You are browsing the archive for Ryan Anderson.
6 June 2010
Solar System Tour: Earth
This is Earth, the third planet from the sun. I’m hoping, of all the planets, you’re most familiar with this one. Hopefully, though, you’re about to learn a little more about home. When seen from space, one of the most striking features of the Earth is all the water. Our planet’s surface is about 70% water. Earth is the only planet known with liquid water currently on the surface. Mars …
4 June 2010
Spirit Rover Discovers Carbonates
Big news from Mars today, Spirit has found evidence for significant amounts of carbonates in the rocks of Gusev crater! Carbonates are really important for two reasons: first of all, Mars has a very thin CO2 atmosphere right now. Too thin for water to remain as a liquid on the surface: it would just boil away and freeze at the same time! But there is lots of evidence that water …
Solar System Tour: Venus
Venus is the second planet out from the sun, and is just slightly smaller than Earth. It is 12,102 km across, which is about 95% the size of earth. You can see Venus in the sky in the morning or evening as a very bright “star”. In fact, for a long time it was called the “morning star” or “evenstar”. It is always pretty close to the sun in the …
3 June 2010
The Case for Mars: Autotuned
For me, none of the newer symphony of science videos can match the sheer catchy-ness of the original, but this one is about exploring Mars, so I can’t complain too much. Check the Symphony of Science page for other autotuned science-themed music videos.
2 June 2010
Vote for Me in the 3 Quarks Daily Science Blogging Poll!
So, remember a while back when I wrote that article about MSL: Mars Action Hero? Well, I didn’t end up winning the ScientificBlogging contest, but someone must have liked it because I just found out that it has been nominated for the 3 Quarks Daily Science Blogging Prize! First place is $1000, and is chosen by Richard Dawkins after the finalists have been chosen through voting: As usual, this is …
Barnstorming Mars
You need to check out this video that the ESA just posted: This was compiled from the small “Visual Monitoring Camera” on Mars Express, and it gives a beautiful view of what Mars looks like from the spacecraft’s highly elliptical orbit. I love the way the orbit clearly speeds up as the spacecraft swoops by the pole. Also, pay close attention at the very end and you can see a …
31 May 2010
Solar System Tour: Mercury
Mercury is the smallest planet in the solar system. It is 4,879 kilometers across. Compare that with our moon, which is 3456 km across, and you can see that Mercury is not very big. In fact, Jupiter’s moons Ganymede and Callisto and Saturn’s moon Titan are bigger! Even though those moons are bigger, Mercury weighs a lot more than they do because it is made of mostly metal and rock. …
28 May 2010
Solar System Tour: The Sun
Everyone knows about the sun, it’s that really bright thing that rises every morning and sets every evening. Not everyone knows much about it though. For example, did you know the sun is actually a star? Ok, so maybe you knew that. But if you’re so smart, what’s it made of? The sun is almost entirely hydrogen, with a bit of helium mixed in and a tiny amount of all …
LittleDog and BigDog walking robots – Could they work on Mars?
If you haven’t seen these videos of experimental new walking robots developed by Boston Dynamics and DARPA, you really need to. They are impressive and quite creepy in how similar the robot movements mimic a living creature. Pretty awesome eh? But would robots like this work on Mars? Well, as you could hear in the BigDog video, it runs on a go-kart engine, so that wouldn’t work on Mars. But, …
27 May 2010
Solar System Overview
Welcome to the solar system! It’s a really interesting place, and there’s a lot to cover. First lets get a basic idea of what our solar system looks like. There are eight planets in the solar system and five “dwarf planets” and they all orbit around the sun. The four planets closest to the sun are called the “inner” planets. They are all pretty small and made mostly of rocks. …
