Nasa’s first uncrewed Artemis mission returned to Earth in December 2022 after almost four weeks in space. Travelling far beyond the Moon, it proved the capabilities of the Orion capsule, its European Space Agency (Esa) Service Moduleand the giant SLS rocket that blasted it on its way. Artemis II is due to carry the first […]
Hold onto your flux capacitors! A young University of Queensland student may never be late for class again – or even early for that matter. He says he has found a way to “square the numbers” and prove that “paradox-free” time travel is theoretically possible in our universe. From Back To The Future to Terminator, stories […]
Grains of sand or stars – which is the bigger number? Obviously, grains and stars can’t be counted, not literally. But you can guestimate. Science writer David Blatner, in his new book Spectrums, says a group of researchers at the University of Hawaii, being well-versed in all things beachy, tried to calculate the number of […]
Ultima Thule is more than a billion miles on the far side of Pluto. This snowman-like space rock is approximately twenty miles long by ten miles wide and seems to spin like a propeller through space. Why? It is two objects fused together in a strange motion. The object was discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope […]
Ben Tippett, a mathematics and physics instructor at UBC’s Okanagan campus, recently published a study about the feasibility of time travel. Tippett, whose field of expertise is Einstein’s theory of general relativity, studies black holes and science fiction when he’s not teaching. Using math and physics, he has created a formula that describes a method […]
How many dimensions are there in our universe? From 2009 (http://phys.org/news/2009-02-fourth-dimension.html): “Creating a unified theory of quantum gravitation is often considered to be the “Holy Grail” of modern science. Daniel Grumiller (left) from the Institute of Theoretical Physics, Vienna University of Technology, Austria, can now at least unravel some of the mysteries of quantum gravitation. […]
Lakes in the desert, the moon larger when it is on the horizon, Escher’s famous sketches – and, then this recent pic which somehow doesn’t quite seem right? The scale is not correct…or, is it? (For an explanation, check out the Post Support.) Optical illusions are a fun way to get connected with Spacial Geometry. […]
Yahoo News reports that “Astronomers say they have discovered a “supervoid” in the universe that is 1.8 billion light years in width. Dr Istvan Szapudi, who led a team of researchers from the University of Hawaii, has labeled it “the largest individual structure ever identified by humanity”. The vast, large space, which is “missing” around […]
The Mars Orbiter was lost in 1999 because the Nasa team used imperial units while a contractor used metric. The $125m probe came too close to Mars during its orbit and was probably destroyed by the planet’s atmosphere. An investigation said the “root cause” of the loss was the “failed translation of English units into […]
