How can you tell if a planet has life? The light coming to us from the planet’s star would show signs of oxygen, water, or some other chemical that we associate with life. The first problem with trying to find life on other planets is that we tend to look for the signs that our
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Is there a planet beyond Neptune? It is possible, but there is no way to know for sure until telescope power increases. Neptune was discovered in 1846 and it was the last planet to be discovered. Pluto was discovered in 1930, but it wasn’t a planet for very long before it was demoted to “dwarf
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What happened to the water on other planets? It was either blown off, evaporated off, or is still there but frozen in ice. The first thing we have to consider is that not all of the planets have water. Pluto has obviously been deregulated and is no longer a planet. Earth has water. Saturn and
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What will happen to the Voyager spacecraft? Unless they collide with anything, they will probably keep going for several billion years. Voyager 1 is currently 24.3 billion km away from Earth and Voyager 2 is 20.3 billion km away. Despite being called number 2, Voyager 2 was launched in August 1977, a month before Voyager
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Why is looking at the sun dangerous? Because the UV light can burn a hole in the retinal tissue. If you look at the sun for even a few seconds, you can badly damage your eyes, something called solar retinopathy. It is also called eclipse retinopathy because it is very common during solar eclipses. People
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Can a binary star system have planets? Yes. There are two types. There are circumbinary planets that orbit both of the stars and there are circumstellar planets that just orbit one of the stars. A binary system is where two suns are gravitationally connected to each other and they orbit around a common center of
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Are all stars inside galaxies? No. There are some stars that are not part of a galaxy. Stars can form outside a galaxy, or they can be kicked out of a galaxy by something. They are called intergalactic stars. Stars that form outside of a galaxy can also be attracted into a galaxy. Stars are
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How thick is the atmosphere? The atmosphere is generally considered to be 10,000 km thick. Our atmosphere is made up of gas. It is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and one percent other gases. Those other gases are argon, carbon dioxide, helium, neon, methane, krypton, and hydrogen. There is water vapor as well, which is a
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What is a nebula? It is an enormous cloud of dust and gas in space. The word nebula is a Latin word, and it means “mist or cloud”. You can see it in the root of the word nebulous. And when we say enormous, most nebula are tens to hundreds of light years across. They
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What is a geosynchronous orbit? It is an orbit that exactly matches the rotation of the Earth. A satellite in geosynchronous orbit goes around the Earth at the same speed the Earth rotates, completing one orbit every 24 hours. From the ground, the satellite appears to be stationary. There are thousands of satellites above us
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