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24 January 2013
Where does Earth get its heat?
The other day I got a message asking about where the earth gets its heat. It brings up a number of misconceptions that I thought would be worth spending a post discussing, so here goes: Many people assume the earth to be millions if not billions of years old. Lava is molten, but the earth being only 8,000 miles in diameter has no internal heat source. It is almost like …
11 May 2012
Our Super Moon
You may have heard all the excitement last weekend about the so-called “supermoon”. The gist of it is that the moon’s orbit is not perfectly circular, so its distance from the earth varies slightly. But all the talk of the “SuperMoon” got me thinking and I realized that we were missing a teachable moment. No, the moon being at perihelion is not a big deal, but our Moon is pretty “super”. Let me show you why:
