Christmas Science

Do you want to have some fun over vacation?  Well of course you do!  Here are a few ideas to help make the time pass more quickly while you wait for Santa Claus to come:

https://www.noradsanta.org
There is an organization called NORAD. During the year they have personnel that track UFO's and objects that can be identified in our atmosphere.  They help classify a lot of stuff that flies through our skies. Basically their job is to warn of us incoming objects that might reach a target on Earth. There is no better organization for tracking Santa!  Visit this site and do a little research, I promise it will be fun, fun, fun!

Christmas Optical Illusions:

Optical Mind Tricks!

Practice Observing...Can you pass?

 How ever you decide to pass your time, enjoy yourself, relax and remember if you want to have a good time, you have to decide to make it happen!

Merry Christmas!!

Choose a Galaxy

There are 4 types of galaxies in our universe.  All of them are a mixture of gases, dust and elements held together by gravitational forces.  These galaxies are named by their shapes:

There are many types of galaxies, just like there are different countries, and different people.  Yes, all them are unique and have their own individual characteristics.  Galaxies are in motion and revolve around their center. In space there are big gaps of emptiness and in galaxies there are big gaps of emptiness...

It was the HUBBLE telescope that put galaxies into categories.  It has been suggested in scientific circles that galaxies were once closer together but as the universe expands, these galaxies move farther and farther apart from each other. 

Spiral Galaxies:
All spirals have a disc, a bulge and a halo.  These galaxies are the most common when observing space around us and make up about 77% of all galaxies.

Andromeda galaxy above. 

Barred Spiral Galaxies:
This type of galaxy shares the same characteristics as a spiral galaxy except in the middle of the galaxy there is a bar of stars where the bulge would be.  There's little activity there and mostly older, redder stars are in the middle.  Short bars in the middle make tighter spirals and longer bars make a spiral that is more spread out.

Elliptical Galaxies:
These galaxies are rather spherical and usually have a black hole within their nucleus.  The middle is brighter than the spiral galaxies, Interestingly these galaxies are bright, round or cigar shaped, but not very active within.  The stars are much older and not much new star formation takes place with in them.

A bit of a boring galaxy....

And finally the Irregular galaxies:
These galaxies have no definite shape but they contain neutron stars, black holes, gases and dust, along with elements from other stars.  Only 20% of all our galaxies are irregular and they are in motion like the others as well.

Kind of untidy...

Well, I suppose there are those who like organized spaces and those that like unorganized spaces.  Each galaxy to its own!

Galaxy Quest!

Let's talk about our Milky Way Galaxy...we know it's big, like really big, but what do we really know about our galaxy?  (Besides, the fact there is a massive black hole in the middle...)

No one has every seen our galaxy because the furthest probe we have out there just passed Pluto!  But astronomers have gotten some pretty good pictures of the Orion Arm where our Solar System is.  They use an "array" of telescopes. From Hawaii, to Puerto Rico, to China, to India they take pictures and then merge them together and the view is AMAZING!

A few facts about our galaxy:
1. Astronomers believe we live in a "barred" galaxy with spiral arms.
2. From the edge to the center is 27 light years.
3. From edge to edge or the whole diameter of the galaxy is 180,000 light years wide.
4. Our Universe formed after the Big Bang, and our galaxy formed close after that.
5. Our galaxy has gobbled up  mass from other galaxies, specifically the Magellanic Cloud Group.

An artist rendering of the Milky Way:

The closest galaxy to us is the Andromeda Galaxy and scientists believe our galaxy may start gobbling that one up, but not for another 5 billion years! So we are good!

Watch where we are in the Milky Way:

Do you know how long it takes our Solar System to orbit the center of our Milky Way? 

So I sorta broke my patella, but I'm still keeping track of who is watching the blog.  No candy will be withheld because of my injury...

Want to learn more?  https://space-facts.com/galaxies/milky-way/

Our Beginnings: The Nebula

The Horse-head Nebula.  This star nursery is beautiful to see.  It is 1,500 light years from the Earth, and 5 light years tall.  Inside the dark head of the nebula, stars are forming, new solar systems are being created.  Doesn't that bring a tear to your eye?  That's how we got started, our little Solar System home in gargantuan Space.

Do you ever wonder what our nebula looked like?  Did it have a name?  Was there anything/anyone watching our nebula grow, change and create worlds?

This is a supernova remnant...did we start like this?

As the gases slowed and spread out, did our little Solar System begin to spin? The story of space is so fascinating, and one can get carried away thinking about the bazillions of stars in space forming, growing, dying, exploding...how amazing is all this?

Supernovas heat up surrounding elements and begin stirring the masses nearby.  There are actually two types of supernova explosion "shapes".  The Shell type:

And the Crab-like remnants:

Watch this short video about supernova remnants:

Photos of remnants help scientists try and figure out how solar systems form and where the elements on the periodic table formed.  I would watch, you're gonna love it!

