Tag Archives: Time

Why Christopher Nolan’s tidal representation in Interstellar makes a terrifying sort of sense.

Note: Spoiler alert for those that haven’t seen the movie!     Within the Interstellar universe, there exists an enormous black hole in a distant galaxy, named Gargantua by the movie’s characters. Around this black hole orbits several different planets, and the characters are hoping to explore and learn more about them. One of these […] Continue reading

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GMT: What else is out there?

This telescope, the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is currently in the process of being built. It is a refractory telescope with 7 separate mirrors that each have a diameter of 8.4 meters. This telescope is going to be incredibly large. In fact, it is going to be the largest optical telescope to be built. According … Continue reading GMT: What else is out there? Continue reading

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The Cosmic Calendar and the Cosmic Perspective

Shrinking the history of the Universe down to fit into the time frame of one Earth year may not seem all too impressive at first. The realization however that, fit into a calendar year, each month is representative of about one billion years, while each day is 40 million years, presents one with the inescapable … Continue reading The Cosmic Calendar and the Cosmic Perspective Continue reading

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Precession: How Will Life on Earth Differ With Summer in January?

Precession is often referred to as “orbital variation.” An easy demonstration of precession is a top spinning. As a top spins on a surface, it moves around in a circular or elliptical path. But while it moves, the direction of its tilt is also changing. The same is true for planets as they orbit stars. … Continue reading Precession: How Will Life on Earth Differ With Summer in January? Continue reading

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How Fast Light Travels

We all know light travels fast, but do you know how fast it can be? The answer 299,792 kilometers in a second. The fact is, if you can travel as fast as light, you could go around the Earth seven and a half times in just one second. Theoretically, there is nothing runs faster than … Continue reading How Fast Light Travels Continue reading

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Dating Everyday Objects?

Radiometric dating is generally used for items in our solar system that exponentially older than humans. The composition of an object is evaluated for its ratio of parent and daughter isotopes. This ratio will provide a good estimate of an object’s age if we know the corresponding half-life. But can we use this same process […] Continue reading

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Blog 1 – Cosmic Calendar

For my first blog, I wanted to discuss the cosmic calendar.  From the picture below, you can see, from a human bias, the five most important events in universal history, symbolized in the julian calendar: the big bang in january, the formation of the milky way in march, the development of the solar system in […] Continue reading

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Hubble’s Law and a Window to the Past

Hubble’s Law is one of the most fundamental observations in cosmology – that objects far off in space are almost … More Continue reading

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Blog #3

The Earth is around 4.5 billion years old. The first half of the Earth’s existence (prior to the Great Oxidation Event which essentially introduced free oxygen (dioxygen) into the Earth’s atmosphere) was characterized by the presence of certain types of bacteria, although evidence of this existence on our planet is limited. However, last year, researchers … Continue reading Blog #3 Continue reading

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The Key Effortless Self-improvement

We’d all probably like to believe that astrology is real so we can identify with the redeeming qualities of our own sign and to hold fast to promising horoscopes. However, zodiac signs are not only false because of their vagueness, which allows each sign to at least partially relate to every human, but also due to […] Continue reading

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