Science and technology benefit one another. New scientific theories afford new opportunities to create technology that can harness the laws of nature. Conversely, new technologies allow for better instrumentation and unprecedented efficiency in scientific progress. It’s a continual feedback loop, and some of the greatest challenges in science are solved simply by throwing more resources at them, or in other words, gathering more data. A good example of this is a relatively old problem for astronomers – determining how the spin of a galaxy affects it’s shape. We certainly don’t want for analogies on Earth, spinning pizza, driving on a...
They may look like they are standing still, but galaxies are all spinning. Spiral galaxies have the lovely regular spin of a disk, while elliptical galaxies are all over the place, a buzzing hive of stars. We don’t see this rotation in real time because it takes millions of years for it to be noticeable. The Milky Way takes 250 Million years to spin just once around it’s axis. Looking at this rotation rate vs. distance from the galactic center was what originally led to the discovery of dark matter. Some galaxies do in fact spin slower than others, but how does...
News always reports the records. The biggest, the loudest, the fastest, the first. When it comes to Astronomy, there are so many new worlds to explore and so much new science to learn, we end up breaking records often. Even with Astronomy being the oldest science, the sheer amount of stuff in the universe means there is always something new and surprising to discover. Today’s episode of ‘Biggest, brightest, hottest’ brings us the move massive binary star system ever found, with two huge, hot stars so close together that they are actually touching, merging their atmospheres together. In the Large...
This is a story that not many know, about a Russian cosmonaut named Vladimir Komarov. He was one of the first Soviet cosmonauts in the 1960s during the cold war space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. He was the first cosmonaut to fly on more than one space mission, and he sadly became the first human being to die due to space flight. An Aerospace Engineer and test pilot, he was one of the few exceptional candidates accepted into Air Force Group One, the original Soviet cosmonaut program. He wasn’t medically fit for the program on...
The recent launch of the Russian Progress spacecraft to resupply the International Space Station has entered a fast spin of about 20-30 RPM. The resupply mission has been aborted and currently mission controllers are focussing on salvaging the craft, attempting to regain control before it`s orbit degrades, sending it into the Earth`s atmosphere where it will burn up. Time will tell if the 3000 lbs of supplies and experiments survive.
