Category Archives: Universe

Blog #7: Sara Seager Ted Talk

Posted on April 29, 2022 by nadiamcglynn

I watched the 2015 Ted Talk from Sara Seager (of the Seager Equation) called The Search for Planets Beyond our Solar System. She sets out to introduce what we currently know about our solar galaxy and extra solar planets. She presents a few interesting artist conceptions of the various exoplanets we know of (mainly from […] Continue reading →

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Blog 8: Planet Womb Discovery

Posted on April 27, 2022 by camsto42

Wombed Planet This weird picture is set to resemble a massive planet scientists have just discovered. This planet is about nine times the size of Jupiter, and its in its very early stage of formation. This star was discovered through the use of a Hawaiian telescope, and it was discovered floating “unusually far” from its […] Continue reading →

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Wormholes

Posted on April 17, 2022 by jadonroy

One of the many wonders of our cosmos that peaked my curiosity to the world of astrophysics was the concept of the wormhole. After seeing a wormhole being used in one of my favorite movies, Interstellar , I became even more fascinated with this topic as it I was given a cinematic and visual example […] Continue reading →

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Interesting facts about Pluto and our path to exploring it

Posted on April 17, 2022 by jadonroy

Dr. Alan Stern is most known for his role as the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. Recently, Dr. Stern spoke at Purdue University on October 10, 2019, discussing and examining the topic of “What If We Return to Pluto?” During this discussion, he detailed many interesting […] Continue reading →

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Black Holes: A great mystery of the universe

Posted on April 17, 2022 by alexlitt

Black holes are one of the greatest mysteries of our universe. However, using just a few concepts that we have learned in class, we can understand the basic constructs of black holes. A black hole is the result of a single point in space containing extreme mass (this point is called a singularity). Similar to […] Continue reading →

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Blog #6: Enceladus’s Tiger Stripes

Posted on April 17, 2022 by nadiamcglynn

The Cassini Spacecraft revealed dramatic geysers spewing from Enceladus’s tiger stripes, horizontal, nearly parallel fissures near the moon’s south pole, in 2006. It was believed that these may have been caused by “cryo-volcanism” (icy volcanos!), but new research suggests that it may be caused by the changes in the eccentricity of Enceladus’s orbit over 100 […] Continue reading →

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Blog #5: AR Aur b (protoplanet formation caught in action!)

Posted on April 17, 2022 by nadiamcglynn

As we have been able to look farther outside of our neighborhood of the solar system, our understanding of extrasolar planets and the formation of other planetary systems has had to undergo questions and testing to ensure that our hypothesis is reasonable. The surprising orbits of some extrasolar planets has caused some such questioning, such […] Continue reading →

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‘Oumuamua: An Interstellar Visitor

Posted on April 17, 2022 by Quint Gfroerer

In 2017, a small, long object between 100 and 1,000 meters in length and between 35 and 167 meters in height and width passed through the inner solar system with a trajectory and speed only possible if it originated from beyond our solar system. This object, now known as ‘Oumuamua, is one of the first […] Continue reading →

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Blog 6: Asteroids

Posted on April 7, 2022 by camsto42

On this Tuesday, April 5th, an asteroid the size of a house flew by the Earth. This asteroid flew by 79,000 miles away from us, which is actually pretty close. That distance is around 1/3 the distance between us and the Moon. Although there is always some panic that an asteroid could hit Earth, this […] Continue reading →

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Blog 5: Pluto

Posted on April 7, 2022 by camsto42

Pluto is a very weird, and unknown “mass”. Since being alive, our generation has known Pluto as the 9th planet of the solar system, and now as a giant rock, or dwarf planet. Despite this, Pluto has some very cool features that aren’t seen other places in the solar system, such as Ice Volcanos. Although […] Continue reading →

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