Category Archives: Physics

Traveling at the Speed of Light

Posted on January 26, 2016 by imanig625

Traveling at the speed of light is entirely impossible in this present day and age, and the question of whether or not we will be able to travel at such a high speed or faster is still unanswerable. The speed of light sets the speed limit for the universe, so that should mean that light… Continue reading →

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Your Zodiac Sign is Wrong: 3 Misconceptions You Have About the Night-Sky

Posted on January 26, 2016 by harperastronomyblog

We all get it. You’re a Capricorn or a Taurus or a Sagittarius or a(n) [any other zodiac constellation]. You’ve read all of your horoscopes, and they fit your personality soooo well. “This is so me,” you might yell to your friends, completely disregarding the fact that they don’t care which vague internet prediction you identify with. […] Continue reading →

Posted in Aliens, Class, Dwarf Planets, Exoplanets, Galaxies, General, Historical, Instruments, Jovians, Light, Moons, Observables, Outreach, Physics, Planet Rings, Public Policy, Science, Small SS Objects, SolarSystem, Space Travel, Stars, Sun, Terrestrials, Universe | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Your Zodiac Sign is Wrong: 3 Misconceptions You Have About the Night-Sky

Lightspeed, Cosmic speedlimits, and Looking into the Past (Part 1)

Posted on January 26, 2016 by harperastronomyblog

In my last post, I made it a point to say that I would try to keep my blog interesting. In light of that decision (I didn’t even notice this pun until I already had this entire post typed up, so this one’s not on me), and because the winter makes me long for the […] Continue reading →

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The Great Shift

Posted on January 25, 2016 by alecsolarsystem

The Earth is like the top from Inception. As it spins around at very high speeds it wobbles or “precesses” back and forth as the force of gravity from the Moon and Sun tug it from different directions, but it will never fall over. This movement, although much slower and less noticeable than the Earth’s […] Continue reading →

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Consequences of breaking the speed limit

Posted on January 25, 2016 by OscarBen

The effects of aberration and the Doppler Effect. Source: Comic Vine During one of the first class sessions, we were given a minute or so to write down what would happen if the speed of light was only 100 mph. I’d never really thought about this before, so I struggled to get anything more than “The… More Consequences of breaking the speed limit Continue reading →

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Cosmic Calendar: The Month of January

Posted on January 24, 2016 by andyastronomer

After studying the Cosmic Calendar, very little appears to have happened in “the first month of the universe.” Aside from the Big Bang in January and the formation of the Milky Way in March, most of the action begins in September, reaching a climax in December. Of course, the notion that little happened in the […] Continue reading →

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The Cosmic Web

Posted on April 24, 2015 by jamej00

Source: abovetopsecret.com This photo, based on our current models of the observable universe, shows our cosmos on the grandest scale that we can imagine.   Each dot is a cluster of galaxies, rich with stars and (probably) planets.  Every law of the universe has teamed up to produce this image: the laws of gravity, astrochemistry,… Continue reading →

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Astronomy in “The Big Bang Theory” and “Interstellar”

Posted on April 22, 2015 by jclyncmp

I originally came into Astronomy 201 just wanted to fulfill my last hours as a second-semester senior at Vanderbilt University with a subject I was interested in. Now that the course is coming its conclusion, the class has evolved into…

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Why I did not like the movie “Interstellar”

Posted on April 6, 2015 by farhannshabab

When Cristopher Nolan’s Interstellar hit the theaters in November 2014, I decided to wait for reviews from my friends. My friends, most of whom were pursuing Electrical Engineering and Physics majors, had this to say about the movie after they watched it: “Meh, too many logic holes”. So I skipped the movie; but over the […] Continue reading →

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Martian Aurora?

Posted on April 6, 2015 by revanth111

Source: National Geographic NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft has recently detected a strange aurora in the lower atmosphere of Mars. Dubbed “Christmas lights” by scientists, the mysterious phenomenon occurred for five days in December, following a solar electron storm. On Earth, auroras are formed when these particles slam into atmospheric atoms, but on Mars, the lack of […] Continue reading →

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