Category Archives: Astronomy

Astronomy, Electromagnetism, Engineering, Imaging, Materials, Physics, Science, Space, Technology

The James Webb Space Telescope Prepares to Peer Past Hubble

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Artist's rendering of JWST
Artist’s rendering. Image courtesy NASA.

For two decades, the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope helped pierce the veil of time, image stellar nurseries and prove that galaxies collide. Now, the James Webb Space Telescope stands poised to take those observations to the next level, making the delicate observations possible only in the cold, dark spaces beyond the moon.

Slated for a 2018 launch date and team-built by 14 countries, 27 states and the District of Columbia, Webb will take astronomers closer to the beginning of time than ever before, granting glimpses of sights long hypothesized but never seen, from the birth of galaxies to light from the very first stars. Join us as we explore…

How the James Webb Space Telescope Will Work

Astronomy, Chemistry, Computing, Electromagnetism, Engineering, History, Mathematics, Physics, Science, Technology, Top 5

Top 5 Large Hadron Collider Findings

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Photo of man examining accelerator
Photo courtesy CERN

When physicists at CERN cranked up the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider on Sept. 10, 2008, they had high (if contradictory) hopes. Like a child at Christmas, they wanted to get exactly what was on their wish list – the Higgs boson, some proof of supersymmetry – but also yearned for some wonderful surprise; because, if everything they predicted was right on the money, then particle physicists might well weep, for they would have no new worlds to conquer.

Years later, the LHC still hasn’t destroyed the planet or crushed physicists’ hopes. In fact, it’s made some amazing and somewhat perplexing discoveries. In this article, I take a (relatively) nontechnical look back at five the five most major findings so far.

5 Discoveries Made By the Large Hadron Collider (So Far)

Astronomy, Biochemistry, Culture, Electromagnetism, Health, History, Mathematics, Medicine, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Physics, Psychology, Science, Top 10, Weird

There was Madness to Their Method: The Western World Before the Scientific Method

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Cartoon of Mary Toft's doctors.
“My money’s on a lop-eared doe, or perhaps a Britannia Petite.”

One of the many things I enjoy about teaching my university class, Science, Feuds, Scandals and Hoaxes, is the opportunity to explore some of the most outrageous ideas ever to gain traction in the public mind. It’s easy to make fun today, but some of these ideas were grounded in reasoning that, though flawed, eventually gave rise to the right answer. Then again, there’s really no defending those doctors who thought that woman was giving birth to rabbit parts.

10 Things We Thought Were True Before the Scientific Method

Astronomy, Engineering, History, Imaging, Physics, Science, Space, Technology

Mars in a Nutshell

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Think you know everything about Mars. eh?

We live in a golden age of Mars exploration, an era of unprecedented knowledge brought to us by ingenious rovers and probes. Already we have learned that our diminutive neighbor once held water and perhaps life. Future missions will help determine where that water went and seek evidence deep beneath the surface of living creatures. One day, we might even go there ourselves. But how much have you kept up on the latest developments?

How Mars Works

Astronomy, Chemistry, Electromagnetism, Engineering, Imaging, Physics, Science, Space, Technology

To Catch a Comet

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Rosetta and Philae at their destination
Rosetta and Philae at their destination. Image courtesy ESA.

For a spacecraft to overtake a comet, let alone touch down and ride it sunward, requires trick-shot billiards on an astronomical scale. But that’s exactly what the ESA/NASA International Rosetta Mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is doing. Launched a decade ago aboard an Ariane 5 rocket, its loop-the-loop, gravity-slingshotting journey has juiced its speed enough to overtake the comet, which can reach speeds of up to 83,885 mph (135,000 kph), and set it up to land in November 2014. Which raises the question…

How do you land a spaceship on a comet?