Category Archives: Science

The planet Mars has captured the imagination of science fiction authors and scientists as the best candidate to finding extraterrestrial life in the solar system. The red planet has been featured in numerous movies, most recently in the Martian, as a place to establish a human research base and colony. As far as we know,Continue reading “Water on Mars”

Neutron stars form from supernova explosions, when the remaining core does not collapse into a black hole. They have a diameter of around 20km, which is the size of a city, but they also contain the equivalent of 1.4 mass of the Sun, making them extremely dense. You probably have heard the famous anecdote thatContinue reading “Neutron Stars”

In the previous post, we saw that intensity of radiation emitted by a star is proportional to its temperature to the fourth power. Let’s now use that to find a formula for a star’s luminosity. In order to calculate luminosity, we multiply intensity by the surface area of the object. Since, we assume that allContinue reading “Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram”

Blackbody radiation is a fascinating concept that shines some light (hehe) on quantum phenomena and stars. Planck’s research into the ultraviolet catastrophe at the beginning of the 20th century jumpstarted quantum physics. An ideal blackbody is an object that absorbs all radiation incident on it, and then emits 100% of it. This means that theContinue reading “Blackbody Radiation”

Since I was a kid, the only thing I knew about the four jovian planets was that they are big, gaseous and cold. Yet, they are so much more interesting than it seems at first glance. In this post I’ll talk about some special characteristics of each of them. But why does our solar systemContinue reading “The Jovian Planets”

Since the dawn of humanity, we have thought that the heavens are huge, but of constant size. We first knew that the stars move around, then that it is actually the Earth rotating on its axis. In the 18th century, the French astronomer Messier observed fuzzy objects that he didn’t know were galaxies. Only inContinue reading “The Expansion of the Universe”

The size of the universe is incomprehensible by humans. One of the most fascinating experiences was playing around with the scale of the universe app made by Cary Huang. Seeing just how huge the Milky Way galaxy is made me feel small. I knew it was big, but not like that. Although, that app stillContinue reading “The Scale of the Universe”

The solar system formed from a cloud of interstellar gas around 4.6 billion years ago. At some point, this cloud collapsed under gravity and the sun formed. The pressure in the center became so high that hydrogen atoms began fusing into helium, and the nuclear reactions that power stars begun. A solar nebula of gasContinue reading “The Formation of the Solar System”

Cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) is the leftover radiation from the Big Bang and serves as a source of evidence for it actually happening. It is extremely cold at just 2.725 Kelvin, so emits blackbody wavelengths in the microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum. It was discovered in 1964 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson,Continue reading “Cosmic Microwave Background”