Tag Archives: blog9

The NASA Warp Drive

In class last week, Dr. Grundstrom mentioned that NASA may be developing a warp-drive.  I’ve done a little research and here’s what I’ve found. Last September, NASA engineer Harold White spoke briefly at a conference in Houston about the possibility of creating and using a Warp Drive, which would allow faster-than-light travel.  He made a […] Continue reading

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Voyager 1

Voyager 1 launched in 1977 in order to collect data and research the outer planets of our solar system. Currently, 11.5 billion miles from Earth, scientists are having some difficulty determining when exactly the Voyager is going to leave the solar system. It has completed its mission of surveying the outer planets, such as Saturn, […] Continue reading

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Fermi Paradox

So let’s say there’s intelligent life in the galaxy outside of Earth. We don’t have the technology to visit them and our ability to search for them is limited. Centuries […] Continue reading

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The Complex Chemistry of Titan

A recent experiment by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory simulating Titan’s atmosphere has shown that there is some exciting chemistry going on not only in it’s upper atmosphere, but in the lower atmosphere too! Before this, scientists had assumed that as you got closer to the surface, the air became “dull and inert.” However, this team […] Continue reading

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Extremophiles in the Berkeley Pit

In Butte, Montana there is a toxic waste site, the Berkeley Pit, which has been discovered to be the home of various extremophiles. Some of these have even been identified to possibly produce anti-cancer agents and anti-inflammatories. The Berkeley Pit is a lake that is filled with about forty thousand gallons of acidic, metal contaminated […] Continue reading

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The Smallest Bears in the Universe

  Water Bears These little guys are a part of a special group of organisms called extremophiles. While their name may be a bit misleading, water bears (or moss piglet) measure about 1.5mm long and can live in some of the harshest conditions. This ability to survive in places where most living things would find unbearable separates […] Continue reading

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Holes and Wrinkles

There is a lot of misconception about two of the more arcane forms of proposed space travel: Warp Drives and Worm Holes. They work on the same principles but function in wholly different ways. General Relativity explains that any mass or energy can bend space and time. Since there is energy everywhere space and time […] Continue reading

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Where are the aliens?!

Many years ago, the possibility that aliens exist always seemed fictional. Although this possibility seemed negligible, there always seemed to be the hope for their existence. Humans have sworn through time to have seen UFOs, or extraterrestrial life, trying to … Continue reading Continue reading

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Interstellar Propulsion

               There is no better way to learn about space then to actually go there. We can only discover so much from far off images and spectrometry techniques. This is why organizations like NASA and DARPA are trying to develop new methods of space travel to send us to other stars. There are a […] Continue reading

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Why Have They Not Visited?

The Drake Equation allows us to estimate the number of civilizations in our own Milky Way Galaxy. Even if conservative numbers are used for each of the factors in the equation, the equation yields a value in the hundreds or even thousands for the number of civilizations in the galaxy. With the numbers of galaxies […] Continue reading

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