paradox. Forget the Drake equation. Yet another hot-button topic relating to astronomy and (potential?) extraterrestrial life is- you guessed it- unidentified flying objects (UFOs for short). Do I think it’s kind of a stretch that I’m relating this to chapter 24? Absolutely! But with the (relatively) recent declassification by the Pentagon of three… Continue reading

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Reflection on Astronomy 2110

The biggest thing I will take away from all that I have learned in Astronomy this year is just how small and irrelevant humans are both in comparison to the size and timeline of the universe. I had always heard that the universe was infinitely big but never thought anything of it and didn’t considerContinue reading “Reflection on Astronomy 2110” Continue reading

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Theia

For my last blog post I have decided to blog about something close to home. The Theia impact is also called the Big Splash, and is a hypothesis as to how we got our moon. The theory is that a mars-sized planetesimal impacted our proto-earth in its early life. This massive impact essentially shredded TheiaContinue reading “Theia” Continue reading

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Culmination Post

Milky Way Galaxy over Chile In the culminating post for this class, I just wanted to write about how my understanding of astronomy has changed. I have obviously gained a greater appreciation for our Solar System as a whole, and learning a little about the magnitudes and sizes of objects in space puts some thingsContinue reading “Culmination Post” Continue reading

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Titan

Titan is the largest of Saturn’s moons, and one of the biggest moons in our solar system period, 50% larger than our own moon. In my opinion, it’s also one of the coolest. While it’s not exactly the prettiest to look at, kind of just being a grosser and hazier version of Saturn minus theContinue reading “Titan” Continue reading

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The Golden Record

In 1977, a cool year for space enthusiasts and film buffs, NASA launched two spacecrafts known as Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. These crafts passed by Jupiter and Saturn, taking advantage of their alignment at that time. Voyager 2 also flew by Uranus and Neptune, and is now traveling across the vast expanse of interstellarContinue reading “The Golden Record” Continue reading

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