THE PLANETS IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM
I learned the following information from an article at this website.
There are two types of planet: the terrestrial planets, which are rocky and have weak magnetic fields and have two moons or less. In order of their position from the Sun they are Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. The other type are the gas giants.
Mercury has practically no atmosphere and its surface has craters much like Earth’s moon.
Venus is of similar size to the Earth. It has a very dense atmosphere largely composed of carbon dioxide. Due to the greenhouse effect the temperature on Venus is many hundreds of degrees Kelvin.
Earth has an atmosphere composed of nitrogen. It is cool enough to have liquid water in the form of oceans and lakes. It has one moon.
Mars is smaller and cooler than the Earth. It has a thin atmosphere that is too thin to retain water. It has two moons.
The gas giants are composed of gas, have stronger magnetic fields, and have rings and many moons. In order of their position from the Sun they are: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Jupiter is the largest of all the planets. It is not solid, and so different bands of gas on the surface rotate at different rates. The Great Red Spot of Jupiter is a hurricane that has lasted for over 400 years. It is the size of three Earths. Jupiter has over 63 satellites. The most well-known of these are the Gallilean moons, Callisto, Ganymede, Europa and Io.
Saturn is the next largest planet. It has many distinctive rings around it. The density of Saturn is so light that the entire planet would float on a body of water. Saturn has at least 43 moons.Neptune’s distance from the Sun is thirty times the distance from Earth to the Sun. It has not completed a full orbit even since it was discovered in 1846.

THE SUN
I learned the following information from an article at this website.
The Sun’s surface temperature is 5800 degrees Kelvin. Compared with other stars it is of a medium size. Its average size allows for the optimal burning efficiency of its fuel. It has a steady and slow conversion of matter into energy through nuclear fusion. The energy is released in the form of light when it shines. The Sun will last about another 5 billion years. When it has converted all the hydrogen and helium into energy it will become a red giant, which means its surface temperature will drop and its size will increase.
The Sun emits high energy particles and gamma rays, x-rays, ultraviolet, visible, infrared and radio radiation. These are all forms of light, or electromagnetic energy.Almost 98% of the total mass in the solar system is the Sun. The other 2% is the planets, moons, comets and asteroids.

STARS
I learned the following information from an article at the website of Thinkquest.
Stars are often born in interstellar nebulae, which are huge clouds of matter in the form of gas and dust. The particles in these clouds compress under the gravity of the clouds and due to increased atomic collisions they heat up greatly. The star is born when it heats up enough to fuse hydrogen atoms into helium. The majority of a star’s life is spent fusing hydrogen into helium and other elements. Its core uses up the elements within over billions of years.
The larger the mass of a star is, the shorter its life is. When a star ceases to fuse elements into other elements, the fate of the star depends on its size.
A star the size of the Sun will ultimately expand up to one hundred times its size and become what is known as a “red giant.” As the helium in its core runs out it shrinks. The gravitational force within the star becomes so great that it crushes the star into a star called a “white dwarf,” which is many times smaller than the star originally was. The white dwarf will shine for many more years until it burns out and is merely a remnant of matter densely compacted.
A star smaller than the Sun burns until the fuel in its core is depleted. Then the gravitational force of the star’s center overpowers the star and it is crushed. It becomes a “brown dwarf,” with no energy left to emit light.
A star more than ten times the size of the sun begins to expand rapidly after it exhausts its fuel. It continues to expand until it is huge and on fire, known as a “supergiant.” The supergiant expands violently and loses energy for it radiates most of its energy away. This is in the form of an explosion that is known as a “supernova.” The remnant of a supernova often forms nebulae.
Four supernovae have been observed in the last millennium: The Chinese witnessed one in 1054 AD, Tycho Brae witnessed one in 1572, Kepler witnessed one in 1604, and the most recent one occurred in 1987.
The remains of the star are finally crushed by gravity and supercompressed into an extremely dense object known as a “neutron star.” A neutron star’s mass is compressed so densely that the protons and electrons are crushed together into neutrons.
A pulsar is a neutron star that spins and emits radio waves.
A star more than thirty times the size of the sun begins to expand once it exhausts its fuel. It expands into a supergiant and then into a supernova. Unlike a smaller star, though, the huge mass of this star causes such a huge gravitational force from its center that it becomes infinitely compressed. It becomes a “black hole,” from whose gravitational pull nothing can escape. A black hole is also called a singularity. Scientists believe that the universe was created by a black hole. According to a theory, the universe could compress itself back into a singularity or black hole, and explode, which would begin the process again, and this pattern would repeat for all eternity.

