Cosmic Perspective
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The Universe: A Timeline of Discovery
Aaaaand she’s back! Sorry for the delay — school had me burnt out! Consider this: humanity has existed for just a few thousand years, and for most of that time, our existence has been constrained to one little blue mote…
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Astronomical Measurements
I’m sure many of you know of Han Solo’s famous Kessel Run — which he made in “less than 12 parsecs.” He says this as if he’s declaring a new time record, like I might brag that I ran a…
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What is a Light-Year?
In my article, “Where Are We?” I showed you just how huge astronomical distances really are. There’s a reason people say that incredible things are “astronomical!” The image above illustrates how far Earth is from several faraway objects, including one…
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Where Are We?
In the 4th century B. C. E. (Before Common Era), scientists believed the Earth was the center of the universe. Before that, they were convinced the Earth was flat. Now, most of us know that the Earth is not the…
