Everyone in Canada looks forward to the Perseid meteor shower each August. The weather is warm, the skies are clear, and they have a high zenithal hourly rate (ZHR). But once they are done, it’s not long before the weather starts to cool down, Canada moves into Autumn and eventually the deep freeze of winter sends our fine nation into hibernation. But if you do feel like coming out of your fort this weekend, in an unseasonably warm December, you will be treated to what has often been the best meteor shower of the year: The Geminids. Under ideal conditions,...
Our planet orbits the Sun. 365.25 days to go full circle (ellipse actually) and bring the seasons to Earth. But the Sun is not really stationary, it’s actually moving through space. It’s orbiting the center of the Milky Way, along with the rest of the galaxy. It actually has a periodic motion as it moves around the Galaxy, slowly moving up above the galactic plane then being pulled back down below by the disk stars. Currently, the Sun is moving toward the constellation Hercules at a speed of around 72,000 Km/h. It is also moving up to the top of the...
Let me ask you, when you look at the stars on a cold, clear night, what do you see? Diamonds sparkling? Shapes? I do see those things, but I also see so much more. When I look at the stars, I see a thousand generations of humans looking up in wonder, writing shapes in the dirt and telling incredible stories of brave heroes, ferocious beasts, and important lessons. I see our common ancestors using the sky to predict the weather, the seasons, and even the coming of the end of the world. They were looking at a comet in the...
If you look up into the sky on a clear night, you would see thousands of stars. There are surely many more that you would need a telescope to see. But there are not stars everywhere. You can zoom in further and further with bigger and bigger telescopes, until eventually you find gaps where you simply don’t see stars. For a long time it was thought that the gaps were empty, until the Hubble telescope peered through the darkness by taking a 200 hour exposure of a supposedly empty patch of sky. What it revealed was a universe full of...
After focussing all of its energy on taking science data during closest approach, New Horizons has been slowly but surely sending back the stream of information collected on the Pluto system. This long process of returning the data to Earth has meant periodic updates for humanity, and a rekindling of excitement for the newest secrets revealed about the dwarf planet. Here is a video of the region of Pluto imaged in high resolution, followed by some of the best still along the way. This is the closest and most detailed view of Pluto that humanity will have for decades. We...
Data is beautiful. There is elegance in the artful manipulation of data to communicate information. I love to see new ways to communicate science to the layman and give an understanding of the collective human knowledge. So I had to post this timeline of the universe infographic, containing events from the beginning of the universe all the way up to the death of the Sun. This is obviously just the tip of the scientific iceberg so to speak, but some of the highlights chosen cross several disciplines of science and are truly significant events in history. Enjoy the truly beautiful...
What do other planetary systems look like? We have seen some where massive Jupiter-sized worlds orbit closer to their star than Mercury does to the Sun, baking them with radiation. Others have had multiple rocky planets within the Earth’s orbit distance. Some have planets similar to Earth in a variety of locations. But what about far away from the star? We never expected to find gas giants like Uranus and Neptune in the far reaches of our solar system. Are there planetary systems where planets live even farther away? Maybe there are planets that live in the empty darkness between stars,...
The only reason we can see black holes in the universe is because some of them swallow up gas and dust. This heats up material that is spinning rapidly around the black hole as it falls in (called an accretion disk), and produces massive jets of material due to conservation of angular momentum that can be seen across the universe. The energy released in the jets and the energy given off in the accretion disk are proportional to how much gas and dust is being consumed by the black hole. More matter = more food = more energy released. But...
Inhabited entirely by robots, Mars is the enigmatic planet that is under intense exploration by humanity. The curiosity rover has been making it’s way closer to Mount Sharp in the Gale Crater, intending to slowly climb the mountain, sampling rocks from different eras in Mars’ history along the way. One of the last regions to cross before beginning its ascent is the region known as the Bagnold dunes, strange dark features similar to sand dunes on Earth. Photos from Curiosity show the beauty and detail in the dark features. The dark dunes have very interesting ripple features, similar to those...
There are so many little things about gravity that we take for granted. If you take it away, a lot of things become tougher. The common discussion points are how you lose bone density, muscle mass, you get taller, and increased risk of herniated disks. But there are a lot of day to day things that are tough too. Sleeping while having no concept of up and down, exercising without weights, eating, writing, and drinking. Generally astronauts would have to drink from bags because you simply couldn’t have a cup of water. The lack of gravity would have the water...