GALAXIES AND QUASARS
I learned the following information from an article at the website of thinkquest. A galaxy is a group of many stars that is spinning through space. Galaxies come in a variety of types based on their shape, groups they may be in, and a number of other attributes. There are five main types of galaxies, classified according to their shape: ellipticals, spirals, lenticular, barreled spirals, and irregular shapes. Elliptical galaxies are ellipses in shape.
One astronomical object that was often mistaken for a galaxy in the past is a quasar. A quasar is an object that is not a star but which radiates an enormous amount of light. The light of a quasar fluctuates over extremely short periods of time, often in a matter of seconds. This shows that quasars are not very big, because it takes light a long time, measured in years, to travel through an entire galaxy. A rule of thumb is that the faster an object shifts its light emission, the smaller it must be. A quasar can emit as much light as a whole galaxy with billions of stars in it. Scientists today generally believe that a quasar is actually an extremely huge black hole.
Star populations of an area have two classifications. The two types of star population are Type I and Type II. Type I includes blue giant stars and blue supergiant stars. Type I includes the arms of spirals and irregular galaxies. Type II are elliptical, lenticular and the nuclei of spirals. Type II includes red giants, subgiants, and subdwarfs.

THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
The International Space Station is the largest international scientific or technological project ever undertaken. It is made possible by work in labs and factories all over the world. A permanent laboratory is established in a realm where gravity, temperature and pressure can be manipulated. The projects undertaken in the space station are impossible to conduct on Earth. Future technologies are tested there and advances will be made in the development of new industrial materials, technology of communication and medical innovations.
The Space Station provides scientists with electric power and time to conduct research on the growth of protein crystals, which helps scientists understand the nature of proteins. Crystals grown in space are currently superior to anything grown on Earth, and these crystals are essential for research into cancer, diabetes, emphysema, parasitic infections and immune system disorders.
The absence of gravity on the Space Station provides for new insights into human health and the combat against disease. Heart, lung and kidney function are studied on the Space Station, as well as cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, hormonal imbalances and disorders, and brain function.
Crew members study materials that could not exist on Earth and processes that could not take place on Earth due to gravity. Polymers, semiconducters for high-speed supercomputers and electronics, and high-temperature superconductors are tested on the Space Station. The Space Station will lead efforts to educate and motivate the next generation of scientists, engineers, and thinkers.
I learned all the information I just described about the Space Station from an article at the website of Thinkquest.

THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE
The Hubble Space Telescope is hugely crucial in our study of the cosmos, and it is important to know what it is. I learned all the information I describe here in an article at the website of Thinkquest.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a program established and run by the European Space Agency and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Its purpose is to operate as a long-lasting observatory of space for the benefit of the study of astronomy worldwide. It was conceived of in the 1940’s, created from the 1970s to the 1980s, and operated beginning in the 1990s. NASA planned the Hubble Space Telescope as a long-term observatory based in space. NASA has planned servicing missions to the equipment in space since the beginning, and has executed these missions. The telescope itself is a 2.4 meter reflecting telescope kept in low-Earth orbit.
All scientific operations of the telescope are coordinated by the Space Telescope Science Institute on the Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus in Baltimore, Maryland.The scientific instruments that are connected with the telescope include three cameras, two spectrographs, and fine guidance sensors. These instruments are able to produce images of astronomical objects of exceptional quality. The Hubble Space Telescope can produce images about ten times more accurately than any telescope located on Earth.

