Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Wishing on a. . .WHAT?

Have you ever tried wishing on a star? Well, if it still haven't come true, I guess you have to know a few facts why it ended up like that.










It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a. . . .SATELLITE?!

As we continue to believe that our wish depends on a star, some astronomers actually have a better explanation for this. Some "shooting/falling stars" aren't actually a piece of heavenly body rather it's a man-made satellite roaming around our blue-green planet. 

How do I Tell the Difference Between Shooting Stars?














The Truth. . .


Meteors are commonly called falling stars or shooting stars.

A falling star/shooting star has nothing to do with a star! These amazing streaks of light you can sometimes see in the night sky are caused by tiny bits of dust and rock called meteoroids falling into the Earth's atmosphere and burning up. 

The part of meteoroid that survived it's way to Earth is called meteorite.

There are dates in a year where you can see number of meteors passing by at nght. These events are called meteor shower and they occur when the Earth passes through the trail of debris left by a comet as it orbits the sun. The names of the showers depends on the constellation where they originated.

"It is important to understand that the meteoroids (and therefore the meteors) do not really originate from the constellations or any of the stars in the constellations, however, they just seem to come from the part of the sky because of the way the Earth encounters the particles moving in the path of the comet's orbit. Associating the shower name with the region of the sky they seem to come from just helps astronomers know where to look." -  http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov


Sunday, June 17, 2012

SPACE TOURISM



When you hear the word vacation, what is the first thing that pops in your mind?
This...

Or this...

Maybe this one...


But have you ever thought of going beyond the imaginable? Well, if you’re thinking about it now, then you won’t be the first.

I was spending my usually Sunday morning cleaning the house and doing a bunch of homework when I decided to find something decent to watch on TV. I was flipping through the channels when a documentary caught my attention.

National Geographic: SPACE VACATION

At first, I thought it’s the usual documentary that deals with astronomical things, but to my surprise it was different and totally new. Like the advance country that they are, a few people from USA are actually studying on the possibility of making the outer space a vacation hotspot.




Virgin airlines, are trying to come up with a space craft—or rather an airplane that can fly people to outer space for a few minutes of sightseeing outside our planet.

While some people already moved further by having an idea of building their very own hotel on the moon that can provide services of fine dining and luxury suites. With this, more ideas grew—constructing greenhouse to assure that plants (that will be prepared for costumers) will grow and will not be wiped out by radiation. Another one is building a space ship that can travel a lot faster to cut off the travel time being consumed in order to jump from one planet to another without taking years.

It seems like these people are so fond of creating new businesses but thing is...is it really necessary for our time?


I mean, aren't there more important things to deal with right now? Global warming gets worst every day, a lot of people die in hunger, many illnesses without a cure cause deaths of millions and yet they managed to think of a creating and pouring their time on venturing a new business?

I do think it’s fascinating and mind blowing—but in my humblest opinion, scientists should set their priorities straight; in fact, not all people can actually afford that kind of vacation especially when majority of the world's population is compose of poor people.





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Thursday, June 14, 2012

Earth Science

When Earth was born it underwent through some tough transformations before it became perfectly suitable for human beings to live in.

It revolves magnificently around the sun; has its perfectly arranged composition that provides for the needs of  living creatures.

It is quite impossible to enumerate or go back to where everything began. All of these planets, particles, energies and universe play a significant role in our lives. We must study it in order to fully understand what surrounds us. It may seem complicated to study such massive topic, but it will surely give us answers to some unanswered questions.


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