Category Archives: Historical

Blog 4: Systema Cosmicum

Posted on March 6, 2024 by Seth Creech

History Channel Portrait of Galileo Galileo was one of, if not the most revolutionary astronomer of all time. He lived at a point where the Catholic Church controlled a large section of public and private life, but they were also seeing their power wane through the Protestant Reformation, championed by Martin Luther (among others). The […] Continue reading →

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Blog #4

Posted on March 6, 2024 by Robert Navarro

Composition -The solar system is primarily composed of the Sun, which makes up about 99.8% of its total mass. The Sun is primarily composed of 74% hydrogen and about 24% helium with some amounts of heavier elements. Planets in our solar system are divided into two main groups based on their composition: the terrestrial planets […] Continue reading →

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Combining Forces: Nuclear Fusion in the Solar System

Posted on March 6, 2024 by Seth Creech

Business Insider Ignition Image Shown above is from the National Ignition Facility, where scientists successfully produced (and reproduced) a nuclear fusion reaction that had more energy output than input. The underlying math behind this lies in E=mc2, which shows that Mass (m) can be converted into a large amount of energy at the sacrifice of […] Continue reading →

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Blog Post #3

Posted on March 5, 2024 by Robert Navarro

The solar system began to form from a giant molecular cloud of gas and dust particles about 4.6 billion years ago. This cloud most likely experienced a shock wave from a nearby supernova, which could have made it collapse under its own gravity. It then began to spin and flatten into a disk shape due […] Continue reading →

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Why Stars?

Posted on March 5, 2024 by Tejas Mahesh

Throughout history, many civilizations have been fascinated by the stars in the night sky. But the question is why. Why have many civilizations been fascinated by stars? What makes the night sky so attractive to humans? Why did they ascribe meaning to tiny dots that shone brightly, and seemed so far away? I present the […] Continue reading →

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Blog on Chapters 1-2

Posted on March 2, 2024 by Alyssa Ballard

I always thought that the seasons were caused only because of where Earth is or isn’t closest to the sun. But other things go into it than just distance, since it is only a small part of the reason. The main reason for the seasons is because of Earth’s axis tilt. One of the common […] Continue reading →

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Intelligent Life Isn’t About Blind Luck. It’s About Probability.

Posted on March 2, 2024 by Landon Peaden

ARS Technia The thought of other sentient life existing in the universe is one that comes up often. Among the religious crowd, many will argue that Earth’s existence is a perfect result of divine influence, that if just a few things were a bit different, we wouldn’t have evolved as we have done. Yes, we […] Continue reading →

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Blog 2— Historical Context: the Ptolemaic Model

Posted on February 14, 2024 by Seth Creech

The Ptolemaic Model stood as the most accurate way to predict the movement of planets for 1,500 years, even though it was a geocentric model. This obviously serious error in the model caused there to be small inaccuracies in the predictive abilities of the model, but it was the best incorrect model created, so it […] Continue reading →

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Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion

Posted on February 13, 2024 by Tejas Mahesh

After meticulously calculating the data that Tycho Brahe collected, Kepler discovered three different laws that described how planets move. Kepler’s First Law – The planets orbit in ellipses, not circles nor epicycles. For majority of history, it was thought that planets orbit through epicycles because the orbit of the planets must be perfect. However, the […] Continue reading →

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The Banner of Heaven

Posted on February 13, 2024 by Owen Purcell

This term, originally coined in the late nineteenth century, at least with its current connotation, began to speak to me in a unique way in high school. I took a backpacking trip in Northern California, and experienced a dry, warm, cloudless night with no shelter but a mosquito net. The sky was brilliant, and it felt like […] Continue reading →

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