Solar System
Tag archives for Solar System
The Far Future of our Solar System
Posted by Ethan on May 8, 2013 
“No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.” -Alan Watts “They do not see what lies ahead, when Sun has faded and Moon is dead.” -J.R.R. Tolkien One of the most amazing facts about the Universe is that, despite only having spent a few hundred years…
An Atom in the Universe
Posted by Ethan on March 6, 2013 
“The atoms come into my brain, dance a dance, and then go out – there are always new atoms, but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday.” -Richard Feynman Here you are, a human being, a grand Universe of atoms that have organized themselves into simple monomers, assembled together into giant…
The Universe is Alive
Posted by Ethan on February 8, 2013 
“Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupery When you look out into the Universe, what is it that you typically think of? Do you think of reliable, fixed stars and constellations? The…
Why the World Will Run Out of Helium
Posted by Ethan on December 12, 2012 
“I have this one little saying, when things get too heavy just call me helium, the lightest known gas to man.” -Jimi Hendrix Hendrix, as I told you once before, was almost right. We know of helium, conventionally, as the lighter-than-air gas that we fill balloons, blimps and zeppelins with in order to quickly and easily…
Our way is not the only way!
Posted by Ethan on November 2, 2012 
“The important point is that since the origin of life belongs in the category of at least once phenomena, time is on its side. However improbable we regard this event, or any of the steps which it involves, given enough time it will almost certainly happen at-least-once. And for life as we know it, with…
How the Earth moves, and how do we know?
Posted by Ethan on September 18, 2012 
“Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and it is indifferent as to whether its hidden reasons and actions are understandable to man or not.” -Galileo Galilei All of science is rooted in the idea that natural phenomena can be explained naturally, and that if we want to know how anything in the Universe works, all we…
Where will we all be in 100 billion years?
Posted by Ethan on August 23, 2012 
“It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.” -Winston Churchill We’ve come a long way in this Universe. Over the past 13.7 billion years, we’ve formed the light elements out of a sea of protons and neutrons, cooled and expanded to form neutral atoms for the first…
A Super-Sized Sister Solar System!
Posted by Ethan on July 11, 2012 
“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” -Neil Armstrong Here on our little wet rock in our Solar System, we…
Whose world is it, anyway?
Posted by Ethan on June 30, 2012 
“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” -Mark Twain So, you’ve been around a while, seen all sorts of things, and learned an awful lot about the world, solar system and Universe that we live in. But how well do you know it,…
A Mysterious Light on the Darkest Night
Posted by Ethan on May 5, 2010 It will shine still brighter when night is about you. May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out. -J.R.R. Tolkien The night sky is no stranger to most of you. Once the Sun goes down in the west, the sky darkens, turning ever-deeper shades of blue until…