Solar System Patterns

Patterns...How do patterns help us understand the Solar System?  

There are lots of paths that go around the Sun, but they all go counterclockwise!  All celestial objects in our Solar System travel counterclockwise...except for a couple of exceptions...all comets, asteroids, meteoroids, dust particles, planets, dwarf planets, and man made satellites.

According to many observations over long periods of time, astronomers have noted that planet shapes are a pattern.  The smaller planets tend to have smaller orbits and larger planets have longer orbits.  For example, Earth takes 365 days to orbit the Sun and Saturn takes 29 years.  Smaller planets are closer to their Sun and larger planets are farther away from their Sun. 

Gravity has created patterns in our Solar System too...planets, the Sun and other objects that have been orbiting a long time, are round.  Gravity causes orbits to be "nearly" round, planets are "nearly" round and our entire Solar System orbits "nearly" around the Milky Way Galaxy.

Finally density of all Solar Systems is the greatest within the Star!  The Sun has the most mass and then the planets make up a small percentage of mass.  The densest objects are closest to the Sun...and the least dense away from the Sun...

Well, look at that!  It appears that the planets begin to gain density again further away from the Sun...interesting!

Patterns are important to observe because they help us understand the forces involved that help form solar systems all through our own galaxy.  Patterns help us SEE clues to an underlying order.  At first it appears our Solar System was born violently, with mass and materials spewed all over.  Looking for patterns have helped scientists to discover orderliness among the "mess".  Patterns help scientists discover how things work.  Understanding how our Solar System works has been a goal for many scientists since the beginning of human recorded history, and possibly before that!  

Maybe because patterns are so satisfying to watch...kind of calming...relieves a bit of stress...hypnotizing...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....

The Planets in Our Solar System

So, Mercury should be super hot because it orbits closest to our Sun.  So, I wonder why it has ice on it's poles?  Doesn't that seem impossible? 

If Venus is a planet that has cleared its neighborhood, and orbits the Sun, and has enough gravity to be round...I wonder why it doesn't have any moons?  I mean look at Saturn, it has like 82 moons!  Do planets steal moons?

If you look at Mars, it's full of gullies and river beds and scientists are pretty sure there was water on Mars...so I wonder where its atmosphere went?  I mean, doesn't water evaporate?  Shouldn't it be in the atmosphere around Mars?

Our moon is peppered with craters which means that there must have been lots and lots of space things hitting the moon...I wonder if this is because of Jupiter?  Did Jupiter have a huge effect on drawing space rocks, dust and comets into it and those items ran into our moon, and the other planets while they were being sucked into Jupiter?

How about those rings around Saturn?  I wonder if there was like this large piece of space stuff, maybe as big as a planet and it just shattered and scattered its remains all around Saturn?  Kind of like the rings are an old planet graveyard?

At first astronomers thought there wasn't much going on around Uranus.  Just a giant, frozen, gassy planet.  Then, they spotted some storms?  I wonder what would cause a storm on a giant, frozen, gassy planet?

The winds on Neptune have been clocked at over 1,100 miles per hour!  That's faster than the speed of sound!  What is on Neptune that would create such amazing wind?

The magnetic field around the Earth protects us from really bad radiation.  NASA keeps track of the levels every day to make sure that we aren't getting horrible doses of sunlight.  I wonder what it would be like if we didn't have a magnetic field around us?  Would we have to live in tunnels?  Would the Earth become a jungle of plants?

There are still a lot of questions Earthians have about their own planet as well as the others...

Can Our Sun Explode?

The number one question from 6th grade students is, "When will our Sun explode?"  The number 2 question is, "When will our planet explode?"  And the third question asked by 6th graders, "When can we explode something in class?"

1. Can our Sun supernova?  NO! 
Our sun doesn't have enough mass to supernova.  Lucky for us!  A very large massive star puts off a whole lot more energy and heat, than our medium sized sun. 

Our Sun fuses hydrogen, and eventually one day will run out of fuel, but not for another 10 billion years.  According to computer models...So we are safe from exploding stars!  Really!  We would have to be 100 light years closer to the nearest massive star before we could be harmed from a supernova. 

A super massive star that explodes actually tears a hole in the fabric of space, causing a black hole formation or a super dense neutron star. 

That shoots out pulsars...

How dense is a neutron star?  A teaspoon of neutron star would weigh a billion tons!  That's so heavy, I can't even stand to think about it. 

2. Could our planet explode?  NO!
Many planets have super hot, boiling cores, but they don't explode.  Why not?  Planets are stable inside.  The only way they could explode is if "we" pumped tons of chemicals into the core or tons of nuclear bombs and detonated them at once.  Then a planet might explode...

Relax, the Earth is stable and will sustain life for a very long time....as long as we take of it....

3. Can we explode something in class?  NO!  

Too many things can go wrong and you have to be super careful around explosives because explosions are energy gone crazy!!

There.  Now that we know all about explosions we can get back to work!