The Case for Tardigrades

I can’t remember if it was Cosmos or Planet Earth, but it was narrated by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. My roommate and I were watching it before bed, and it was fascinating. Almost the entire episode was dedicated to tardigrades, more colloquially known as water bears. These microscopic animals are uncannily resilient. Like, scarily so. According …

A Brief, Incomplete History of “Earth”

When looking at our solar system, it is pretty easy to notice one thing that separates Earth from the other planets with which we share a star. Namely, Earth is the only planet not named after a Roman deity. You have Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, and even Pluto! So where does “Earth” …

Terraforming Mars: Chances are as Thin as the Air

Many of the futurists and sci-fi enthusiasts of today will at some point think about trying to live on Mars. However, terraforming the planet seems increasingly difficult as we learn more about the process. The first step, and a limiting one, is Mars’ atmosphere. This NBC article summarizes the findings of a 2018 study concerning …

Some Context… But More!

Tycho Brahe (14 December 1546 – 24 October 1601) was the master of unassisted observational astronomy. A major portion of this was due to his building of the observatory and castle Uraniborg. Uraniborg was designed inside and out to collect the most precise measurements known at the time. Possibly though, more important was that he …

Some Context…

I thought to start out the semester, I would look back and provide a little context for myself and everyone else as to how we as humans used to do astronomy. I learned some of the basics of the history of astronomy in a class called the Scientific Revolution. We discussed some of the big …

A little big place