A SECOND LOOK AT LIFE EXISTING IN THE EARLY UNIVERSE
I learned all the information described here from the article by Robert Roy Britt that I linked to in the last post. This is a deeper look into the discovery of the building blocks of life being present in the early universe. One probably wonders what context these molecules were found in, that is, where they were and what was around them.
Biologist Ken Nealson described his opinion of the context of the molecules. “It’ll have shape and composition. It’ll have structure,” he stated. Nealson described how this structure is necessary to convert one form of energy into another, which is what stars do and is a fundamental property of life. He continues, “Life replicates, and life evolves. And because it consumes energy, it produces waste products. And it has some particular activities that seem to be universal, one of which is movement.” He claims that there is little else to distinguish life in a universal sense. It is not even certain whether life requires fuel of any sort or even water. It is important to note that while scientists search into the furthest reaches of time and space, there are some planets and moons in our solar system that could contain life. Mars is a possibility. Europa, a moon of Jupiter, and Saturn’s methane-covered moon, Titan, are still possibilities. Even Venus could harbor life. However these places are extremely unlike Earth and so astrobiologists hope to find other Earthlike planets out there that could harbor a life form similar to that of our planet.

LIFE COULD HAVE EXISTED IN THE EARLY UNIVERSE
The elements that formed life have been discovered in galaxies that are so far away that the light images we can gather of them are a glimpse into their existence when the universe was 75% younger than it is today. Scientists have discovered organic molecules called hydrocarbons present in this early universe. These molecules are the building blocks of life. Scientists do not know how life formed from organic material into living material. This finding therefore doesn’t give any idea of whether there is or was life in the universe, only that the building blocks were there.
They galaxies they viewed are almost 10 billion light-years away and are therefore seen as they were 10 billion years ago. George Helou says that “Planets and life had very early opportunities to emerge in the universe.”
The hydrocarbons discovered are found throughout the Milky Way.
The leading theory of the development of the universe implies that at first matter was mostly hydrogen. It is believed that new and heavier elements formed as the first stars were born, burned, and died. Among these are oxygen and metals. As more and more stars lived and burnt out more and more elements emerged, and some of these elements combined into hydrocarbons. These, combined with water, are the ingredients of life. However, scientists do not know how life formed.
You may be wondering how scientists can tell what elements are present by merely viewing a distant galaxy. Scientists did this by viewing the infrared light shed by the galaxies and splitting the infrared light into a spectrum of its colors. The colors of the burning stars reveal what element is present.
I learned all the information I just described in an article written by Robert Roy Britt, a writer for the website of SPACE.

THE SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE
A report published in 2002 puts the odds for extraterrestrial life on planets similar to Earth at 1 in 3. However, scientists cannot find any hints of what extraterrestrial life might look like. Over 100 top scientists including chemists, biologists and astronomers met around that time, and they came to the conclusion that they did not know how even the simplest life begins.
“Nobody understands the origin of life,” said Ken Nealson, a geobiologist at the University of Southern California. “If they say thay do, they are probably trying to fool you.”
Not only do scientists not know how life begins, they don’t even know how they can search for it. Britt asserts that the odds are that the extraterrestrial life we first discover will be microbial. Life on Earth took billions of years to evolve and the creatures that would survive the various harsh conditions out there would be very simple creatures. Britt claims, “Astrobiology is first and foremost a search for the scum of the universe.”
I personally find his characterization of life to be distasteful. Life is not the “scum of the universe.”
On Earth certain microscopic bacteria are discovered to endure far harsher conditions than we would have imagined two decades age. Ken Nealson claims that “Life hides under rocks. Life hides in the rocks.” He also claims that life forms have evolved to eat and breathe rocks alone. We are constantly discovering new methods of survival. This suggests that on other planets there may be countless different mechanisms of survival. I learned all the information I just described from an article by Robert Roy Britt, a writer for the website of SPACE.

