Interactive 3D model of Solar System Planets and Night Sky Scale of the Universe 2012 Credits: Scale of the Universe 2 was created by Cary and Michael Huang. Drag the scrollbar or use your mouse-wheel to zoom in and out of the universe. Prepare to have your mind blown! Requires Flash to view. Please share Scale of the Universe with a friend! OML has thousands of free addictive Flash and HTML5 Games like Scale of the Universe 2012. Credits: Scale of the Universe 2 was created by Cary and Michael Huang. Drag the scrollbar or use your mouse-wheel to zoom in and out of the universe. OML has thousands of free addictive Flash and HTML5 Games like Scale of the Universe 2012.
Moon's interior water casts doubt on formation theory 26 May 2011Last updated at 19:01 By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News The study looked at pockets of volcanic material locked in glass An analysis of sediments brought back by the Apollo 17 mission has shown that the Moon's interior holds far more water than previously thought. The analysis, reported in Science, has looked at pockets of volcanic material locked within tiny glass beads. It found 100 times more water in the beads than has been measured before, and suggests that the Moon once held a Caribbean Sea-sized volume of water. The find also casts doubt on aspects of theories of how the Moon first formed. A series of studies in recent years has only served to increase the amount of water thought to be on the Moon. The predominant theory holds that much of the water seen on the lunar surface arrived via impacts by icy comets or watery meteorites. They wrote in a Nature paper that the samples contained about 10 times more water than they expected. 'Not consistent'
History of Space Exploration History of Space Exploration There are things that are known and things that are unknown; in between is exploration. -Anonymous Space History Historical Publications Space Exploration Chronology Spacecraft Mission Summaries This is a partial list of past, present, and future planetary and solar missions; for a complete account, please see the Space Exploration Chronology. U.S. USSR/Russia Missions European Missions China National Space Missions Chang'e 1 Japanese Missions Spacecraft Home Pages for Current and Future Missions Educator Guides Additional History Resources
Physics Flash Animations We have been increasingly using Flash animations for illustrating Physics content. This page provides access to those animations which may be of general interest. The animations will appear in a separate window. The animations are sorted by category, and the file size of each animation is included in the listing. In addition, I have prepared a small tutorial in using Flash to do Physics animations. LInks to versions of these animations in other languages, other links, and license information appear towards the bottom of this page. The Animations There are 99 animations listed below. Other Languages and Links These animations have been translated into Catalan, Spanish and Basque: En aquest enllaç podeu trobar la versió al català de les animacions Flash de Física. Many animations have been translated into Greek by Vangelis Koltsakis. Most animations have been translated into Hungarian by Sandor Nagy, Eötvös Loránd University.
Solar System, Solar System Information Our Cosmic Neighborhood From our small world we have gazed upon the cosmic ocean for thousands of years. Ancient astronomers observed points of light that appeared to move among the stars. They called these objects "planets," meaning wanderers, and named them after Roman deities—Jupiter, king of the gods; Mars, the god of war; Mercury, messenger of the gods; Venus, the goddes of love and beauty, and Saturn, father of Jupiter and god of agriculture. Since the invention of the telescope, three more planets have been discovered in our solar system: Uranus (1781), Neptune (1846), and, now downgraded to a dwarf planet, Pluto (1930). The four planets closest to the sun—Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars—are called the terrestrial planets because they have solid rocky surfaces. Nearly every planet—and some of the moons—has an atmosphere. Moons, Rings, and Magnetospheres From 1610 to 1977, Saturn was thought to be the only planet with rings. —Text courtesy NASA/JPL
Anatomy of a short gamma ray burst Seil Collins, reporter (Image: ASA/AEI/ZIB/M.Koppitz and L.Rezzolla) A supercomputer has revealed the process behind the formation of short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) in gory detail. GRBs are some of the brightest events in the universe. The most common type lasts over 2 seconds and the process behind their formation is generally well understood: the collapse of a massive star into a black hole triggers the formation of jets, which bore through the collapsing star, producing gamma rays as they emerge. Short GRBs last less than 2 seconds, and the exact nature of the forces behind their formation has proven difficult to understand. The new simulation ran for nearly seven weeks on the Damiana computer cluster at the Albert Einstein Institute in Potsdam, Germany and follows the events as they unfold over 35 milliseconds. The first 15 milliseconds show two neutron stars crashing and transforming into a rapidly spinning black hole.
World Sunlight Map - die.net Watch the sun rise and set all over the world on this real-time, computer-generated illustration of the earth's patterns of sunlight and darkness. The clouds are updated daily with current weather satellite imagery. The Mercator projection used here is one way of looking at the spherical earth as a flat map. Used since the 16th century for navigation, straight lines on this map can be used accurately as compass bearings but the size and shape of continents are distorted. Compare this with Peters, Mollweide or equirectangular projection maps. Also available is a semi-realistic view of dawn and dusk from far above the Earth, a look at the moon, and information about how this works.