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Planet Earth

How LONG is the Earth? The answer will surprise you!

“How long is the Earth” is a weird question – but what if you cut it up into Minecraft-sized 1-meter cubes and lay them in a line through space, how far would the Earth stretch? It is a thought experiment and in the video published by the astrophysicist (and a famous poker player!) Liv Boeree below, we can get the answer and it is mind-blowing: the Earth would stretch across the entire Milky Way (more than 100,000 light-years!) if its volume is laid out in a line of 1-meter cubes.

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Moon Landing Space Exploration This Day in Science, Technology, Astronomy, and Space Exploration History

Complete descent and landing of Apollo 11 [July 20, 1969]

Apollo Flight Journal channel published a detailed video that shows every second of the complete descent and landing of Apollo 11, the spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon on July 20, 1969. The video combines data from the onboard computer for altitude and pitch angle (you can see both altitude and pitch angle every second), 16mm film that was shot throughout the descent at 6 frames per second.

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Climate Global Warming

Climate change: how your personal choices affect your contribution

Scientists Seth Wynes (University of British Columbia – Vancouver, Department of Geography) and Kimberly A. Nicholas (Lund University, Centre for Sustainability Studies) prepared an infographic that shows how your personal choices affect your contribution to climate change.

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Earth from Space Space Exploration

Comet-Rise, the rise of Comet NEOWISE from the ISS

Have you ever seen a comet-rise? This stunning real-time video shows the rise of Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) from the International Space Station (ISS). As the ISS orbits the Earth, Comet NEOWISE rises behind the Earth’s body, above the horizon.

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Earth from Space Astronomy Solar System Space Exploration

Comet NEOWISE and noctilucent clouds – something we’ve never seen before

Russian space agency Roscosmos published spectacular photos of Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) and noctilucent clouds or polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs) above our beautiful planet Earth. This is something we’ve never seen before (a comet and ).

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Solar System Astronomy Space Exploration

Spectacular comet photo from the ISS

Russian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner published a spectacular comet photo on his Twitter account (@ivan_mks63). He tweeted both in Russian and in English and said “During the next revolution I tried to capture the C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) comet a bit closer, the brightest one over the last 7 years. Its tail is quite clearly visible from the International Space Station!”

Categories
Astrobiology

Search for life beyond Earth: SETI Institute CEO’s AMA session

On June 25, Friday, SETI Institute CEO Bill Diamond held an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on the popular social news aggregation and web content rating website Reddit. Here are some interesting questions and Bill Diamond’s answer to them.

Categories
Solar System Astronomy Planet Earth

How the moon was formed? An epic exploration of lunar origin theories

How the moon was formed? The most widely accepted theory of the Moon’s origin is known as the Giant Impact Hypothesis. The standard giant impact hypothesis, sometimes called the Big Splash, or the Theia Impact suggests the Mars-sized body, called Theia, impacted Earth, creating a large debris ring around Earth, and the Moon formed out of that debris. The hypothesis additionally suggests that this collision also resulted in the 23.5° tilted axis of the earth, thus causing the seasons.

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Space Exploration

New Horizons shows nearby stars from an unearthly perspective

NASA’s New Horizons space probe is currently the farthest human-made object that is still able to take photographs. It was launched on January 19, 2006. Now the spacecraft is so far from Earth that the photos taken by New Horizons show nearby stars from an unearthly perspective (see notes 1).

Categories
Oceans Space Exploration

Kathryn Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space now the first woman to reach the deepest point of the ocean

Kathryn Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space on October 11, 1984, now also becomes the first woman to reach the deepest point of the ocean, the Challenger Deep, at the southern end of the Mariana Trench. She also became only the eighth person ever to reach the Challenger Deep.