UFO MYTHS AND FACTS
I learned the following information from an

UFO MYTHS AND FACTS
I learned the following information from an article written by Leonard David, a writer for the website of SPACE. Leonard David poses a question that he claims people who are interested in unidentified flying objects pose: “Scientifically speaking, are UFOs worth keeping an eye on?”
For decades people have spotted UFOs, or Unidentified Flying Objects. UFOs and aliens are a part of our culture. Yet UFOs remain fraught with mystery. A reason for this, claims David, is that there are many phonies and disproved claims out there. However there are also many seemingly unbiased witnesses. Ted Roe, the Executive Director of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena, claims that there have been advances in the field of UFO research. Among these innovations is the capture of optical spectra from “mobile, unpredictable luminosities.” Roe states that there are “stable, mobile, unusual, poorly documented phenomena with quite unusual properties manifesting within our atmosphere.”

EARTH WARPS THE FABRIC OF SPACE
According to an article by a writer for the website of SPACE named Robert Roy Britt, a recent study confirms a key principle of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. The following information was gleaned from Britt’s article. Earth’s spin has been proven to warp space around the planet. Researchers have watched the movements of two Earth-orbiting satellites to determine whether they shift any in response to spinning Earth for over 11 years. They have determined that each is dragged by about 6 feet every year. This means that the spinning Earth twists the space around it. The results of this study were announced on October 20, 2004.
The twisting of space is called frame dragging. Frame dragging was predicted in 1918 and it means that an object with mass warps the space-time around it. This is comparable to the way a heavy object deforms a stretched elastic sheet. The spinning of Earth distorts space in the way that a wheel spinning on a sheet would distort the sheet.
If Earth is causing this frame-dragging, the satellites would be affected, scientists believed. They hit two satellites with millions of laser signals to ascertain the position of the satellites. These satellites look like golf balls two feet in diameter, and are designed to do absolutely nothing but orbit the planet. The scientists report that the amount the satellites have moved is 99% the amount they predicted. According to physicist Neil Ashby this study is “the first reasonably accurate measurement of frame-dragging.” These results can be applied to theories about black holes. Frame-dragging was predicted by Einstein but it was actually discovered through observing a black hole. In 1997 researchers discovered that the movements of gas spiraling into a black hole were wobbled like a spinning top wobbles. Scientists have also discovered that black holes do spin and that frame-dragging is a main cause of the way black holes cause huge jets of material to be spewed away from the area around a black hole.

A SPIDER WEB IS THE BEGINNING OF THE UNIVERSE
The information described here was gleaned from the article by Robert Roy Britt that was noted in the last post. This is a more detailed description of what was discovered from the image showing cosmic radiation emitted across the universe just after the Big Bang. This image is the first evidence ever discovered that confirms scientists’ theory that the first seconds of the existence of the universe was a time of super expansion. It also gives clues as to how exactly this expansion was able to occur.
The data was derived from observations of the cosmic microwave background. According to the article by Robert Roy Britt, the Cosmic Microwave Background was created “about 380,000 years after the Big Bang, when the universe had first expanded enough to cool and allow atoms to form. Around that time a dense and impenetrable primordial cloud cleared out. The radiation escaped in one form and, over time, its wavelengths were stretched to the microwave range by the perpetual expansion of the universe. The remnant radiation retains an imprint of the end of that era and hints about what occurred before, much like the patterns on a cloud’s exterior provide clues to its insides.” This microwave radiation has spread throughout the universe over time. Its temperature is nearly uniform across all of space, but extremely small variations in temperature reveal clues about the structure of the early universe. The temperature ranges from 2.7251 to 2.7249 degrees Kelvin. According to Britt these locations of variation were the earliest “lumps and bumps” or “seeds for galaxies and stars.”Scientists have not yet found any evidence indicative of what happened to those places of temperature variation, but they imagine that “nodes” of matter were connected with filaments of matter, like a spider web. Hydrogen, like droplets on a spider web, developed and eventually gathered at the nodes of matter. Here the matter gathered to form the first galaxies.

