We live on an Earth that from day to day seems permanent and stable. We go to work, school and perhaps the pub every day and it seems like things will never change dramatically. Unfortunately as we are all beginning to realise things in the universe are forever changing which when looked at from the [...]

The Kuiper belt is a region beyond Neptune that is full of comets, asteroids and other debris. It circles the solar system and has always been a little bit of a mystery as it is so far away and hard to explore. The inkling that the Kuiper belt existed first came from Kuiper and a [...]

Meteors streak through the air giving us a display that can be not only beautiful but awe-inspiring as well. This isn’t all they give us as they carry to us a wealth of information from the solar system. So what is flying through the atmosphere giving us a such a show? As you might imagine [...]

In the previous post I made a mistake about Ceres and its classification as an asteroid or dwarf planet. It’s been a topic of debate for some time, the debate originating with Pluto and its classification from planet to perhaps an asteroid and back to dwarf planet. Everybody was once sitting pretty thinking that Pluto [...]

Throughout history comets have been much more interesting than asteroids. This is mainly because they can be seen with the naked eye because of their immense tail. They have been the stuff of legends the most famous being Halley’s comet as mentioned before. When the planets were formed they didn’t use up all the material [...]

It is black out there, very black. In between the specks of light called stars and in between the galaxies there is just a lot of black. That may be true to our eyes but it is not true at all. In the darkness of space in the black bits there is a giant monster [...]

The solar system formed from dust grains and eventually built up into planets. On the way to making planets some dust grains only formed up to a small size (compared to a planet) and remain at this size today. These rocks are called asteroids. If it wasn’t for these rocks the planets would not have [...]

I looked at the atmospheres of the terrestrial planets in an earlier post and now it is time to look at the other planets especially Jupiter. These are just totally weird planets. it is not possible to land a spacecraft on the surface of Jupiter as, by today’s standards, your spacecraft would be crushed to [...]

If you don’t know what an atmosphere is then I suggest you find a blog on fashion or similar. Perhaps, though, we think we know what an atmosphere is but do we really? Well, just in case it’s that thin blue line that we see around the Earth when looking at pictures that the International [...]

A crater is simple, right? Well, not really, they are not just holes in the ground (well they are really but they do differ depending on the size of the crater). Once we have become experts on the different types of craters and why they are classified differently then I’ll go through the different ways [...]

This sounds a bit like a no-brainer really; the asteroid or comet crosses the path of Earth and hits the Earth’s surface causing an impact crater. That’s it isn’t it? No, nothing in life is quite as simple as that and the way impactors (asteroids, comets, space stations or astronauts) hit the Earth is quite [...]

Volcanoes are one of those great forces of nature that we take almost for granted on Earth. I am not sure that I would take it for granted if I lived right next to a volcano but on the overall scheme of things they are part of the Earth’s make up and mold the Earth [...]

A massive old star is about to die… How a supernova explosion will be observed and what with. By NASA // Join the forum discussion on this post – (1) Posts

Wouldn’t it be good to know how you got here? Well unfortunately the answer to that is unknown. It has been thought about for a long, long time and one day we will probably know the answer. What we do have good idea about though is how the solar system formed. Throughout the galaxy gigantic [...]

What’s the point in trying to impress people with things about cooking, football, weather and the things that your mum or dad knows? Why not impress people with facts on black holes instead? You may even put them to sleep. Here’s a few interesting facts on black holes- When material falls into black hole, a [...]

So what is a black hole? A good way to look at what a black hole is, is to think of a region of space that has so much mass that everything around it is unable to escape its gravitational pull. The mass of a planet determines how much gravity that planet has, the higher [...]

Supernovas don’t explode. Why is that? The nuclear fuel runs out and it begins a collapse under its own weight and there should be a massive blast, but nothing happens. Something is being missed but a new space telescope should resolve this problem. //

ENCORE While the Kepler spacecraft hunts for habitable planets beyond the solar system, we’ve let one of our own planets slip away! Find out why Pluto’s demotion to dwarf status created a public uproar as astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson reads us his hate mail. From third-graders! Also, how we might find Earth-like planets… the possibility [...]

What is the Kuiper Belt? by Susan, Amanda & Kevin Murph. Susan Murph from the How to Grow Your Geek Podcast and her children Amanda and Kevin discuss Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. //

Paul Kalas was the leader of the team who managed the long-sought feat of actually taking a photograph of a planet orbiting another star. Before this, all the planets outside our solar system were found by indirect means. He describes how they achieved the breakthrough, using the Hubble Space Telescope, and discusses the wide range [...]