HD 189733b: A Jupiter Sized Alien Planet Where it Rains Molten Glass!

By on Aug 31, 2013 in Astonishing Discoveries | 0 comments

There is so much of the universe that is unknown by humankind, specifically at least 96% (unless we know what dark matter and dark energy is by now!). However, through the efforts of Kepler we are able to understand a little more about alien planets. This particular alien planet called HD 189733b rains molten glass. Yes that is right, molten glass.   The Lowdown on Planet HD 189733b This planet is called HD 189733b and it is located 63 light years away (or 630 trillion KM from Earth) and was first discovered in 2005. This was also the first extrasolar planet to have a thermal map constructed. If you were to compare this exoplanet orbit versus the orbit of Earth, it would be 30 times closer than Earth. This Jupiter sized planet also orbits its host star in 2.2 days!! Now the reason that is astounding is because it takes Earth 365.25 days to travel around the Sun. The orbital speed...

Bruce Murray Director of Voyager Missions and Founder of Planetary Society Dies at 81

By on Aug 30, 2013 in Breaking News | 0 comments

Bruce Murray 1931 – 2013 On Thursday August 30th, 2013 the world lost one of the most important scientists. A man called Bruce Murray who died at the age of 81 from Alzheimer’s disease. He is most famously known as the director for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. It’s amazing and inspiring to know that Bruce Murray was the man behind the successful Viking landings on Mars, the Voyager 1 and 2 missions, as well as the Galileo mission to Jupiter and Magellan to Venus. Bruce Murray was also dubbed the “Admiral of the Solar System” by Discovery magazine. Interestingly Bruce Murray never set out to be a planetary explorer. He went to MIT through a ROTC program then got his PhD in Geology. He served sometime in the U.S airforce then went to Caltech where he started observing the Moon. Most geologists were focusing on the Moon at that time since...

Sunset Over Dione

By on Aug 18, 2013 in For Your Information | 0 comments

  This is a gorgeous image of a sunset over Dione (pronounced die-OH-nee). Dione is one of Saturn’s moons and is the 15th largest moon in the solar system. If you combine all the smaller moons together it would still not be bigger than Dione. It has a 1:2 orbital mean resonance with Enceladus which means that for every orbit Dione completes (2.7 Earth days), Enceladus will have completed 2 by then. Dione is mostly made up of ice and has a diameter of 1122 km. It is also the third densest Saturnian moon and has the distance of 377,000 km from Saturn (or about the same distance from the Earth to the Moon). An interesting observation of Dione is that it’s front side is facing all the debris that it plows through but it’s backside actually has MORE impacts than its front side. Scientists have speculated that an impact could have spun the moon around 180 degrees...

Methuselah Star: Older than Universe? Not Quite

By on Aug 11, 2013 in Breaking News | 0 comments

Have you ever wondered what star in our record books is considered the oldest star in the universe? Well Hubble Space telescope studied the Methuselah star and retrieved some interesting data. They found a star to be 14.5 billion (+/- .8 billion) years old and it’s located right in our own Milky Way! The distance of the star was calculated to be 190.1 light years away from Earth. Even though there is a large amount of commotion saying it is older than the universe some say it isn’t. There is a margin of error that goes along with predicting the age of a star and for Methuselah star it is about a 800 million year difference. It’s still quite close to the beginning of the universe which is still fascinating and a question that is provoking is if our theory of the big bang is facing danger because this data goes against what we know about cosmology. Nonetheless, the age...

What is a Kilonova?

By on Aug 3, 2013 in For Your Information | 0 comments

What is a Kilonova?   NASA astronomers have found an intense cosmic event called a “kilonova.” A kilonova is an explosion so powerful that it’s 1000 times stronger than a normal supernova. To help put this in some perspective think about this. The amount of energy a Sun (like the size of our own) produces in its 10 billion life time equals to the amount of energy an average supernova produces. Still not helping? Well think about the amount of energy of the atomic bomb Little Boy outputs (the one dropped on Hiroshima) which is 15 kilotons (6 x 1013 joules) of TNT. During the cold war the United States developed a hydrogen bomb with a max theoretical yield of 25 megatons or 1015 joules. To equal that of a supernova you would need about 10 trillion of the most destructive hydrogen bombs. Now that your brain is barely hanging on let’s move away from the...