nucleosynthesis
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Cosmology Demystified
That has got to be the single strangest post title I’ve ever written. Of all the whacky branches of science out there, cosmology almost takes the cake — second only, I think, to the downright trippy world of quantum mechanics.…
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A Cosmological Timeline
We started covering cosmology way back in April. And since then, we’ve explored quite a bit — in fact, the grandest story the universe has to offer. We’ve followed the universe from the first fractions of a second after the…
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Cosmology: How Do We Know?
Have you ever wondered how the heck astronomers think we know anything about cosmology? It’s a truly mind-blowing field of study, full of whacky concepts like the shape of empty space, the expansion of the universe, and dark energy. More…
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The Problem of Matter
At first glance, this is an ordinary image of a galaxy cluster: specifically, Abell 1689. If we look closer, though, we see that there’s something weird going on with the more distant, background galaxies in the image. Many of those…
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The First Nucleosynthesis
One minute after the Big Bang, all the protons, neutrons, and electrons that would ever exist had been produced. There were no atomic nuclei, though. No atoms. No materials as you and I know it — like wood, metal, or…
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When Galaxies Collide
Meet the Whirlpool Galaxy, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici. This was actually the first galaxy to be classified as a spiral. Specifically, the Whirlpool Galaxy is what we call a grand-design spiral: a galaxy with a very…
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The Milky Way Demystified
Alright, people…time to finish off our exploration of the Milky Way Galaxy, our home in the cosmos! For the past nine weeks, we’ve covered everything from how our galaxy was “discovered” to how it may have formed. But there’s so…
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How Did the Milky Way Form?
Over the course of my last eight posts, we’ve covered just about everything there is to cover about our home galaxy — or, well, at least the basics. We’ve explored how astronomers first discovered what that incredible, milky stream of…
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The Composition of the Milky Way
What is our home galaxy made up of? In the broadest sense, it’s made up of stars, clouds of dust and gas, and the mysterious dark matter. We could also get a little more detailed. We could say that it…
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What Happens After Helium Fusion?
Back in August — sorry I took so long! — we talked about the helium flash, an explosion that occurs within stars when helium nuclei begin to fuse within a degenerate core. So…this is not what the helium flash would…
