June 2- Science

In 2006, 5% of astronomers worldwide voted on a subject that would be hotly debated until now, and probably for a while to come. What vote could this possibly be? The split decision to degrade Pluto from being a planet to a dwarf planet. How could such an atrocity have taken place? How dare the IAU make such a decision?! It's to small to be a planet anyway...whatever your opinion is, technically, Pluto isn't a planet anymore. So for my daily question, I ask: Why?







The new definition of a planet is a bit more complex than the former definition of a planet. First, a planet must orbit around the sun. Well, lots of things do that. Comets, Asteroids, all that stuff. It needs to have enough gravity to pull itself into a spherical shape. Gravity is a force that surrounds anything with mass. The more mass, the more gravity. If there is enough mass, an object can pull itself into a ball, the tightest object it can become. Pluto can do that. Finally, a planet must clear everything near its orbit. This is where Pluto just doesn't match up. There are lots of thing near Pluto that it just doesn't have enough gravity to pull into it. So, unfortunately for now, Pluto remains a "dwarf planet".

April 21- Science

Radios are weird. They have all sorts of strange properties, like if you grab the antenna, the reception gets better. Another strange thing, that you may or may not have noticed, is that the reception is often times better at night. Which brings me to my question of the day: Why is the reception better at night? (Hint, it has to do with the sky)







In order to find a complete answer, we need to remember a couple of things. First, the earth is constantly revolving. Second, there are several layers of the atmosphere that keep said earth from frying. One such layer is the ionosphere. This is a layer of the atmosphere that has lots of ions very close to each other. Now lets look down at the picture. (Click on it to see the image in its entirety) You can't really see some of the writing I put on there, but, you can see the earth, and that white oval around it. Inside the oval is a purple line. That represents radio waves. Now, the left side of the earth is day, and the right is night. Since the ions are so close in the ionosphere, radio waves have to bounce off them. You can see that the ionosphere is closer during the day, so the radio waves have to bounce more, giving it more opportunity to get blurred. But at night, the ionosphere is farther away, so the waves can go farther in one bounce. This means you get a clearer reception.

April 14th-Science

The much loved Ozone layer. High above us, it converts UV rays into heat. Without it, the Earth would become sterilized, or in simpler terms, we'd be toast. Man made pollutants are constantly breaking down this part of the atmosphere, but more recently, the Ozone layer has been patching itself up. But what exactly is the Ozone layer?




The element that makes up the Ozone layer is oxygen. The exact compound is O3 which means that it is 3 oxygens linked together.

To learn more visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_layer
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/Ozone/ozonelayer.html
http://www.oar.noaa.gov/climate/t_ozonelayer.html