When you look at images of planets in our solar system, they all seem to follow a certain design. The rocky ones are round with a few moons, while the gas giants and the ice giants have rings. But one of them is different. It seems to be tilted on its side, with its rings nearly at right angles to its equator. That planet is Uranus.
Tag: Science
An Ancient Tree and the Question of Life, the Universe and Everything
The 42,000 year old kauri tree has information about Earth’s magnetic field reversal at the time.
Coelacanth – No Longer A Living Fossil
This weird fish called the coelacanth has long been known as a living fossil. After disapearing for over 60 million years it reappeared. And now genetic testing shows it has been hijacking genes from other species.
Alexander von Humboldt: A Scientist of Whom You’ve Never Heard l Blogpost
You may have heard of the Humboldt Current and of the Humboldt Penguins but you probably don’t know after whom they were named. A very influential scientist that you may never have heard of: Alexander von Humboldt.
Take A Trip to Mercury!
Let’s take a trip to the planet Mercury. Use your cursor to check out its surface inside! The European and Japanese spacecraft Bepi Colombi is on its way to orbit the planet in 2025 & took amazing images.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell
The astrophysicist who co-discovered the first radio pulsar in 1967 but – surprise surprise – the Nobel Prize this discovery received in 1974 did not include her name.
Collecting Soil from Asteroids
Most people don’t know that we have sent out two missions to asteroids that will bring back soil samples! Now that’s no small feat — the asteroids are moving at a speed of 25 Km/s — their speed varies based on their distance from the sun. Meanwhile, the two spacecraft are entering the orbit of the asteroids, identifying sample sites, collecting soil samples, leaving the orbit, sending data back to earth and of course bringing back those soil samples.
Jupiter: Giant of the Solar System
Although it is named after the Roman God of sky and thunder (and king of the gods), ancient civilizations long before the Romans knew of Jupiter. It is one of the brightest objects in the sky and is visible to the naked eye, so it was easy to spot. This blog has amazing images of the God of all the planets.
Back to Africa
The history of our ancient African ancestors, how they all interbred & the diversity present in the African continent today.
Fantastic Women Series — Ada Lovelace, First Computer Programmer
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, was born on December 10, 1815. She was the daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron and his wife Anne Isabella Noel Byron. However, being Lord Byron’s only legitimate child is not her claim to fame.
Ada Lovelace was an extremely brilliant woman, who excelled in mathematics, and today she is widely acknowledged as the first computer programmer.