Category Archives: Science

The Moons of Jupiter

Source: New Moons The Solar System is home to four giant gaseous planets named Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus. These gas giants have many satellites due to their mass and subsequent gravitational pull. Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and has fascinated humans for hundreds of years due to the large amount … Continue reading The Moons of Jupiter Continue reading

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The Moons of Jupiter

Source: New Moons The Solar System is home to four giant gaseous planets named Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus. These gas giants have many satellites due to their mass and subsequent gravitational pull. Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and has fascinated humans for hundreds of years due to the large amount … Continue reading The Moons of Jupiter Continue reading

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Celebrity Scientists

For my last blog, I wanted to write about something that was somewhat related to astronomy: celebrity scientists. Specifically, I wanted my last blog to be why Bill Nye is not a scientist. He should not be having millions of followers or appearing at colleges and talk shows (not scientists should be creating a “brand” … Continue reading Celebrity Scientists Continue reading

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St. Elmo’s fire is a real thing

One really cool thing I learned about this semester is a thing called “St. Elmo’s Fire.”  (I’m pretty sure the textbook mentions it somewhere, and after stumbling across it I was instantly curious.)  So… what is it? For starters, it definitely does not involve Emilio Estevez or a fuzzy red puppet (or is it muppet?)…

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Methane-Based Life

Is liquid water necessary for life to form? If judging strictly from the only life we know, of course. However, humanity’s exploration of the universe has just begun, and we can’t say for sure what lies beyond Earth. Other worlds within our solar system have organic compounds that life could possibly evolve from. In particular, … Continue reading Methane-Based Life Continue reading

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Interstellar Travel

In many science fiction movies, spaceships race through the galaxy at extremely high speeds, seemingly ignoring many of nature’s laws that govern our universe. With what we know about the universe right now, it is impossible for any object to travel faster than the speed of light. Any man made object has not reached speeds … Continue reading Interstellar Travel Continue reading

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the Fermi paradox

The Fermi paradox is named after the famous scientist Enrico Fermi.  In this paradox, Fermi acknowledges the apparent contradiction between the amount of extraterrestrial life that we have detected (none) and the high probability that extraterrestrial life exists.  For these “high probabilities”, Fermi was drawing on lines of reasoning similar to that presented in the…

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First Image of a Black Hole

Roughly 50 million light-years away, in the center of the Messier 87 galaxy, resides a supermassive black hole that has about the cumulative mass of 6.5 billion suns. While this black hole is undoubtedly a monster, the true astonishment should come from the fact that image is the first time that scientists were able to … Continue reading First Image of a Black Hole Continue reading

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SETI isn’t Science: Why the Search for Aliens is a Waste of Resources

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has been ongoing for about 60 years now, and it’s time to reconsider if it’s worth the millions of dollars and hours it burns every year. To start off, I want to make the case that SETI isn’t real science. It’s a faith-based effort that isn’t falsifiable. An article … Continue reading SETI isn’t Science: Why the Search for Aliens is a Waste of Resources Continue reading

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The Drake Equation

We hear about aliens all the time, whether in books or movies or tv shows, and this leads us to ponder our own existence. Are we alone, or is there other life out there? This is a question that has plagued mankind since begun exploring interstellar space, and started looking for life in our own … Continue reading The Drake Equation Continue reading

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