Rogue planets wander about in interstellar space, detached from their stars and dislodged from their orbits to float freely into the desolate void of the cosmos! A mechanism which presents a very intriguing phenomenon for astronomers. Although such planets are quite elusively hard to detect owing to their relatively faint nature, a number have been discovered. […]
Read more "The Wandering Planet"Naturally-occurring particle accelerators function throughout the universe all the time, perpetually manifesting in energetic outbursts and other events that reveal a universe far more dynamic than our perception would lead us to believe. These natural accelerators are exploded stars, quasars, and black holes that continually send cosmic messengers our way. Buried a few kilometres deep […]
Read more "IceCube: Fishing for Cosmic Neutrinos"One’s perception of butterfly flight is that it is typically characterized as some undefined haphazard flitter, but quite astoundingly butterflies flutter about from flower to flower and from bush to bush in quite a precisely targeted fashion. The mechanism of aerial locomotion in butterflies is quite intriguing indeed, ranging from steady undulations to rapid, erratic […]
Read more "On the Aerial Locomotion of Butterfly Wings"Penguins can fly? The title of this article is sure to elicit raised eyebrows and deep furrows of confusion, but it is true — penguins do, in fact, fly. But, they fly underwater. Penguin flippers evolved in order to “fly” underwater, employing similar mechanisms of flight that birds use. Penguin wings are modified as paddles that […]
Read more "Penguins Can Fly!"As our sense-extending technologies continually project the far elusive reaches of the universe into the confines of our cognition, we find ourselves constantly defining the word observable. NASA’s long-awaited Hubble successor, the James Webb Telescope, is finally taking shape as it promises to give us an unprecedented glimpse into the history of our early universe. Just today […]
Read more "Peering Back into the Cosmos"Few people today have heard of Sir George Cayley but indeed much of the intellectual edifice, upon which the principles of modern aerodynamics rest, can be attributed to the genius of this great thinker. Born in December 1773, this Yorkshire baronet was the first to imagine the airplane. A hundred years before the Wright Brothers, […]
Read more "Sir George Cayley: The Father of the Airplane"Burried layers deep in the ground, about 330 feet below the Franco-Swiss border, lies a marvelous machine, one that has been pushing the boundaries of our knowledge of the universe since its activation in 2008. Thus far, the Large Hadron Collider is the biggest machine ever built and the largest experiment ever attempted. About 27 […]
Read more "Seeing Beyond the Higgs: What’s next for the Large Hadron Collider?"In science, there has always been a gap between curiosity-driven exploratory scientific research and applied targeted research (seen as having more “real-world potential”). But, in my opinion, it is important to note that curiosity-driven science and exploration has always been the engine for all progress in science and technology. All knowledge is useful and indeed […]
Read more "The Importance of Curiosity Driven Science"
The BLOG of the cosmos 