10 Features
The Universe began 13.8 billion years ago in an event called the Big Bang. Throughout its ages the universe has changed a lot, sometimes dramatically, so to appreciate these changes I’m going to discuss the History of the Universe in 10 Features. My first feature is the theory of cosmic inflation.
AstroNews
Pluto is still not officially a planet. No matter what most people think, both scientist and non, until the International Astronomical Union has a vote, Pluto remains a dwarf planet.
AstroNews
The Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms) is the largest of the lunar maria (seas) covering roughly 4 million square kilometers (about the surface area of the EU). Its wide flat basaltic surface was believed to be the result of a major impact on the Moon surface in the early days of our satellite...
AstroNews
The Seven Wonders of the Milky Way are: The Sagittarius stream, a long, complex, structure made of stars that wrap in polar orbit around the Galaxy. It consists of tidally stripped stars from the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy. The multi-planet planetary system around the millisecond pulsar ...
Astrology
I’ve received several questions about astrology and I thought that I could dedicate this vlog to explain why astrology is nonsense. Astrology is the belief that the apparent position of some astronomical objects in the sky at the time of birth influences a person’s character and can predict their...
Astronomy
In this Astroholic Vlog I will be talking about Dyson Spheres. Dyson Spheres are hypothetical megastructures purposely built around stars to absorb most or all of the stellar electromagnetic output.
Electromagnetic Radiation
My friend Russell asked me under which condition an object would be able to stand still around the Sun. This is a very interesting question; it probes some fundamental facts about the solar system and its applications are keeping many engineers around the world busy. Planets go around the Sun due...
Cosmology
Saoussen Mbarek and Manu Paranjape at the Université de Montréal in Canada have published a paper that details the conditions for negative mass to exist in our Universe without the need to include exotic particles. In their calculations negative mass is allowed in the General Relativity solution ...
Curiosity
What would a planet orbiting a pulsar look like from the ground? Would it look like a giant disco planet with a constant strobe light? Pulsar form from supernova explosions, and they are neutron stars that spin on their axis thousand time per second.
Galaxy Merger
Galaxy mergers are violent interactions between galaxies and they are consider one of the fundamental steps in how galaxies form and evolve. Mergers occur when two (or more) galaxies collide. This interaction can radically alter the overall structure of the progenitors due to the tidal forces bet...
AstroNews
The exoplanet finder extraordinaire that is the Kepler telescope significantly changed our understanding of the type of planets that can exist in our galaxy. We only find two types of planets in our solar system: small rocky planets (like the Earth) and giant gassy planets (like Uranus). The scie...
AstroNews
When galaxies collide, the supermassive black holes (SMBH) at their centre merge after a long spiralling dance around each other. Several studies have been conducted to underpin everything that happens from the beginning of the galaxy mergers to the SMBHs becoming one; the final details of this p...