Tag Archives: blog3

Light

Posted on February 20, 2013 by michaelglindsay

Light Light, to me, will always carry a sort of mystical quality, regardless of how great our understanding of it grows to someday be. It travels across the cosmos carrying tantalizing hints at what lies beyond our short grasp. It is the information super highway of the Universe, bringing information and description of what else […] Continue reading →

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Astronomy’s Evolving Role in Society

Posted on February 20, 2013 by werdercj

Above: Stonehenge is an ancient structure in England that was used to mark the seasons. Archaeoastronomy is the study of ancient structures in search of astronomical connections.  It shows how people in the past understood and utilized phenomena they observed in the sky.  To me, the most interesting part of this is the progression of […] Continue reading →

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Plato’s Cosmology

Posted on February 20, 2013 by JT McJunkins

While Plato’s cosmology may seem odd to a modern observer, it was a carefully reasoned, innovative theory in its time. Plato departed from his predecessor’s ideas beginning with his belief in a deity. While pre-Socratic philosophers attributed orde… Continue reading →

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Black Hole Collisions

Posted on February 20, 2013 by marknshirleyvu

Even with little formal expertise about black holes, most people know that black holes are extremely powerful regions in space in which gravity “sucks in” everything around the black hole with no chance of escape.  Now imagine if two of these massive regions were to collide.  It is easy to infer that said collision would […] Continue reading →

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Hubble Images: Not as Easy as Just Taking Pictures

Posted on February 20, 2013 by zvgio

Most people have heard of the Hubble Space Telescope, a visible light telescope that has been orbiting Earth since 1990, and if they haven’t, they’ve probably at least seen some of it’s images of distant galaxies and majestic nebulae. These pictures are vibrantly colorful and awe-inspiring, but they don’t start off that way. All of […] Continue reading →

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Neutrino Detectors

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Will K

Over the past several decades telescope technology has improved dramatically. Not only are we able to view the galaxy from massive observatories on Earth, but we can capture light through telescopes orbiting in space. Although these advances have allowed us to detect light from many different ranges across the electromagnetic spectrum, telescopes cannot detect all […] Continue reading →

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Archeoastronomy and Stonehenge

Posted on February 19, 2013 by rtjobe

Archeoastronomy is not as the name at first implies a study of ancient astronomy, but rather the study of how astronomy affected early civilizations. In a sense, it is a combination of astronomy, anthropology, and history with respect to ancient cultures. Archeoastronomers look at a variety of types of evidence in their efforts to determine […] Continue reading →

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Archeoastronomy

Posted on February 19, 2013 by AlanL

Over the summer I was in Mexico and visited some Mayan ruins in Tulum and Chichen Itza. It was incredible to hear all about how the cities were built with regard to the sun’s movement in the sky. In Chichen Itza, there is an observatory where they had 20 sight lines each marking a different […] Continue reading →

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DETECTING OXYGEN!

Posted on February 19, 2013 by sharpew

According to a New Scientist article from FEBRUARY 19TH, 2013, a new telescope in Chile might be able to detect oxygen on exoplanets (planets outside our solar system). This means that it would be able to detect alien life!! According to the article, our currently developed telescopes can identify the different elements of exoplanet’s atmospheres by studying the substances that absorb […] Continue reading →

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Who Needs Telescopes When You Have Dry-Cleaning Fluid?

Posted on February 19, 2013 by wherrysg

Image Source For Raymond Davis Jr, this was a legitimate question that he proposed to the science community in the 1960s with his Homestake Experiment. This experiment was Davis’s quest to learn about neutrinos–a neutral subatomic particle with an almost-zero mass and that also rarely reacts with normal matter. According to this article, Davis’s research […] Continue reading →

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