Planet Rock

The history of earth is hard to imagine without our moon. The moon has had an impact on the earth in many different ways. For as long as man walked this earth, the moon has affected the tides and even the metals of the earth. The phases of the moon are still used to help guide the harvest, and even help determine the time of the river floods. The moon is a place that we know little about and very few people are lucky enough to get to experience it in person. Some interesting facts that we know…

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the most distant that can be seen with the naked eye. Saturn is the second largest planet and is best known for its fabulous ring system that was first observed in 1610 by the astronomer Galileo Galilei. Saturn is a gas giant and is composed of similar gasses including hydrogen, helium and methane. Saturn can be seen with the naked eye. It is the fifth brightest object in the solar system.Saturn was known to the ancients, including the Babylonians…

Space exploration has the opportunity to critically make a change in life here on earth. It has the potential to change how we live and how it can benefit even the most poor people on the planet. Improvements in medicine and energy production can result in the exploration of space and the colonization of other planets. “The Gemini and Apollo programs were child’s play in comparison to the threat of human life posed by long duration, deep space missions to such places as Mars” (Launius 124).…

Mars harboured long-lasting lakes and water streams about 3.8 to 3.3 billion years ago, boosting the odds that life may have once existed on the Red Planet, scientists, including one of Indian-origin, have found. Using data from the Curiosity rover, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity team has determined that, long ago, water helped deposit sediment into Gale Crater, where the rover landed more than three years ago. The sediment deposited as layers that formed the foundation for Mount…

that formed the planet and from the heat generated by the core that the outer layers were mostly liquid. Over time, it slowly cooled, and a hard crust formed on the outer surface. This was much like the thin layer of ice that first forms over a pond when the temperature dips below freezing. And just as there is liquid under the layer of ice, there is still liquid magma flowing under the crust. As this happened, a cycle of events began to be put into place that causes changes in the rocks that…

Do you ever think about the mysteries of space? Have you ever wondered if there’s water somewhere besides Earth? Do you think there’s possibly more to the solar system than we know? Mars is the famous red planet we all know of, but it may be more than it seems. To understand the planet of Mars, one must know about its various geographical features, types of weather, and signs of water.The first key of knowledge that you should know about Mars is its many geographical features. Mars is home to…

Mars was first observed before the 1500s and got its name from the Roman god of war. The Egyptians were the first to notice the 5 planets in the sky. Johannes Kepler, during the 1600s, makes Kepler’s first law that Mars has an elliptical orbit. In 1609, Mars was first observed with a telescope by Galileo Galilei. Dutch astronomer, Christian Huygens was able to draw Mars using a telescope he made. Huygens was able to notices certain spots returning to the same position at the same time each day,…

Since Mars is the only terrestrial planet whose surface can be directly observed in detail from the Earth with help from a telescope, it has been studied by Earth-based instruments since as early as the seventeenth century. However it is just since the exploration of Mars started in the mid-1960s that close-range observation has been conceivable. Flyby and orbital shuttles have provided information from above, while direct estimations of atmospheric conditions have been given by various…

Mercury is a terrestrial planet in our solar system. Apart from the planet being closest to the sun, it is also the smallest planet in our solar system. Terrestrial planets differ from jovian planets as they are smaller Earth-like planets that consist of solid surfaces, few moons point, they have topological features such as peaks and valleys, and are most notably before the freezing point in the solar system. In Mercury’s case, the planet is the closest to the sun, giving it a very thin…

Space is extraordinary! It is full of planets, stars, and many other things. There are several different hypotheses that were proposed on how the solar system was created. One of these hypotheses is the Nebular that was formulated by Pierre-Simon de Laplace in 1796. Many years later, in the 1900s, the Protoplanet hypothesis was proposed by Carl von Weizsäcker and Gerard Kuiper. Forest Moulton and Thomas Chamberlin proposed the Planetesimal hypothesis in 1905. The Nebular hypothesis starts…