-
Hunting Exoplanets
“What is outside our solar system” Exoplanets are the distant planets outside our solar system. Hunting exoplanets is the search for planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. Astronomers rely on clever techniques—most notably the Transit Method (watching a star dim as a planet crosses its face) and the Radial Velocity Method (measuring a star’s…
-
Dark matter
Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that does not interact with light or other electromagnetic radiation. Originally known as the “missing mass,” dark matter’s existence was first inferred by Swiss American astronomer Fritz Zwicky, who in 1933 discovered that the mass of all the stars in the Coma cluster of galaxies provided only about 1 percent of the mass…
-
Sunspots
What are sunspots and how are they formed? Sunspots are temporary spots on the Sun’s surface that are darker than its surrounding area. They are caused by the Sun’s magnetic field. When are they formed? Just as our Earth goes through seasonal changes, our Sun goes through an 11-year solar cycle. The Sun moves from…
-
Magnetars
“A gravity prison for the universe” Can you imagine a magnet so powerful that it could wipe every credit card on Earth from a distance halfway to the moon? That is how strong the magnetic field of a magnetar is! A magnetar is an exotic type of neutron star, its defining feature that it has…
thethinkingatom 