Saw this article on Discover.com earlier this month and thought it was really interesting: The Solar System’s Lost Planet. Nesvorny, who runs computer simulations to study how the solar system evolved over time, kept encountering the same problem: The four giant gas planets, whose orbits are comfortably far apart from each other today, kept violently jostling… Continue reading Lost planet
Tag: Space
The Scale of the Universe
I realized I missed posting in April entirely(!), and I don’t like the look of the gap in the archive calendar, so I’m back-dating this entry. And you need to check this out, a Flash-animated Scale of the Universe that is simply mind-boggling. From the smallest structures known (quantum foam, the Planck length) to the… Continue reading The Scale of the Universe
Yuri’s Night
Tomorrow, April 12th, is a pretty momentous date: it is the 50th anniversary of the first human being to launch into space (which took place on April 12, 1961) by Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Appropriately enough, the 12th is also when Yuri’s Night is celebrated, a sort of unofficial holiday “world space party” that commemorates… Continue reading Yuri’s Night
Much Ado About Pluto
More geeky space news! This is more mainstream-popular, though, as I’ve seen it popping up everywhere. Pluto is no longer a planet. I’m actually a bit surprised at the uproar this seems to be causing; Slashdot has more on this. Me, I guess I’ve always been suspicious of Pluto; I mean, the thing has this… Continue reading Much Ado About Pluto
They don’t make ’em like that anymore
Okay, I’m a little behind on news, but I thought this story was extremely cool: Voyager 1 passes 100 AU from the sun. I guess this is only of interest to you if you’re a space and astronomy geek. (Some quick Wikipedia references: Voyager 1, AU.) It’s just amazing to me that a spacecraft built… Continue reading They don’t make ’em like that anymore
Orion
The February issue of Discover Magazine has an interesting article about Project Orion: a project that was developed during the ’50s and ’60s to build a spaceship that was as big as a skyscraper, weighed eight million pounds, and was propelled by—get this—nuclear bombs. While Discover’s article was good, focusing more on the people and… Continue reading Orion
Blue Moon
One for the weekend: tomorrow, July 31, (er, rather, today now I guess) is a blue moon. One definition of it, anyway. Enjoy!
Water on Mars
Forgot to point to this the other day: Opportunity finds evidence of water in Mars’ past. Probably you’ve all heard this by now, but it’s still incredible. “Liquid water once flowed through these rocks. It changed their texture, and it changed their chemistry,” said Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for… Continue reading Water on Mars
Lunar eclipse
In case you live in a cave somewhere and don’t look up into the night sky, there was a total lunar eclipse tonight. Unfortunately, here on the west coast we missed most of the show; by the time the moon rose over the cloudy horizon, it was just past totality and starting to emerge from… Continue reading Lunar eclipse