Physical Science

There is no such thing as a safe space flight: launching atop what amounts to an enormous, barely controlled explosion; flying through the near-vacuum of Earth orbit; and then plunging back to the surface with only a perilously fragile heat…
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Assuming the physical world actually exists as we perceive it (and that, for example, some super-powerful extraterrestrial force is not manufacturing starlight in order to deceive us about our surroundings in the universe), the stars we see really were there…
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Determining the number of stars in the sky is actually a surprisingly difficult problem, because it leads directly into a second problem: determining the size of the universe. The European Space Agency says there are between 10 sextillion and one…
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The X-15 was an experimental spaceplane developed by North American Aviation for NASA and the U.S. Air Force, which entered space thirteen times during the 1960s. It set a number of flight records, and the pilots who entered space were…
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It is impossible to actually calculate the probability of detecting extrasolar civilizations, simply because too many of the variables involved are unknown. However, there are some general guidelines which can help us explain why, at the very least, detecting extrasolar…
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Project Gemini was NASA’s second major series of manned spacecraft, the intermediate stage between the groundbreaking Project Mercury, which placed the first American astronauts into space, and the Apollo project, which sent astronauts to the Moon for the first –…
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The Orion Nebula is a large, bright nebula roughly 24 light-years across and about 1350 light-years away from the solar system. It is among the brightest nebulae in the galaxy (at least viewed from Earth), so much so that it…
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Pluto IS a planet because unlike most objects in the Kuiper Belt, it has attained hydrostatic equilibrium, meaning it has enough self-gravity to have pulled itself into a round shape. When an object is large enough for this to happen,…
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The sun is the nearest star to Earth, and the source of the energy that powers life on Earth. It is made mostly of hydrogen and helium, the predominant building blocks of the universe, glowing with inconceivable heat. The sun…
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Welcome to Olympus Mons! Some day people are going to land on the planet Mars and begin the “up close and personal” exploration of its dry, dusty, frozen surface. They’ll have the benefit of years of Earth-based Mars exploration to…
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