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Tag Archives: blog1
No Need to Feel Small
The Powers of Ten video, originally made in 1977 by Charles and Ray Eames, is a stunning look into not only the unimaginable vastness of the universe, but also the depth of biological life itself. The video takes away the anxiety of being a very small human in a very large universe by presenting the …
Posted in Class, Science, Universe
Tagged astro2110, astronomy, blog1, Perspective, powersoften
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No Need to Feel Small
The Powers of Ten video, originally made in 1977 by Charles and Ray Eames, is a stunning look into not only the unimaginable vastness of the universe, but also the depth of biological life itself. The video takes away the anxiety of being a very small human in a very large universe by presenting the […]
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Posted in Class, Science, Universe
Tagged astro2110, astronomy, blog1, Perspective, powersoften
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The Speed Limit of the Universe
58,536 km/h. That’s the speed of the fastest ever man-made vehicle: the New Horizons space probe. Though this may seem like an unfathomable feat to the layperson, there’s something that can travel even faster than that by five orders of magnitude. Light is the current “speed limit of the universe.” It travels at 3 x 108 m/s or 1 […]
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Blog #1
For my first blog, I will write about the size and scale of the universe and what that might mean from a human and space travel perspective. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is about 100,000 light years across. The nearest major galaxy, Andromeda, is 2.5 million light years away. The limit of direct space exploration for […]
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The Vast Size and Scale of the Universe
Image Source The universe is so massive that it is difficult to grasp a sense of scale. In the image above, you can see what astrophysicists call the “observable universe.” This is unique to the entire universe because it excludes the parts of space that are so far away that their light has not had […]
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Posted in Class, Universe
Tagged astro2110, astronomy, blog1, size and scale, space, theuniverse
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One Long Trip
When we look up at the sky during the night, it can feel comforting that instead of being surrounded by darkness, we see the bright twinkles of stars all around us. Though this might make us feel like we are not simply on a rocky planet hurtling through space far from everything else, this is not […]
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Posted in Class, Light, Stars
Tagged astro2110, blog1, lightspeed, scale, spacetravel, Uncategorized
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The Cosmic Calendar
We, as humans, can have difficulty understanding amounts that exceed our narrow perspective. To aid us in understanding the 14 billion years that the universe has existed and the minuscule amount of time humans have inhabited it, scientists have put it in our terms of one year. Each month of the “cosmic calendar” represents roughly 1 … Continue reading “The Cosmic Calendar”
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Posted in Class, Historical, Universe
Tagged astro2110, blog1, cosmiccalendar, Solar System, Time
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The size of the universe and what that means for space travel
If there is one thing that I have learned so far in the Solar System, it’s that the universe is really big. Just for light to travel from one end of the Milky Way galaxy to the other takes 100,000 light years, and this distance is short compared to the universe itself! Additionally, since light […]
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Posted in Space Travel
Tagged astro2110, blog1, humansinspace, interstellarspace, voyager1
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Consequences of breaking the speed limit
The effects of aberration and the Doppler Effect. Source: Comic Vine During one of the first class sessions, we were given a minute or so to write down what would happen if the speed of light was only 100 mph. I’d never really thought about this before, so I struggled to get anything more than “The… More Consequences of breaking the speed limit
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Posted in Light, Physics
Tagged astro2110, blog1, speed of light
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Ahead Warp Factor One
People love to speculate about faster than light travel, but how did we come to know the speed of light?
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