Physical Science

A solar eclipse is an event which occurs when the moon’s orbit takes it between the sun and the Earth. The moon’s shadow then falls on the Earth, and blots out the sun. In some cases, this happens totally, where…
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Solar energy technology is taking so long to advance itself as a result of the skew of Earth’s populus toward easier sources of energy. “Easy energy” is, and will always be dominant as the fuel for the forces of nature….
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It’s entirely possible that something in the immensity of space has been looking for us, but I’m not convinced we’ve been discovered yet. We can be reasonably sure of this because of a sometimes overlooked scientific fact; and that is…
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Abstract Molecular modeling of chemical reactions using Spartan programs has proven to be a useful exercise yielding both thermodynamic and kinetic information about Diels-Alder electrocyclic systems comparable to experiment. The program suite is user friendly for both undergraduate and graduate…
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Apollo 1 Crew Space flight is dangerous. Astronauts are sitting on gigantic tubes packed with explosive materials. Spacecraft move dangerously fast, making a collision inevitably fatal. Spacecraft fly through a deadly, inhospitable environment of vacuum, radiation, and extreme cold. By…
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A manned mission to Mars is quickly emerging as the most important near-term goal for the future of manned space programs. Just as was the case prior to the missions to the Moon in the late 1960s, there remains considerable…
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For years SETI has been looking for messages from outer space, searching the sky for signs that we are not alone in the universe, but while we have been listening rarely have we said anything ourselves. The Arecibo Broadcast is…
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Two NASA astrophysicists at the Goddard Space Flight Center at Greenbelt, Md., Nikolai Shaposhnikov and Lev Titarchuk, have found an alternate way to ascertain the masses of black holes. The method, first suggested in 1998 by Titarchuk, was used to…
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Helium’s Happy And Lazy Cousin: Neon In the year 1898, scientists Sir William Ramsey and WilliamTravers discovered three Noble gases. They were krypton, xenon,and neon. The two scientists isolated the elements from liquid airby cooling air to very low temperatures…
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It IS rocket science! But fortunately we do not need to be conversant with the technical specifications of spacecraft propulsion systems to understand the rationale behind Enrico Fermi’s (1901-1954) question “Don’t you ever wonder where everybody is?” The question is…
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