One of the reasons I love science is that it actually does allow us to look into the past and future, beyond our existence in the present. Written history gives us a perspective of a person who was around before any human currently living on Earth, and allows us to piece together the history of our culture. This is very important, so no disrespect to historians and their work. Much disrespect to fortune telling though. It’s a waste of energy involving a person who fishes for information for a living. But let’s talk about Science. Since we just passed Canada...
A newly installed instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) has just taken it’s first images, what we call ‘first light’ in the astronomy world. The instrument, called GRAVITY, uses four different 8m telescopes to perform what we call ‘Baseline Interferometry.’ It is expected that tis is the instrument that will allow humanity to take the first ever direct picture of a black hole. Interferometry is a technique that uses multiple small telescopes all collecting light at a specific wavelength. These telescopes form a line that we call the baseline. The combination of these telescopes and...
How do we measure the rotation speed of a planet? Exactly as you would expect. Watch the surface, look for markable features, and time how long it takes until those features pass the same point again in the future. But how can we possibly nail down this information when the planet has little to no visible surface features. Gas giant planets are great examples of this. Jupiter is a bit easier since it has plenty of storms and separated cloud layers along the planet’s rotation axis, but the other three are much tougher. Aside from hard-to-spot features, gas giants also...
