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Episode 1: The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean (Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, Carl Sagan) Neil deGrasse Tyson: Cosmos’s Master of the Universe. Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey premieres on Fox Sun 9/8c and National Geographic Mon 10/9c “A Higgs boson goes into a church. …” Neil deGrasse Tyson—America’s best-known astrophysicist, with more than 1.5 million followers on Twitter—is telling a joke to the team shooting his photo for the cover of Parade.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Cosmos’s Master of the Universe

Standing in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, he continues: “And the priest says, ‘We don’t allow Higgs bosons here.’ And the Higgs boson says, ‘But without me there is no mass.’ ” Bada bing! He’s got another. Everyone laughs, without necessarily knowing that a photon is a tiny particle of light, or that the Higgs boson, the so-called “God particle,” gives everything physical mass. Dr. At 55, Tyson is a science rock star whose passion for the laws of nature is matched by his engaging explanations of topics ranging from the mystery of dark matter to the absurdity of zombies.

Not that Tyson—or anyone—has all the answers to the mysteries of the universe. Get more from Dr. The Search for Signals From Space. Editor’s note: This article by Carl Sagan was originally published in the Sept. 19, 1993, issue of Parade.

The Search for Signals From Space

As children, we fear the dark. Anything might be out there. The unknown troubles us. But, ironically, it is our fate to live in the dark. Head out from the Earth in any direction you choose, and—after an initial flash of blue and a longer wait while the Sun fades—you are surrounded by blackness, punctuated only here and there by the faint and distant stars.

Even after we are grown, the darkness retains its power to frighten us. There are 400 billion stars comprising the Milky Way Galaxy. Or, here and there, peppered across space, orbiting other suns, maybe there are worlds something like our own on which other beings wonder about who else lives in the dark. Our species has discovered a way to communicate through the dark, to transcend immense distances. If they exist. But our fear of the dark rebels. “It’s too expensive.” “We’ll never understand what they’re saying.” Ru_cosmos: Законы Иоганна Кеплера. 1618 год, Иоганн Кеплер (немецкий математик, астроном, механик, оптик и астролог) открыл законы движения планет.

ru_cosmos: Законы Иоганна Кеплера

Законы Кеплера — три эмпирических соотношения, интуитивно подобранных Иоганном Кеплером на основе анализа астрономических наблюдений Тихо Браге. Описывают идеализированную гелиоцентрическую орбиту планеты. Напомним их вкратце: Первый закон Кеплера (закон эллипсов): Каждая планета Солнечной системы обращается по эллипсу, в одном из фокусов которого находится Солнце. Форма эллипса и степень его сходства с окружностью характеризуется отношением е=с/а, где "с" — расстояние от центра эллипса до его фокуса , "а" — большая полуось. Второй закон Кеплера (закон площадей): каждая планета движется в плоскости, проходящей через центр Солнца, причём за равные промежутки времени радиус-вектор, соединяющий Солнце и планету, описывает равные площади.

Top 10: Weirdest cosmology theories - space - 04 September 2006. The Interactive Global Exploration Roadmap. Curious About Astronomy? Galaxies. On a dark night, we can often see a band of light stretching across the sky.

Curious About Astronomy? Galaxies

This band is the Milky Way galaxy -- a gigantic collection of stars, gas and dust. Far beyond the Milky Way, there are billions of other galaxies -- some similar to our own and some very different -- scattered throughout space to the very limits of the observable universe. Types of Galaxies Astronomers classify galaxies into three major categories. Spiral galaxies look like flat disks with bulges in their centers and beautiful spiral arms. Spiral Galaxies Spiral galaxies usually consist of three components: a flat disk, an ellipsoidally formed bulge and a halo. Astronomers classify spiral galaxies according to their appearance by using the Hubble scheme. There are some galaxies like M84, M85 and NGC 5866 that are disk galaxies without any spiral structure. Elliptical Galaxies Elliptical galaxies are ellipsoidal agglomerations of stars, which usually do not contain much interstellar matter.

Irregular Galaxies. How 2012's full moons got their strange names - Technology & science - Space - Space.com. The start of 2012 brings with it a new year of skywatching, and lunar enthusiasts are gearing up for a stunning lineup of full moons.

How 2012's full moons got their strange names - Technology & science - Space - Space.com

But, where does the tradition of full moon names come from? Full moon names date back to Native Americans of a few hundred years ago, of what is now the northern and eastern United States. To keep track of the changing seasons, these tribes gave distinctive names to each recurring full moon. Their names were applied to the entire month in which each occurred. There were some variations in the moon names, but in general, the same ones were used throughout the Algonquin tribes from New England, continuing west to Lake Superior. European settlers followed their own customs and created some of their own names.

Symphony of Science.