The stars that you see in the night sky are part of the Milky Way, our home galaxy. But the Milky Way is not all around us because we do not live in the middle of the Milky Way; our solar system resides midway between the edge and the center of the Milky Way galaxy. [...]

Organist William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus in 1781 with the first reflecting telescope that he built. It was the first identification of a planet since ancient times. He named it Georgium Sidium in honor of King George III of England. For many years the planet was known as the Georgian. It was not until [...]

While the movies and YouTube videos might have you believe that asteroids are heading straight toward Earth the European Space Agency, who monitor thousands of nearby stars, asteroids and comets, says it is highly unlikely that any sizable space object will hit earth during the next half-million years. The chance that a big star will [...]

God got smaller the bigger the universe got, it seemed. The more man gaped in awe at the rapidly expanding size of the universe the more it was thought to be too big, too obvious to have been “created.” Modern concepts had reached new dimensions, able to explain complex gravity and parallel universes … but [...]

For thousands of years people did not know why we breathe air. Plato and Aristotle believed that nutrients from food were burned in the heart, making the flame that brought warmth and life to the body. They thought that the air that we breathe helped to keep the fire controlled. Oxygen was discovered to be [...]

It is the fire of life. It can be kind but it can get angry. But it never throws its weight around. It is the sun. And although it is 330,000 more massive than earth and contains 99.8% of the mass in our solar system, it is small in comparison with some other stars. The [...]

Plants have been used for centuries as medicines – now genetically modified plants can produce plastic, skin tissue agents and human blood proteins. Biotechnologists have created genetically modified (GM) plants that can grow plastic. They managed this by inserting 4 genes from a plastic-producing bacteria into varieties of oilseed rape (Eurasian plant) and cress. Conventional [...]

All the planets in the solar system rotate anticlockwise, except one. Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise. Venus (radius 3,760.4 miles) is similar to Earth (radius 3,963.19 miles) in size and structure but spins very slowly; a day on Venus is 243 Earth days long. Earth is the densest (5.515 g/cm3) planet in [...]

Earth is not exactly round; it is slightly pear-shaped. The North Pole radius is 1.73 inch (44mm) longer than the South Pole radius. Plates carrying the continents migrate over the earth’s surface a few inches per year, about the same speed that a fingernail grows. Which also is about the speed at which the moon [...]

Inspired by Isaac Newton theory of gravity Henry Cavendish first discussed the possibility to establish the weight of earth in a letter to his friend John Michell in 1783. Michell proposed using a torsion balance to measure the tiny gravitational pull between metal spheres, an experiment also carried out by French physicist Charles Augustin de [...]