planets
Geek Out

What Life On Earth Would Look Like If Earth Had Rings Like Saturn

Every so often, when the moon is especially ginormous, or we can see Venus or Mars from Earth, humans collectively freak out. And it’s warranted! Seeing things that don’t belong in the sky pop up, well, in the sky is fun. So could you imagine if one day Earth developed rings like Saturn? It would be insane.

17 May 2013

Geek Out

What New York City Would Look Like On Other Planets

The most iconic skyline in the world (or at least in America) would look completely different if it was on another world. On Venus, New York City would be a yellow haze, on Mercury would look glow in the dark, on Mars would make everything rusty and on Uranus and Neptune would totally obliterate the city.

2 April 2013

Science

What Earth Looks Like From 160 Million Kilometres Away

Although we’ve seen plenty of our beautiful blue marble from space before, here’s what Earth looks like from 160 million kilometres away. That’s a little more than the distance from the Earth to the sun.

29 March 2013

Science

Astronomers Find Real-Life Tatooine

French astronomers think they have found Tatooine in real life, and we didn’t even have to travel to a galaxy far, far away (well, it’s still kind of far). The fictional home of Luke Skywalker is called 2MASS0103(AB)b in real life, and it revolves around two suns that move relatively close together. Basically, this planet is in the binary star system, just like Tatooine.

24 February 2013

Science

Watch This Hypnotising Footage Of A Rainbow Mercury Spinning Through Space

While Curiosity’s off drilling into the surface of Mars, plenty of other man-made, space-bound machines are surveying the rest of the solar system, and coming with some pretty cool stuff. NASA’s MESSENGER, for instance, put together quite the mesmerising footage of Mercury’s spin.

21 February 2013

Science

Astronomers Announce Tiniest Planet Ever Discovered

If I were Pluto, I would be really pissed off with the astronomers that just announced the tiniest planet ever discovered. It’s a new planetary system called Kepler-37, which is centred around a star similar to our sun about 210 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra.

13 February 2013

Geek Out

Own A Piece Of Mars Without A NASA-Sized Budget

Good news for anyone who has stared in envy as NASA sends rover after rover to explore and study Mars. You no longer need countless millions and a team of rocket scientists to perform your own experiments on the red planet. For just $US25 ThinkGeek will sell you your very own shard of our celestial neighbour.

30 January 2013

Science

What Would Happen If You Flew A Normal Plane Above Other Planets?

We’re lucky enough to live on a planet where it’s comparatively easy to design and build aeroplanes that work: our atmosphere and the Earth’s gravitational pull are kind in that respect. But what would happen if you tried to fly a regular plane around another planet or moon?

10 January 2013

Science

The Universe Is Bubbling With Life

Astronomers have a mind-blowing new theory: that there are 17 billion Earth-sized planets in our galaxy. They don’t yet know how many of these worlds are in habitable zones, but the implications of this discovery are amazing. So much that some claim the “quest for a twin Earth is heating up”.

20 December 2012

Science

Astronomers Discover Earth-Like Planet Nearby

This is really exciting: an international team of astronomers has discovered that Tau Ceti, the closest single star like our sun, has planets just like our solar system. But more importantly one of these planets orbits in the habitable zone around the star.

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