Author Archives: jasperluastronomy

One of the greatest difficulties interstellar, or even just interplanetary, travel faces today is the problem of fuel storage. In order to accelerate to fast enough speeds to travel between planets in a reasonable amount of time, as well as to later decelerate, ships would need to hold a tremendous amount of fuel, which would […] Continue reading →

The Chicxulub crater is a crater buried underneath the Yucatan Peninsula which is suspected to be the location of the impact of the meteor which wiped out the dinosaurs. The crater is more than 180km in diameter and 20km in depth. Estimates place the size of the impacting meteor to be at least 10km in […] Continue reading →

We talked much in class about different methods of discovering extrasolar planets, and Dr. G pointed out to us that the only reason people bother looking for extrasolar planets is to try and find life outside of our solar system.  To do this, scientists have to narrow down the list of extrasolar planets into a […] Continue reading →

The above photo is a picture captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope of what is now known as the “Pillars of Creation.” Located in the Eagle Nebula, which is around 6,500 – 7,000 light years away from Earth, the structures are named as such because of their pillar-like shape, as well as because the gas […] Continue reading →

Scientists have known how to use the process of nuclear fusion as a weapon for over 50 years at this point. However, we have yet to find a way to repurpose it as a safe, nearly unlimited energy source. One of the main issues that researchers are facing with trying to tackle this issue is […] Continue reading →

While reading the textbook, I found it very disappointing just how close the Greeks were to figuring out that Earth was not the center of the universe. Had they not been fooled by looking for parallax, they would have been led to the right conclusion that the Earth orbits the sun, rather than that everything […] Continue reading →

We talked a bit in class on Tuesday about what would happen to someone’s body if he were to spend too long in space. His bones would start deteriorating, his muscles would get weaker, and his body would produce less blood as he adjusts to zero G. I was reminded while we were talking about […] Continue reading →

Contemporary Events   “Romeo and Juliet” is published– the manuscript was printed in 1597, and then performed by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men in a theater outside of London. Harvard university was founded – in 1636, the university was established by the leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and named after a minister called John Harvard. Today, […] Continue reading →