Physical Science

A Space Walk may look like fun but it does little to keep an astronaut in shape. Without having to work against the force of gravity, muscles and bones become weaker rather than stronger. We’ve all been told that weight…
Read more

The year was 1957, and the world as it was known would never be the same, for this was the year in which the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. A few months later, the United States…
Read more

Almost certainly, it is not. According to one theory, based upon a tenuous analysis of obscure ancient Sumerian texts, the ancient peoples of the Near East were aware of a planet which follows a drawn-out 3600 year orbit, passing near…
Read more

The essential difference between stars and planets is that when stars formed out of the giant molecular cloud which predated their stellar system, they were large enough that their gravitational pressure forced the hydrogen at their core to begin undergoing…
Read more

Saturn, the second-largest planet in the solar system after Jupiter but certainly the most beautiful planet because of its rich ring system, has so far been approached by four human spacecraft: Pioneer 11, the two Voyager probes, and Cassini. Unfortunately,…
Read more

A constellation is a pattern of stars which appear to form the outline of an image or picture in the sky. The best-known of these constellations are relatively easily located, have highly recognizable shapes, and have well-known names, like the…
Read more

The Spring Equinox has been an important time of the year for many cultures throughout history. Equinox literally means “equal night”, and the Spring Equinox is the time when the day and the night on the equator are of equal…
Read more

The four Galilean moons of Jupiter are Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Although Jupiter now has 63 known moons, these four are the largest and best known, having been first discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. These are among the…
Read more

In a sense, modern space rocketry owes its genesis to Nazi Germany – an uncomfortable and somewhat disturbing thought. Although rocket inventors and experimenters existed in many industrialized countries during the early twentieth century, the early Cold War space programs…
Read more

A pulsar is a neutron star which, as it spins (having been accelerated to unbelievably rapid speeds), shoots out a continuous stream of electromagnetic radiation. From any given vantage point (for example, a telescope on Earth), these stars seem to…
Read more