Does Space Tourism Have Health Risks?
Until recently, the idea of traveling to space was restricted to highly trained, healthy and strong individuals called astronauts. If you had any health problems, even something simple like flat feet or glasses could keep you out of the space program and stuck on the ground. Recently, space billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have started to expand the list of people who can travel to space — and it doesn’t require any sort of training at all. There’s one question that hasn’t been asked, even as Tesla, Boeing and others start building their space planes — does this push toward space tourism have any health risks we should…
Origin of Our Universe – Gravitational Waves and Cosmic Inflation
Cosmology is confusing, yet extremely interesting! Before we get deeper, we actually got the picture of our universe 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Wondering where did we get this baby picture of our universe? Let’s talk from the start. Our universe 380,000 years after the Big Bang was so hot that all the subatomic particles like protons, electrons were in a state of plasma moving randomly, even light passing through, was scattered or absorbed, which means the whole universe was opaque. After 380,000 years when the universe has cooled and expanded, the electrons and protons combined and formed hydrogen atoms. So finally after moving randomly for 380,000 years, the…
How NASA’s Juno Mission to Jupiter Works [Infographic]
Recently, on August 5, 2011, NASA launched a new space probe, called Juno, headed towards Jupiter. When it reaches its destination the spacecraft will be placed in a polar orbit in order to study the planet's composition, gravity field, magnetic field, polar magnetosphere, and the deep winds of its atmosphere.
Astronomy Picture of the Week – Galaxy Cluster MS0735
This image of galaxy cluster MS 0735 is actually a composite of three separate images in different wavelengths. The cluster's full scientific designation is MS0735.6+7421. It is located about 2.6 billion light-years away in the constellation of Camelopardalis.
Astronomy Picture of the Week – Hubble Finds Ring of Dark Matter
This composite image of a ghostly ring of dark matter in the galaxy cluster Cl 0024+17 was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in November 2004. A false color map is superimposed on a Hubble image of the cluster in order to make the cluster's dark matter distribution more evident.
An Artist’s Vision of a Future Colony on the Moon
Some time ago, I posted an image of the Copernicus Crater for the Astronomy Picture of the Week. Now I stumbled upon an amazing painting by Marshal T. Savage depicting his vision of a future colony on the Moon. It’s the same Copernicus Crater, except it’s domed over and terraformed to create an ecosphere. At first I thought that this was really cool, but it would be impossible to build such a gigantic structure. (The crater has a diameter of 93 kilometers!) However after giving it some thought I changed my mind. If it was built with a material strong enough like carbon nanotubes, it could in theory be built. While…
Astronomy Picture of the Week – Unusual Spiral Galaxy M66
This is a photo of an unusual spiral galaxy called M66, taken by the Hubble Telescope. It lies about 35 million light years from Earth and it spans 100,000 light years. At a first glance, this galaxy looks familiar. Why? Well, because it is similar to our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Both galaxies are spirals. However, what’s really unusual about this one is that it is asymmetric. Usually the force of gravity of a mega black hole (or group of mega black holes) attracts all the stars and interstellar gas in a symmetric pattern. If the mega black hole is not originally in the center of a galaxy it…