BABY PICTURE OF UNIVERSE REVEALS ORIGINS
I learned the following information from an article by Robert Roy Britt, a Senior Science Writer for the website of Space. This article was written on February 11, 2003, the day that astronomers announced hugely important discoveries revealing the age and properties of the universe as well as when the first stars were born. These discoveries were based on the development of a map of the universe that was created measuring radiation emitted before there were any stars. According to Britt, the discoveries provide “the strongest support to date for the Big Bang theory of the creation of the universe and a sub-notion within that theory that asserts that “hyperinflation” ruled during the first seconds.” The discoveries also proved astronomers’ suppositions of the age of the universe and the state of the universe at the time when the first stars were born.
The image created shows the universe’s radiation properties about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Specifically, it shows the cosmic microwave background. The data was projected to learn what the universe would have looked like at a later point in time, revealing that star formation was possible 200 million years after the Big Bang. The universe was revealed to be approximately 13.7 billion years old. The universe at the time represented by the image was composed of 4% matter in the form of atoms, 23% dark matter and 73% dark energy. Dark energy causes the expansion of the universe to accelerate at an ever-faster pace. Another interesting aspect confirmed is that the geometry of the universe is flat. This means that parallel lines never meet, even at the ends of the universe.

ASTRONOMY AND THE UNSOLVED QUESTIONS OF LIFE
Seth Shostak, a writer for the SETI Institute, writes an interesting perspective on the philosophical side of astronomy. In an article at the website of SPACE he says that astronomy is all about the biggest question mankind has: "What's it all about?" This asks what the point of our existence is, including the point of the Earth, the stars, you, me, and everything. He states that "in the interests of mental equanimity" most often this question is in the back of our minds rather than something we consider daily. He asserts that astronomy could help humans to discover the meaning and the point of it all, not by directly answering the question but rather by providing a context in which to consider ourselves.
Shostak asks what astronomy actually says. Up to the dawn of the twentieth century people believed the universe had been around for eternity and always would be. Individuals are infinitely small particles in an endlessly flowing river, or so we believed.
But in the recent past, the answers have been proven. Recently Edwin Hubble proved that the entire universe is expanding, and that recent measurements of the universe show that this expansion is speeding up. The universe is getting larger and larger so that every year there are 20 billion more miles between us and the nearest Virgo cluster of galaxies.
The point to notice with this fact, asserts Shostak, is that an expanding universe must have had a beginning. This is similar to many religious beliefs.
The most important thing to realize, asserts Shostak, is about the Sun. In five billion years it will swell up, eclipse the inner planets, and boil away our world. Our descendants must relocate to a new home in space. Humans will last awhile if they can accomplish this, but they will eventually have nowhere to go. The population boom of stars is definitely over, and the stars are going out. In 100 billion years there will be no stars left in the galaxy and only remnants, black holes, and neutron stars- a hundred billion of them.
Shostak states, "The fun will be over, but the decay will go on. Chaotic encounters will eventually strip planets from the corpses of their erstwhile suns, and galaxies will slowly evaporate- spewing their dark and lifeless contents into the ever-expanding void. Even massive black holes will someday melt away, adding their mass to the inert and keenly cold fog that the universe will become. The cosmos will be a deathly silent graveyard, cloaked in perpetual night."
Shostak goes on to describe how this scenario will occur endlessly, with no reversal. It will continue to expand forever and become forever thinner.
In conclusion, after 100 billion years of activity the universe will fall apart forever. Our brief history of a species is infinitely short in the lifespan of the universe.
Shostak muses that given our apparent insignificance and the doom of all things, it is tempting to try to live in the moment. Also he muses that considering why we're here is pointless and a "temptation to madness." There is only the hope of our discovering something that will brighten the bleak prospects. Shostak closes with the quote by Sigmeund Freud that "anatomy is destiny."