Tag Archives: blog1

I swear the universe doesn’t even know I exist

Posted on January 25, 2014 by juliamac17

So I was watching this video called Powers of Ten, yes? And this video takes you from looking at a view that’s 1m^2 and then increases that by a factor of ten every ten seconds (so after the first ten seconds you’re looking at 10m^2, then 100m^2, and so on and so forth), and by […] Continue reading →

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Humans: Only Around for a Blink of an Eye

Posted on January 25, 2014 by hollyreichert

The universe has been around for 13.8 billion years.  In the grand scheme of things, this means that human life has only been around for the blink of an eye.  When 13.8 billion years is put into one calendar year, homo erectus does not appear until 10:48 pm on December 31.  All of our human […] Continue reading →

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The Cosmic Speed Limit

Posted on January 19, 2014 by jblubin

It was Einstein who only came up with his Theory of Special Relativity after having been inspired by a daydream of himself riding on a beam of light across the cosmos. What a journey that must have been, despite its fantasy; our only idea of what travelling at the speed of light may look like […] Continue reading →

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Light-Years: The Key to the Past

Posted on January 28, 2013 by werdercj

Speed of light: 300,000 km/second One topic I’ve found particularly interesting to read and think about is the speed of light and its implications.  We’ve learned that light travels at about 300,000 km/second; first off, this number alone is unfathomably large to me.  When I thought about how fast light travels, and then learned that […] Continue reading →

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The Size of the Universe

Posted on January 28, 2013 by theskyisbeautifultonight

How to conceptualize the size of the universe?  I think we find it so hard to do it because astronomical numbers dwarf anything we use in day to day life and on some level, our brains can’t process them.  It’s like trying to visualize the national debt.  What’s a couple more zeros here and there […] Continue reading →

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Things to know about Zodiacs

Posted on January 28, 2013 by eloisechen

According to our birthday, we know our Sun Sign or zodiac. What does it actually mean? I personally love sun sign astrology, but didn’t know its true meaning before I begin this class. The star sign is the constellation in or near which the Sun appears at the night of a given day. If we […] Continue reading →

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The Cosmic Calendar

Posted on January 28, 2013 by williamrmccormick

The idea behind the cosmic calendar is to put the timeline of the entire universe into the perspective of one calendar year. Below is a picture of the calendar. This calendar really puts into reality how short humans have really been around. It takes until 11:54 on December 31 for modern humans to appear on […] Continue reading →

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The Universe is More Observable Than What Meets The Eye

Posted on January 28, 2013 by jacksonlangham

In class we talked about how the observable universe is 13.7 billion light years. The reason for this is because the universe is 13.7 billion years old so we therefore […] Continue reading →

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The speed of light in everyday terms

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Elizabeth Merriman

The idea of light years is pretty mind blowing.  Click on the above picture to watch a cool video explaining how we measure distance with time in everyday life.  The difference between saying I live 10 hours from Nashville and … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Switching to Light Speed

Posted on January 27, 2013 by brendanfeeley

What is the fastest thing that Humans have ever built?  According to Aerospace Web, the fastest man-made object were the Helios probes built and launched into space to study the Sun.  These orbited the Sun in elliptical fashion, allowing them to zoom around the Sun at very high speeds.  These are said to have reached […] Continue reading →

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