stars
Tag archives for stars
Every Galaxy will have New Stars for Trillions of Years!
Posted by Ethan on November 7, 2012 
“It’s a brilliant surface in that sunlight.” – Neil Armstrong Indeed, all that glitters so brilliantly in the cosmos does so because of the stars that have formed throughout it. Over the 14 billion-or-so years that our Universe has been around, we’ve formed hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy alone. Given that our…
The lives and deaths of Sun-like stars
Posted by Ethan on October 1, 2012 
“Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.” -Samuel Johnson But the stars, as opposed to humans, are born shining, with hundreds (or more) of brothers and sisters, shine ever more brightly over their lifetimes, and die in spectacular fashion. As far as we can tell, here’s the past, present and future story…
Another Trip Around the Sun
Posted by Ethan on August 3, 2012 
“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?” -Satchel Paige Today marks another year and another trip around the Sun for me. For you, and me, and everything on Earth that makes it through another year on this world, there’s a whole lot we get to experience. Some things are…
Sometimes, Size is Everything!
Posted by Ethan on June 12, 2012 
“I went into a clothing store, and the lady asked me what size I was. I said, ‘Actual’. I’m not to scale.” -Demitri Martin When you look out at the Universe, what you can see is limited, at the most fundamental level, by the size of what you look with. This is why you can…
Incredible Star Trails, from Earth and Beyond
Posted by Ethan on June 8, 2012 
“Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen.” -Larry Niven Here on the solid ground of the Earth, the Sun and Moon rise and set on a daily basis. During the hours where the Sun is invisible, blocked by the solid Earth, the stars twirl overhead in…
Practically Everything Leaves Something Behind
Posted by Ethan on May 28, 2012 
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people…
What Lies in the great Pinwheel Galaxy?
Posted by Ethan on May 26, 2012 
“This seems to be the law of progress in everything we do; it moves along a spiral rather than a perpendicular; we seem to be actually going out of the way, and yet it turns out that we were really moving upward all the time.” -Frances Willard As spring gives way to summer here in…
And on the sixth day…
Posted by Ethan on May 14, 2008 Good news for science from… the Vatican? No joke. Father Gabriel Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory and chief astronomer for the Pope, has just issued a public statement stating the following things: Intelligent beings could exist in outer space. Life on Mars cannot be ruled out. The search for extraterrestrial life does not contradict…
Do all Stars Eventually Explode?
Posted by Ethan on April 7, 2008 What’s going to happen to all the stars in the Universe as they get older? Well, just as nothing can live forever, stars can’t live forever also. Why? Because they run on fuel: burning hydrogen into helium, for example. When they run out of fuel, something’s gotta give. Barbara Ryden reminds us of an excellent…
