HackingTheUniverse

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The GAIA space observatory platform was launched in 2013 into a stable Lagrange orbital point known as L-2. L-1 is a stable point on the Sun side of Earth and L-2 is a mirror of that but on the opposite side of Earth from the Sun. GAIA is a project of the European Space Agency […]

The Hubble space telescope opened the universe to new levels for our viewing. After twenty years of effort, a replacement for the Hubble, called the James Webb Space Telescope is nearly ready to go. It will be one hundred times more powerful. Into the Unknown – [youtube.com] Into the Unknown tells the story of the […]

Niku is an object that orbits our Sun, but at a great enough distance to be considered a “trans-neptunian object”. Objects with an average orbital distance from the Sun greater than the orbit of Neptune (at 30 AU), earn this tag. Niku is likely to be a chunk of rock, but it might also contain […]

Asteroids can be identified in SDSS imaging because they change position during the course of an 8-minute exposure with the SDSS camera. The SDSS has identified and measured colors of more than 100,000 asteroids and other Solar System minor objects. The video to the left shows the orbits of many of the asteroids that the […]

George Lemaitre was born in 1894 in Belgium and was an astronomer and physicist who became known for promoting the theory of an expanding universe. In 1927, he published an article titled, “A Homogeneous Universe of Constant Mass and Increasing Radius accounting for the Radial Velocity of Extra Galactic Nebulae”, which used the relativity equations […]

Shen Kuo was born in 1031 in Qiantang (Hangzhou today) in Eastern China. He excelled in the fields of astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, medicine, literature, engineering, and was also known as a diplomat and expert at military strategy. Both his knowledge and assorted skills were encyclopedic. PRECURSOR: -0325 – Euclid 0220 – Ma Jun 0283 […]

When objects move through a medium, they often push the medium out of their way, creating a wave like the bow wave of a boat pushing water away. When an aircraft is pushing air away in a bow wave, as the speed of the craft nears the speed of sound, the wave becomes compressed into […]

The astrolabe is an astronomical calculator used to solve problems related to the position of the Sun and the stars in the sky. It enables an accurate estimation of the position of the astrolabe on the surface of the Earth by creating a flat projection map of astronomical objects. The principles of mathematics and astronomy […]

Robert Hooke was born in 1635 on the Isle of Wight in England. He was known as an architect and philosopher, but made contributions in many fields. He discovered Hookes Law of elasticity which describes the compression and extension of springs. He collected observations made with magnifying lenses, of both small objects and distant objects, […]

Astronomers have suggested that advanced alien civilizations that generate and use energy on a large scale would also produce waste heat that can be detected from a distance. Since modern astronomy can’t detect such heat signatures, they conclude that such civilizations don’t exist. Since a waste heat signature can be detected by our primitive technology, […]