Nicolas Reed Science Blog

A Trio of Super-Earths (artist's impression)  by  ESO Is There Life in Space?        There is life in space. This is because their is so many stars and planets in the universe that it is unimaginable to picture. It is in fact so big that we had to create new forms of measurement to measure things in space. Even one of those measurements is still so big to us as just one light second is the equivalent of going around Earth's equator 7.5 times. There is at least one hundred billion galaxies in the universe. This means that at least one of those galaxies should have one star and one planet that can support life. That one of the galaxies in the incredibly large universe must have one planet that has life currently on it.        Currently their is two major methods for discovering planets, the transit method and Doppler Technique. Along with the use of technology such as the Kepler telescope, we have quadrupled the amount of plane...

Perseid and Milky Way  by  TheBrockenInaGlory Summary:        The universal force in which holds a galaxy together is gravity. There are three main different type of galaxies, elliptical, spiral, and irregular galaxies. The galaxy in which Earth is in is the Milky Way which is a spiral galaxy. Stars in galaxies produce energy through nuclear fusion where hydrogen atoms fuse into helium atoms. In order to measure the distance between stars or other things in our galaxy we use light years which is the distance that light can travel in one year. However, when measuring things in our own solar system, we use astronomical units in which are equal to about 8.2 light minutes. In order for scientists to discover new planets, they use two main techniques, transit method and Doppler technique. Both of these techniques use stars to find planets rather than trying to look for the planets themselves. The Doppler technique uses the fact that as a planet orbits aro...

Solar lunar eclipse diagram  by  Tomruen Summary:        The positions of the Earth, Moon, and Sun heavily determine eclipses, seasons, and tides. For example, both types of eclipses are caused when the Earth, Moon, and Sun are aligned. Solar eclipses are caused  when the Moon is in front of, and blocking the Sun's light from reaching Earth. This results in not being able to see the Sun, or the Sun being partially blocked by the Moon. A lunar eclipse is caused when the Earth is in front of the Sun which blocks the light from reaching the Sun. Thus, turning the moon to a gray color or a dark red color depending on if the Moon is in the penumbra (gray) or umbra (dark red). Another example of how the positions of the Earth, Moon and Sun effect things is with tides. Spring tides (when the difference between the height of the high tides and low tides is very great), which have very high tides are caused when the Earth, Moon, and Sun are aligned in an...