What is the Great Filter? The Great Filter is one of the possible explanations for why we might not find other intelligent life in the universe. It is a point at which no intelligent life can pass. You may have heard of the Fermi Paradox. I wrote an article about it before. Enrico Fermi was […]
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What is the Boötes Void? The Boötes Void is an area of space 330 million light years across that only contains 60 galaxies. It is found in the constellation known as Boötes. It is sometimes called the “Great Nothing”. The Boötes Void was discovered by an astronomer called Robert Kirshner in 1981. He was looking
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How would a Dyson sphere work? A Dyson sphere would work by capturing the energy output from the sun and transmitting it to Earth. It would probably be a series of satellites. A Dyson sphere is obviously hypothetical because we don’t have the technology available to make it. However, that isn’t to say that we
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What is a pulsar? A pulsar is a neutron star that rotates extremely rapidly and releases pulses of radiation, hence their name. Neutron stars are formed when stars much larger than our sun (a minimum of eight times larger) run out of fuel to burn. All stars begin by burning hydrogen and turning it into
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Is space based solar power possible? Yes, space based solar power is certainly possible, but there are a lot of problems that need to be overcome first. The idea behind space based solar power is that they would have unimpeded sunlight for virtually 24 hours a day, every day. Solar power stations on Earth are
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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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