Alliteration is accessible to all! Okay I’m done. Start some science! Really done this time. Today’s double post covers the smallest of stars, still larger than most planets, and the only weather Mercury will ever have. Humans are naturally interested in the extremes, the biggest, smallest, fastest, hottest, coldest, and every other characteristic outlier. With stars, being so huge and powerful, we are often more interested in the largest, hottest, and most energetic. Though on the opposite end of the spectrum, Cambridge University astronomers have discovered the smallest star in the known universe. The star, a red dwarf, has the...
Dark matter could be almost anything. With little data other than how much total dark matter mass exists, we can’t decode much about what individual chunks of dark matter might be made of. I’ve talked before about Massive Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs) and Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), but these are just two possibilities. Other theorists have talked about Modified Newtonian Gravity (MNG), where gravity may work differently on the grand scale than it does on our small Earth scales. Or perhaps it’s something I haven’t seen before. Maybe what we call dark matter is just a large population of ancient black holes....
One of the most important questions our species has tackled is the origin of life on Earth. If we can figure out the conditions and catalyst for the beginning of life, we can look elsewhere in the universe for those same conditions, and zero in on the potential for finding extraterrestrial life. We know the universe is old enough for the painstakingly slow evolutionary process, but what started it? In the famous 1952 Miller-Urey experiment, a flask containing the basic natural elements water (H20), methane (CH4), Ammonia (NH4), and Hydrogen (H2), all present on the early Earth, was subjected to...
I’ve talked at length about Solar Flares. They are massively energetic, and due to the Sun’s 11 year maximum period of activity, we have seen a lot of powerful ones this year. With the holidays in full swing, sometimes the Universe can put up its own lights. Which is More Powerful? A Solar Flare or all the Lights on Earth during the season? First of all, we need to figure out how much energy lights produce, and roughly how many homes put them up, and for how long. We will have to make some assumptions, but we will start...
Have you ever heard of the Van Allen belts? If not you really should learn about them. After all, without them the majority of life on Earth could not survive. So what are they and how do they keep us alive? The Van Allen Belts are a collection of charged particles, held in place by the magnetic field of Earth, that act as a barrier to prevent the most harmful radiation from the Sun from reaching the surface of the Earth. They shift according to the incoming energy of the Sun, and if there is a large enough swell of...
