Space and Science

The sun lies at the heart of the solar system, where it is by far the largest object. It holds 99.8 percent of the solar system's mass and is roughly 109 times the diameter of the Earth — about one million Earths could fit inside the sun. The visible part of the sun is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,500 degrees Celsius), while temperatures in the core reach more than 27 million F (15 million C), driven by nuclear reactions. One would need to explode 100 billion tons of dynamite every second to match the energy produced by the sun, according to NASA. The sun has enough nuclear fuel to stay much as it is now for another 5 billion years. After that, it will swell to become a red giant . Eventually, it will shed its outer layers, and the remaining core will collapse to become a white dwarf . Slowly, this will fade, to enter its final phase as a dim, cool theoretical object sometimes known as a black dwarf .

Q  - What is a planet? A planet  is an astronomical body orbiting a star or Stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermo nuclear fusion , and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals The Solar System  The  Solar System  is the gravitationally bound  system comprising the  Sun  and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly.   Of those objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest eight are the  planets ,   with the remainder being significantly smaller objects, such as  dwarf planets  and  small Solar System bodies . Of the objects that orbit the Sun indirectly, the  moons , two are larger than the smallest planet,  Mercury . The age of her solar system is 4.568 billion years and the nearest star the solar system is proxima centauri which is 4.22...

A  black hole  is a region of spacetime exhibiting such strong gravitational effects that nothing—not even particles and electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from inside it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a  black hole . Objects whose  gravitational fields  are too strong for light to escape were first considered in the 18th century by  John Michell  and  Pierre-Simon Laplace .  The first modern solution of general relativity that would characterize a black hole was found by  Karl Schwarzschild  in 1916, although its interpretation as a region of space from which nothing can escape was first published by  David Finkelstein  in 1958. Black holes were long considered a mathematical curiosity; it was during the 1960s that theoretical work showed they were a generic prediction of general relativity. The discovery of  neutron st...

Hubble Space Telescope This photograph of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope was taken on the fourth servicing mission to the observatory in 2009. Credits: NASA From the dawn of humankind to a mere 400 years ago, all that we knew about our universe came through observations with the naked eye. Then Galileo turned his telescope toward the heavens in 1610. The world was in for an awakening. Saturn, we learned, had rings. Jupiter had moons. That nebulous patch across the center of the sky called the Milky Way was not a cloud but a collection of countless stars. Within but a few years, our notion of the natural world would be forever changed. A scientific and societal revolution quickly ensued. The Hubble Space Telescope is named in honor of astronomer Edwin Hubble. Hubble Facts NASA's Hubble Space Telescope was launched April 24, 1990, on the space shuttle Discovery from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  Hubble has made more than 1.3 million observa...

Act telescope Atacama Cosmology Telescope The Atacama Cosmology Telescope The goals of the ACT project are to study how the universe began, what it is made of, and how it evolved to its current state. This pursuit is part of the field of scientific cosmology in one which asks questions about the Universe on the largest and grandest scales. Over the past two decades, there has been a tremendous flourishing of the field, driven by many excellent astronomical measurements. This has led to the development of a precise and elegant understanding of cosmology. The  Atacama Cosmology Telescope  ( ACT ) is a six-metre telescope on  Cerro Toco  in the Atacama Desert  in the north of  Chile , near the Llano de Chajnantor Observatory . It is designed to make high-resolution,  microwave -wavelength surveys of the sky in order to study the  cosmic microwave background radiation  (CMB). At an altitude of 5190 metres ...