Tag: moon

Italian Explorer Christopher Columbus Leveraging Astronomy to Manipulate the Indigenous Taíno of Jamaica

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During Italian explorer Christopher Columbus’ 4th voyage and while still stationed upon the island of Jamaica in the Caribbean, Columbus’ crew and flotilla did not have the supplies necessary to travel back to Europe. Columbus appealed to the indigenous Taíno people of the island and requested they share their resources. The Taíno informed Columbus that they had only sourced enough supplies to see themselves through the season and that they did not have access to a surplus. Columbus responded by telling this group that if they did not comply, he would summon divine forces and cause the moon to disappear within 1 weeks time; the key to this being that Columbus understood that a total lunar eclipse was scheduled to occur within the coming week. The Taíno were skeptical of this claim initially, but when a total lunar eclipse occurred as predicted, it caused this group to believe that Columbus held a seat beside the hand of God. Unsurprisingly, Columbus was almost immediately provided all of the material he desired to fund his return voyage to Europe. During the middle of the total lunar eclipse, Columbus stated that his god, the Christian God, would now reverse the destruction of the moon and return the moon to its former position as the Taíno had complied with his crews demands

The 12 Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Greece

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The Ancient Greeks believed in 12 gods and goddesses who were understood to reside upon Mount Olympus. These deities included Zeus (pronounced “zoose”) the king of the gods, Hera (pronounced “hare-ah”) the wife of Zeus and goddess of marriage and childbirth, Apollo (pronounced “ah-pol-oh”) the son of Zeus, sun god, and god of music and healing, Artemis (pronounced “art-em-is”) the daughter of Zeus, twin sister of Apollo, and the goddess of the moon and hunting, Aphrodite (pronounced “af-row-dye-tee”) the daughter of Zeus and goddess of love and sexual desire, Ares (pronounced “air-eez”) the son of Zeus, god of war and battle, and lover of Aphrodite, Poseidon (pronounced “po-sai-den”) the brother of Zeus and god of the sea, storms, and earthquakes, Demeter (pronounced “de-me-tur”) a lover of Zeus and the goddess of agriculture and fertility, Athena (pronounced “ah-tee-nah”) the daughter of Zeus and goddess of wisdom and war, Hephaestus (pronounced “heh-fai-sch-tus”) the son of Zeus and god of fire and art, Hermes (pronounced “hur-meez”) the son of Zeus, god of commerce and travel, as well as being a personal messenger for his father, and finally Hestia (pronounced “hess-tee-yah”) the sister of Zeus and goddess of the home and family

The Mathematics Behind Why Rockets Can Escape The Gravitational Pull of the Earth

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Robert Goddard’s liquid rocket never reached the 3 kilometer mark because of Tsiolkovsky’s Rocket Equation named after Soviet scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (pronounced “con-stan-tyin tsel-kov-skee”). This equation states that as fuel increases for faster and further voyages, so too does the weight, becoming increasingly heavy as more and more fuel is added. Tsiolkovsky took into account the velocity of a rocket alongside its mass of payload, mass of fuel, and the mass of the rocket itself. The longer the engine burns, the more velocity the rocket will have, however longer burning means more fuel which adds weight and makes it more difficult to push upwards. To travel fast enough to deliver a rocket to space, most of the craft must be fuel. Scientists have battled with this question for decades and although mathematical constructs have been developed to explain the relationship between weight and thrust, no one has yet to develop an idea to get around this problem with currently available technologies. The equation developed to explain this limitation of space travel is ΔV^R = V^E * ln((M^P + M^F + M^R) / (M^P + M^R)). This effectively states that only a tiny portion of a rocket can be used to deliver payload, with notable cases being the Apollo missions which employed enormous rockets to carry just a few small astronauts and the things they needed into space. Tsiolkovsky theorized this in the beginning of the 20th century as his calculations demonstrated that kerosine wouldn’t be enough to go from the Earth to the moon with a single craft

The Future Abeyance of Total Solar Eclipses

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In the distant future, approximately 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) years from now, total solar eclipses will not occur, only partial eclipses and annular eclipses will develop. The reason for this change is because the moon is moving away from the Earth at approximately 3 centimeters per year

The Protoplanet Theia Creating the Earth’s Moon

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The protoplanet which hit the Earth and created the moon is referred to as “Theia”. When Theia hit the Earth, its core fused with the Earth’s core sending enormous amounts of liquid rock into orbit. Because this liquid rock was in a magma like state, it was very easy for it to coalesce and from the moon. The collision changed Earth’s trajectory as a planet because metals like iron were released from the planets core, resetting Earth’s basic chemistry. Gasses like methane, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen, seeped into Earth’s atmosphere, gasses which were the building blocks of life. During the 1950’s, American chemist Stanley Miller carried out a classic experiment which included creating a cocktail of these gasses and simulating life on Earth by introducing electricity. What emerged was a film of brown slime, full of amino acids, the raw material of proteins, created by nothing but the very gasses already present on Earth. During the cooldown of the Earth after the collision, water vapor condensed to form oceans, oceans which were tidal by nature due to the moons gravitational pull. Chemicals found within the early oceans were aided by the moon as the moon pulled upon the Earth creating low tides which in turn were introduced to ultraviolet radiation from the sun as the sun’s heat evaporated the remaining water within those tidal pools. This constant wetting and drying of these tidal pools was the catalyst which created ribonucleic acid, complex molecules created by very simple materials under very simple conditions

Italian Astronomer Galileo Galilei Determining the Speed of Light

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The speed of light was once thought to be infinite and able to travel over infinite distances instantaneously. The polymath Galileo Galilei thought this to be incorrect and had an assistant stand atop a hill 1 kilometer away whilst Galilei shone a lantern and had the assistant shine one back as soon as he recognized the opposing lantern being lit. Galilei posited that he could measure the reaction time and divide it by the distance between both parties. The experiment failed to work because a much greater distance would be required for success. During the 1670’s, the Danish astronomer Ole Roemer closely observed Jupiter and its moon Io. Roemer noticed that his predictions of where Io should be did not synchronize with its actual position and subsequently realized that because Jupiter and Earth are sometimes closer together, the travel time of light between each could take between 1 hour and 1 hour and 15 minutes. Due to this realization, Roemer was able to calculate that light coming from Jupiter’s moon Io traveled at approximately 300,000 meters per second. Today scientists can verify Roemer’s experiment by pulsing a laser beam towards mirrors left upon the moon by astronauts during the Apollo missions the National Aeronautics and Space Administration launched in decades past to confirm that the speed of light is indeed 299,792,458 meters per second. The lasers scientists use act upon the same principal Radio Detection and Ranging or Radio Direction And Ranging (RADAR), Sound Navigation and Ranging (SONAR), and Light Detection and Ranging or Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) utilizes in that they all measure objects at a distance by pinging them to approximate how fast they are traveling, and how far away they are