Tag Archives: blog1

Big big numbers make no sense don’t they?

Posted on January 27, 2014 by ilman

We all know the universe is 13.8 billion years old. But… How long ago was 13.8 billion years ago? How about 65.5 million years ago, when the dinosaurs die out? How long ago was that? Ourselves, being such small creatures with so short a lifespan, how could we comprehend the largeness of such numbers? Well, […] Continue reading →

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The Scale of the Universe (Interactive)

Posted on January 27, 2014 by zkorman

(Scroll to zoom through the universe, magnitude of zoom at the bottom right, click on things for a short description) This program is designed to give us a chance to fathom the scale of our universe relative to things we can fathom. At the beginning we see ourselves, humans. Scroll just for a second and […] Continue reading →

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Beyond The Speed of Light?

Posted on January 27, 2014 by joshkphilips

How concrete are our laws of physics? Could there be a way to bend the laws and essentially travel beyond the speed of light? Could such an ability open the possibilities for interstellar space travel? These are some of the questions that surround the intriguing idea of wormholes. Two wormholes could in theory act as […] Continue reading →

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The Speed of Light is Pretty Speedy

Posted on January 27, 2014 by hughavanheesewijk

Everyone appreciates illustrations of any sort that put very large things into perspective. These illustrations can come in many different forms, but I think that the most effective ones are the ones that use comparisons. These comparison illustrations can take something that is absolutely massive and crunch it into something almost manageable. This is a […] Continue reading →

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Lightspeed Activate!

Posted on January 26, 2014 by Chad F

The speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second.  Nothing that we know of travels faster than light, and that’s a good thing because everything we see depends on light traveling from the object to our eyes.  Because light has to travel to our eyes, we always see things as they appeared in the past. […] Continue reading →

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Different speeds of light

Posted on January 26, 2014 by drewhamilton0

Although we often refer to “the speed of light” as a singular value (c = 299,792,458 m/s), the truth is that when we see light, it is actually moving slower than this speed. This is because the light we see is not moving in a vacuum, but through our atmosphere instead. Light moves at different speeds… Continue reading →

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Size and Expansion of the Universe

Posted on January 26, 2014 by katiew

I have always thought that the universe is almost unfathomably huge, but until recently I had not spent much time contemplating how humans have determined this. While reading about the topic, I came across information about the Hubble Space Telescope. Not being familiar with astronomy, I did not know much about it or its purpose. […] Continue reading →

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Potential to Shed New Light on Our Cosmic Calendar

Posted on January 26, 2014 by waldentb

Interplanetary Dust Particles Interplanetary dust is dust that been shorn away from asteroids, comets, planets, and other leftover debris from …

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A Different Spin on Scale

Posted on January 26, 2014 by jgarrett9

The universe is massive. We know it, we think we can understand it, but every time we see one of those pictures with a tiny Earth next to a huge star, it still blows our mind. So yes, based on the principle of size, I agree that we are tiny and insignificant compared to the… Continue reading →

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Issues with time

Posted on January 26, 2014 by colepospisil

Imagine a perfectly accurate clock, one that measures nanoseconds away without any margin of error. This clock is more advanced and precise than anything we have today, even the atomic clock pictured above. If you wanted to know what time it is right now, this clock would still be a little behind, unfortunately. This is […] Continue reading →

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