Tag Archives: blog8

The toughest animal on the planet

Posted on April 9, 2013 by fathomingthestars

Most creatures require a specific set of conditions to survive: a certain amount of oxygen, temperature, pressure, food, etc.  However, some animals can live in conditions so extreme they kill almost everything else.  These animals are called, fittingly, extremophiles.  One extremophile is the tardigrade, more commonly called water bears or moss piglets. In general, tardigrades […] Continue reading →

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100,000 Stars

Posted on April 9, 2013 by kevinm387

Above is a video of an awesome website, 100,000 Stars. This website is an interactive, 3D map of the closest 100,000 stars to us. The video gives a little taste, but I encourage everyone to go to the site and explore for yourselves. Zooming in on our Solar System, you encounter the Oort Cloud first, […] Continue reading →

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Chemical Activity on Titan

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Will K

  Scientists at NASA now believe that Saturn’s moon Titan is much more chemically active than we previously thought. According to Astronomy Magazine, the found that the “complex organic chemistry that could eventually lead to the building blocks of life extends lower in the atmosphere than previously thought.” This is activity in the lower atmosphere […] Continue reading →

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The Galilean Moons of Jupiter

Posted on April 9, 2013 by staunesm

With the constant discovery of more and more objects in space, it is difficult to keep track of the planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and exosolar planets that we already know and love.  Therefore I am using this blog as an … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Creating Life

Posted on April 9, 2013 by charlesbcochran

You might think this is Earth, but this is something much more intriguing……… Many years from now, humanity will be threatened by a plethora of factors that will cause the inevitable. Humans will have to seek refuge somewhere other than … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Green Peas Shed Light On Universe Beginnings

Posted on April 7, 2013 by wherrysg

Image Source In 2007, astronomers made a discovery of what they called the Green Pea galaxies. These galaxies are those that are undergoing high rates of star formation and help us understand reionization–which is an extremely important process in the development of our universe. Reionization by definition is “the process that reionized matter in the […] Continue reading →

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Saturn’s Rings

Posted on April 7, 2013 by hannahladendorf13

     I think I speak for a lot of people (or maybe I don’t) but I honestly thought Saturn’s rings were legit rings, made up of a solid material that didn’t break and rotated around Saturn.   It is amazing … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Exoplanets

Posted on April 3, 2013 by juliettealper

Our lecture on exoplanets in class today reminded me of an article that I saw a few months ago about the discovery of new exoplanets. After looking deeper into it, I realized that just a month ago scientists discovered 2,700 objects that could potentially be considered planets. Not only is this a possibility, but around […] Continue reading →

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Dark Matter Discovered?

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Megan C

Scientists announced today that they may have finally found dark matter. Dark matter is the invisible matter making up most of the universe, but scientists can’t see it because it emits no light.  Scientists only know it exists because dark matter’s gravity bends light – gravitational lensing – and because stars are orbiting in galaxies […] Continue reading →

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