Category Archives: Physics

How Gravity Affects Space-Time

One of the more interesting (and more confusing) concepts we’ve learned thus far in the Solar System is the bending of spacetime. As can be seen in the figure below, massive objects with gravity (such as planets or stars) have the unique property in that they can bend the spacetime “grid” around them. Before you […] Continue reading

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How Gravity Affects Space-Time

One of the more interesting (and more confusing) concepts we’ve learned thus far in the Solar System is the bending of spacetime. As can be seen in the figure below, massive objects with gravity (such as planets or stars) have the unique property in that they can bend the spacetime “grid” around them. Before you […] Continue reading

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One Shift, Two Shift, Redshift, Blueshift

Images: Redshifted, blueshifted spectra,   The Doppler shift You’re probably already familiar with the doppler effect of sound. Every time you hear a car zoom past, it pitch changes from higher as it approaches to lower as it leaves. This is because sound is dependent on the relative position of the observer, and if the sound […] Continue reading

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One Shift, Two Shift, Redshift, Blueshift

Images: Redshifted, blueshifted spectra,   The Doppler shift You’re probably already familiar with the doppler effect of sound. Every time you hear a car zoom past, it pitch changes from higher as it approaches to lower as it leaves. This is because sound is dependent on the relative position of the observer, and if the sound […] Continue reading

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We’re all attractive (by gravity!)

We like to think science has everything figured out—and it has in fact come very far to that end. But there are still many things in the world and the universe that has researchers scratching their heads. One of these phenomena is gravity, the force that attracts all objects. Sure, we know how to calculate […] Continue reading

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We’re all attractive (by gravity!)

Images: Gravitational Field,  Conic Sections We like to think science has everything figured out—and it has in fact come very far to that end. But there are still many things in the world and the universe that has researchers scratching their heads. One of these phenomena is gravity, the force that attracts all objects. Sure, […] Continue reading

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In Other News: We Can Analyze Atmospheres of Super-Earths

(Feature Image courtesy of ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser) In the past week, the big news in astronomy was the first detection of gravitational waves, a phenomenon predicted by Albert Einstein in his general theory of relativity. No doubt within a few years students will be reading in textbooks about how the LIGO experiment measured the gravitational […] Continue reading

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Blog #3

For this week’s blog, I’ve decided to talk a little bit about the intuition behind the idea of  gravity. I find this theory really interesting because it makes so much sense when you think about it. As history moved along, Einstein and other physicists managed to explain the reasons why gravity acts upon objects. Gravity is due to the […] Continue reading

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Gravity Waves and the Graviton

So physicists have recently announced the discovery of Gravitational Waves, but what does that mean for the Graviton?  Similar to how protons and electrons carry electrical charge, it is theorized that the Graviton carries, you guessed it, gravity.  Because it is a subatomic particle it is more of a focus for particle physicists than for […] Continue reading

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The Consequences of the Interaction of Light and Gravity

It is astonishing the extent that gravity and light interact with one another.  This is of course very fortunate for us humans when trying to understand the basic force that is known as gravity.  After Isaac Newton proposed his Law of Universal Gravitation in 1687 is was generally thought that gravity was understood even though […] Continue reading

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