Tag: astro2110
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We are Lucky
We should be grateful for our place in exploration. Sometimes I get sad, and mope around upset that I was born at the wrong time. The phrase goes something like “born too late to explore the Earth, too early to explore the stars.” And it is so easy to get caught up in it. But…
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Light Has Momentum?
How is that possible – And how can we take advantage? We know that light has no mass. And, according to classical mechanics, momentum is given by 1/2mv^2; in other words, according to classical mechanics, light cannot have momentum. But, as we know, light is different — and oh so interesting! By virtue of energy…
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Protecting Our Home
History is doomed to repeat itself. Will we be ready? Around 66 million years ago, an object estimated to be around 10km wide struck Earth at incredibly high speeds. The energy released was equivalent to roughly 100 million megatons of TNT. The impact, then, released over 6.5 billion times more energy than the catastrophically powerful…
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A Messenger From Afar
‘Oumuamua, our first confirmed Extrasolar Object On October 19th, 2017, a telescope at the University of Hawaii, called Pan-STARRS1 detected an object unlike any before observed in our Solar System. It was highly elongated (by a ratio of at least 10:1), completely inert (no dust floating around or behind), and composed of rock and possibly…
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Our Voyage
We have an innate desire to explore. If we look at our history as a species, that seems to be consistently true from the very beginning. But the frontier of space presents a distinct challenge from previous frontiers — it is simply SO large. Large enough, in fact, that for the first time in the…
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Nature’s Closely Guarded Secret – Nuclear Fusion
We are, quite literally, made of stardust. Stars are the birthplace of many of the elements that make up our physical reality as we know it. Heavier elements (heavier than Iron, specifically) were created in a Supernova — a violent explosion of epic proportions at the end of a massive stars life. Inside of every…
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Observational Limitation, Scientific Innovation
Our telescopes just keep impressing. There are just so many limitations, on a physics level, that prevent us from observing the Universe around us. Telescopes are hindered by light pollution and atmospheric disturbances on Earth, preventing them from peering into extreme distances. In space itself, obstructions such as gas clouds block our view of more…
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Astronomy’s Pioneers
Isaac Newton was something truly special – I’ve heard many, in my opinion correctly, claim him to be the most intelligent human that has ever lived. From finding an infinite series to describe the precise digits of pi into infinity, to inventing calculus, to observing the laws of motion and beginning to crack the code…
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Our Speed Limit
(its slower than you think) Many people know that the laws of physics dictate that nothing – and I mean nothing – can travel faster than the speed of light. It is not possible for any object, nor any information, to exceed 299,000,000 meters per second. At first, this seems to be an incredibly high…
Solar Expedition 