Tag Archives: astro2110

Natural Ozone Formation

In the history of life on Earth, ozone has played an incredibly important role. For much of the early history of life, the atmosphere contained little oxygen, slowly being replaced by carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. It wasn’t until a critical mass of this CO2 was replaced that animal life could venture onto land. This is […] Continue reading

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The Role of Radioactive Decay in Earth’s Internal Heat

Image: Cross Section of Earth As we have learned, the cause of seasons is the directness of sunlight a particular region of the Earth receives. What you may not know is that the sun is not the only source that heats up the Earth. The Earth actually internally generates its own heat through radioactive decay. […] Continue reading

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Asteroid Mining

As we know, the Earth’s resources are finite. There are only so many materials and metals that we can extract from Earth before it runs out. To help combat this problem, a new solution was envisioned, asteroid mining. What asteroid mining would do is collect precious metals from asteroids near Earth. Some of these include […] Continue reading

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Why Stars?

Throughout history, many civilizations have been fascinated by the stars in the night sky. But the question is why. Why have many civilizations been fascinated by stars? What makes the night sky so attractive to humans? Why did they ascribe meaning to tiny dots that shone brightly, and seemed so far away? I present the […] Continue reading

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Nuclear Fusion

We know that the Sun is extremely hot. Its surface temperature is 5,500 K. Temperature is a measurement of energy. So, we know that the Sun possesses huge amounts of energy. Where does that energy come from? How does the Sun create that much energy? Through a process called nuclear fusion, the Sun manages to […] Continue reading

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The Journey Back to the Moon

Hello everyone! Almost spring break! Isn’t it bonkers to think that we first sent human beings to the Moon in 1969? That’s 54 years ago! In that time, we have made such large strides in technology. Finally, there are plans to go back soon! NASA is working hard on its Artemis campaign. This campaign aims […] Continue reading

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The Golden Record

Aboard Voyager 1 and 2 there sits a golden record. This golden record contains anything NASA thinks is important to understanding humanity. The record contains both photos and images. The golden record fascinates me so much because of what they chose to put on it. First, they needed a way to communicate how to play […] Continue reading

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Blog 4 – Weather vs. Climate

There is often a lot of confusion when we talk about weather versus climate, and the impact both have on our planet. Many people who deny climate change/global warming do so because they are confused between weather and climate. I had a teacher in high school who told my class that climate change wasn’t real, […] Continue reading

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What color is the Sun? (not yellow)

by me The Sun is the brightest and biggest celestial body in our solar system. Its diameter is 865,000 miles, which is about 110 Earths long. Without the Sun’s light, there would be no life on Earth. The Sun is so important to us humans, yet some people don’t take the time to appreciate its […] Continue reading

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Our Voyage

We have an innate desire to explore. If we look at our history as a species, that seems to be consistently true from the very beginning. But the frontier of space presents a distinct challenge from previous frontiers — it is simply SO large. Large enough, in fact, that for the first time in the […] Continue reading

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