Astrophysics

Long have we have looked to the stars, be it for navigation, spiritual guidance or shear awe. But, believe it or not, the wonders we see in the night sky with our naked eyes are only a glint of the universe’s enormity, and, as said by Julianne Dalcanton in her 2009 article 18 Years of Science with the Hubble Space Telescope, our hazy atmosphere even limits our ground-based instruments as well. (Dalcanton) Both the incapability of our eyes and our local telescopes hindered astronomy for…

The Age of Enlightenment manifested towards the end of the Renaissance period around 1650 and propelled the movement from the Medieval Age to an Age of Reason in Europe and the Western world. The Enlightenment was a time in which challenging the church was not considered heresy but rather appraised as productive curiosity. The most prominent aspect since the commencement of the Enlightenment period was the centralization of the scientific method during the Scientific Revolution. Likewise, the…

Short Summary Best friends and neighbors Tane and Rebecca have known each other for their entire lives. One night, while floating on their backs in the flooded Sunnyvale playground (affectionately referred to as “Sunnyvale Lake”), the creative-minded Tane catches sight of a shooting star, and has a wildly speculative idea about time travel. Though the brilliant (and college-level physics genius). Rebecca scoffs! at Tane’s silliness at trying to send a human back in time, the two come up with…

presents a world in which humanity has surpassed a need for pain, and has become an oblivious, but happy society. It is in this world that individuals are completely unaware of what they are missing, similar to the absurdity of an ant learning astrophysics, or a human attempting to imagine a new color. It is in this world that pleasure and satisfaction reign supreme, and people are unfettered by any grievance. The society in Brave New World is, unquestionably, a utopia, and like any utopia, it…

Queen Queen is a band that not many people really know about, but everybody has heard of. Many people have heard of some of their most famous hits which is mostly played at sports games. Queen was famous in the seventies, eighties, and nineties. Queen is known for always putting on a show when they performed in concert for their fans. “The epitome of pomp-rock in the seventies and Eighties, Queen rocked radio and sports stadiums alike with booming, highly produced anthems like ‘We Are the…

linking the mass of a star to its lifespan. From the noted trends and correlations they formed what is now known as the Hertzsprung Russell Diagram or commonly referred to as the HR Diagram. The HR Diagram is used as an important tool in the study of astrophysics. Specifically it is a graphical tool that Hertzsprung and Russell formed for astronomers to use to measure the different characteristics of a star, i.e. luminosity, spectral type, colour, temperature, and evolutionary stage. The…

2.5. Color Temperature Color temperature is a characteristic of visible light that has important applications in a variety of fields such as lighting, photography, videography, astrophysics, manufacturing and publishing. In generally the hues of light generated are either warm (yellowish) or cool (bluish) and measured in degrees of Kelvin (K) 2.5.1. Technical Definition The color temperature of a light source is defined as the color temperature of a black body radiator that radiates light of…

Noah Yeasted A black hole is a large amount of matter in a small space. Black holes are one of the things that can be left over after a larger star dies. The other thing a larger star can become after it dies is a neutron star. A white dwarf is created after a smaller star dies. The only way for a star to become a black hole is if the star was 10-15 times more massive than the sun. The diameter of a black hole is approximately the diameter of New York City. A black hole’s gravitational pull is…

The Guardian published an article titled “$ 100m to find alien life? That’s a start – but not nearly enough” by Rebecca Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer is a writer for the Guardian, and chair of the American Museum of Natural History’s department of astrophysics. In the beginning of the article, the author asked a scientific question and wondered if we are alone in universe. Furthermore, she emphasized that there is alien life out of our solar system. However, the author didn’t provide good evidence to…

To Whom This May Concern: I am writing this letter in regards of the constant budget cuts we've undergone in scientific research and as what many people have dubbed "The War on Science". Society and Science has butted heads throughout history from the science of genetics, to the shape of the world, even to something as simple as washing your hands to prevent the spread of germs. Society and Science has never been on the same page. We as society improved both technologically and efficiently…