How can the James Webb Space Telescope see the past? The James Webb Space Telescope cannot really see into the past, rather it can see the light that has taken billions of years to reach us. To understand this, we need to think about the speed of light, the vast distances in the universe, the […]
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How do ultramassive black holes form? Ultramassive black holes can form when supermassive black holes collide. To make a supermassive black hole, we need to start with a regular black hole. Black holes can form when a very large star collapses in on itself. The star has to be very large, at least 25 times
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What noise would the sun make? The sun doesn’t make a sound in the conventional sense because there is no air for the sound waves to travel through. Sound is a pressure wave that moves through a medium. The energy is passed from molecule to molecule until it runs out and the sound fades away.
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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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