Many kinds of stars, called variable stars, change in brightness, increasing and decreasing in luminosity over periods as long as years or as short as fractions of a second. However, these changes are dependable patterns that repeat over the star’s lifetime, and these fluctuations can only account for up to two percent of the star’s […]
Sorry, Not Aliens: Tabby’s Star Mystery Solved Read More »
Stephen Hawking, a renowned cosmologist and celebrity scientist, passed away at age 76 on March 14, 2018, the 300th anniversary of Galileo’s death. Hawking was born in Oxford, England in 1942 to a family of academics: his mother studied politics, philosophy, and economics and worked as a secretary for a medical research institute, and his
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Scientists studying exoplanets are about to take a step into the future with the launch of NASA’s newest darling, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Once launched in April 2018, TESS will be able to detect exoplanets using the transit method, one of several methods astronomers use to detect planets around other stars. When a
Planet Spotting with TESS Read More »
A Better Sense of Our Place in Space By Megan Wassick, Undeclared, 2018 Where in the universe are we? …well, yes, we’re in Massachusetts. But think bigger than that: beyond the United States or even North America or the Earth. Earth is in the Solar System, the Solar System in the Milky Way — but what is bigger
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