400 years ago on August the 25th, Gallileo Galilei presented his telescope to the world. It was only a simple machine. Today we have the Hubble Space Telescope – it is a little more powerful than the original! You can see some fabulous pictures, with new ones posted every day, at the NASA website.
Category:Space
The Elusive And Crafty Black Hole…
This post was written by Rolfasaurus Rex… The black hole is one of the Universe’s most confusing phenomena. There is even still a debate over whether they actually exist! Assuming that they do exist, scientists have discovered that they are amongst the most dangerous objects in the universe. A black hole is, as far as …
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Moon Not Made Of Cheese…
Yesterday, NASA reported that their LCROSS mission to find water on the moon had been successful. They found lots of it, with about 100kg of water vapour and ice being thrown up as they crashed into the Cabeus crater near the moon’s south pole. “We are ecstatic,” said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator at …
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They Might Be Giants…
I love They Might Be Giants so I thought I would post this video for one of their songs. Many of their songs are full of wonderful geeky science and this is no exception. It mentions that every element present in the sun is in a gaseous state because of the high temperatures. The sun is mostly made …
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Don’t Panic…
When I was in my last year at Prep School I was obsessed with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books by Douglas Adams. In it, a character called Zaphod Beeblebrox is sentenced to be put into the Total Perspective Vortex. The device compares you with the enormity of the Universe. This makes you feel so small and insignificant that …
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A Mars A Day…
I was invited out to dinner tonight and was welcomed at the door by a very enthusiastic plan to view Mars at its closest to Earth for 60,000 years. I rather too enthusiastically poo-pooed this as being a myth to a somewhat muted reception. We did go out and view Mars, which was twinkling with an …
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Hubbly Bubbly…
The Hubble space telescope was launched on April 24th 1990 on the space shuttle Discovery. In the 21 years since its installation in orbit around Earth it has taken some of the most amazing photographs of space ever recorded. Earlier this month Hubble was pointed at a pair of interacting galaxies known as ARP 273 …
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Origin Of The Universe…
Something a little less exam-oriented but interesting stuff nonetheless I hope. This video from Minute Physics discusses what we do and do not know about the origins of the Universe. We make observations and draw conclusions. Hopefully what we don’t do is look for areas of uncertainty and then make up an explanation. It’s OK not to …
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Tycho Brahe…
Tycho Brahe (1546 to 1601) was born in Denmark to wealthy and aristocratic parents. He was a brilliant astronomer pioneering the idea that accurate observation was the secret to making improvements in astronomy. He designed special apparatus for making measurements and was meticulous in checking their accuracy. He taught Johannes Kepler who used the data gathered during …
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Doubt And Uncertainty…
I am travelling to France today so will be away from my computer for 24 hours or so. I like this video about Saturn’s rings because it has lots of eminent scientists admitting that they don’t know the answers to some pretty big questions. Celebrate doubt and uncertainty! It’s what keeps driving science forward. . …
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