Mercury is the smallest planet in the solar system. It is 4,879 kilometers across. Compare that with our moon, which is 3456 km across, and you can see that Mercury is not very big. In fact, Jupiter’s moons Ganymede and Callisto and Saturn’s moon Titan are bigger! Even though those moons are bigger, Mercury weighs [...]
Archive for May 2010
Solar System Tour: Mercury
May 31, 2010Solar System Tour: The Sun
May 28, 2010Everyone knows about the sun, it’s that really bright thing that rises every morning and sets every evening. Not everyone knows much about it though. For example, did you know the sun is actually a star? Ok, so maybe you knew that. But if you’re so smart, what’s it made of? The sun is almost [...]
LittleDog and BigDog walking robots – Could they work on Mars?
May 28, 2010If you haven’t seen these videos of experimental new walking robots developed by Boston Dynamics and DARPA, you really need to. They are impressive and quite creepy in how similar the robot movements mimic a living creature. Pretty awesome eh? But would robots like this work on Mars? Well, as you could hear in the [...]
Solar System Overview
May 27, 2010Welcome to the solar system! It’s a really interesting place, and there’s a lot to cover. First lets get a basic idea of what our solar system looks like. There are eight planets in the solar system and five “dwarf planets” and they all orbit around the sun. The four planets closest to the sun [...]
Solar System Tour
May 27, 2010The other day, I was reminiscing about things I had done as an undergrad at the University of Michigan and I remembered a website I put together with two of the other officers of the Student Astronomical Society. The site is a tour of the solar system, and I thought to myself: “Hey, I should [...]
Mars Polar Cap Mystery Solved
May 26, 2010If you’ve ever seen a picture of the north polar cap of Mars, you’ve probably wondered why it has those spiral troughs in it. Until recently, you would be in good company: it’s a question that has been plaguing scientists for 40 years. But it has finally been solved! Go check out my new article [...]
The “explorer” analogy and US spaceflight
May 20, 2010The other day, the blog Sociological Images had a thought-provoking post about a Canadian ad campaign which invokes the idea of exploration and discovery to promote Canadian tourism. It got me thinking about one of the most common defenses of U.S. space exploration: that it is the natural next step for a nation founded on [...]
Big Pictures: Space Shuttle and Mount St. Helens
May 18, 2010The Big Picture has been on a roll lately, with two sets of particular interest to planetary and space-types. First, is the feature on the final launch of the space shuttle Atlantis last week: Second, today is the 30th anniversary of the explosive eruption of Mount St. Helens, and there are some amazing photos that [...]
Talking lasers on aussie radio
May 12, 2010Through a crazy random happenstance, I was just interviewed by a friend of a friend of a friend at Australian radio station ‘triple j‘ for a feature on lasers! We talked all about shooting stuff with lasers, why one might want to do that (other than because it’s awesome) and how the real lab is [...]
Going AWOL
May 7, 2010Loyal readers, I’m going to be scarce for the next few weeks. I just had a major work setback, courtesy of Microsoft word and my own failure to backup a key file. So, I’ll be frantically working to make up for all the work I just lost. In the meantime, it’s probably going to be [...]
