Category Archives: Science

Explore the Celestial Sphere with Star Chart!

It is a great experience to learn about the changing map of the sky; it is a more amazing experience to actually gaze at the stars and be able to relate to the knowledge of the cosmos. Unfortunately, not all of us reside in a location untainted by light pollution or by smog; a clear starry night sky […] Continue reading

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A Ghostly Eclispse?

This week, people have noticed that there was a very odd appearance that made the moon look different. They noticed that there was a very slim crescent moon that also shows the black silhouette of the rest of the moon. Although it does look like a eclipse, experts have weighed in and determined this phenomenon […] Continue reading

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Stonehenge and the Summer Solstice

Everyone is familiar with the famous landmark Stonehenge located in Wiltshire, England. The first construction on Stonehenge was start about 5,000 years ago. We are still not sure what the original purpose of Stonehenge is but people have speculated that…

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Scottish Scientists Slow Down Light :O

Although the speed of light has been taught to be a constant value in a vacuum setting like the universe, however a team of Scottish scientists have valid proof that this might not always be the case. The Scottish researchers from the University of Glasgow and Heriot-Watt University made this amazing discovery by firing two […] Continue reading

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Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

In the 1980’s, a 13 episode television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage was presented by the famous Carl Sagan covering topics such as the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe. In the first episode, “The…

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Arctic Lake Extremophiles

We have been learning a lot about extremophiles and whether they would be able to survive on other worlds, specifically within out solar system. I found an article on Wired that pointed to a discovery of microbes in a brine lake located beneath 65 feet of ice in Antarctica. This extremophile had to survive in […] Continue reading

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Life from Earth, elsewhere

In class, we have discussed the possibility that life on Earth did not originate on Earth, but came to Earth on an asteroid or other impactor. But another idea is that the inverse is true: Later impacts on Earth sent life to other locations in the Solar System. Recent simulations suggest that some of the… Continue reading

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The origins of life and the Drake equation

In using the Drake equation to discuss and estimate the probability of non-Earth life in our universe, one factor we estimated was the probability of life developing on a given planet in the habitable zone. The problem with making such an estimate as students in an Astronomy 201 course, of course, is that we all… Continue reading

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The Fabric of Time

  Einstein In later years of Einstein’s life he decided that the evolution of three-dimensional existence is flawed, and that …

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The Solar System is in us

The solar system is an amazing place filled with a vast spectrum of unique objects, and the most notable of them all is us. We and everything else in the solar system are comprised of the same materials that came from the same place, but only we have grown and developed to appreciate that fact. […] Continue reading

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