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Build Your Own Planet

Posted on January 20, 2014 by Math Blaster

What is a simply DIY craft project that you and your space-crazed kid can complete together? Try making this easy, mess-free solar system to hang in your Blaster’s room!

The materials you need to complete this galactic task are as follow:

Color paper
Scissors
Compass or several circular objects (mugs, bowls, plates, etc.)
Pencil
Fishing line
Stapler
Glue
Star-shaped stickers (optional)

Steps:

To create our hometown, Earth, you will need blue, green, brown, and white colored paper.
To be precise, you can set your compass’ width to be 7 cm, which means the diameter of your circles will be 14 cm in total. Or you can use a large mug instead, and trace the outline onto the colored paper by using your pencil.
Using your scissors, cut out the circles. Then, fold them in half.
As shown in the image, stack the paper and staple across the crease that you just folded to keep the paper intact
Then, fold the paper backwards to create a 3-dimensional shape.
Tie the fishing line around the center seem.
Tie a knot and your Earth is completed!
Optional: You can purchase star-shaped stickers and use it as a label for the planet and to cover up the knot you tied in step 7.
Repeat steps 1 to 8 to create Saturn, but this time, use orange, yellow, brown, and white colored paper instead, and set your compass’ width to 10 cm, or find a bigger circular object.
To create the ring, simply create two circles in white and brown respectively that are just a tiny bit smaller than the ones you did to create the spherical shape of Saturn.
Glue them together by slightly overlapping them, and slide it over the 3D Saturn.
Repeat steps 1 to 8 to create the other planets, but make sure you alter the measurement of your compass slightly to show the scale between the different planets.

Note:

The more circles you cut out, the more detailed your planets will look, but it will also be harder to staple all the paper together.
Assist your kid when using the compass – the sharp tip can be hazardous.

Filed under: Crafts, Family Activities, Family Fun, Just for Fun, Newsletter, Parents and Kids | Tagged: Blaster, Crafts, DIY, Earth, Jupiter, mars, Math Blaster, Mercury, Neptune, Planets, Pluto, Saturn, Saturn Ring, Solar System, space, stars, Venus | Leave a comment »

The Mystery of a Mega Black Hole Explosion

Posted on September 30, 2013 by Math Blaster

Have you and your blaster been keeping up with the latest space happenings? Scientists from the University of Sydney found that two million years ago, a gigantic black hole exploded at the center of our galaxy. The eruption was 100 million times more powerful than it is today, and it lit up a cloud that was 200,000 light years away. Those are some impressive numbers!

Photo by Phil Plait

The evidence to support this astonishing finding comes from the Magellanic Stream, which is a strand of hydrogen gas that follows behind our galaxy’s neighboring galaxies, which are simply called the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. The researchers have been noticing a peculiar glow shining from the Magellanic Stream, and realized that this glow is a record of the massive outburst of energy when the black hole exploded at the heart of our galaxy many years ago.

The area that envelops all the galaxy’s black holes is called Sagittarius A*, which emits all sorts of radiations. Flickers of flares will appear when small clouds of gas fall onto the hot disk matter that swirls around the black hole. Scientists knew that the galaxy’s stars cannot produce enough ultraviolet that caused the glow they found in the Magellanic Stream, therefore, it can only be explained by the black hole theory.

These black holes can switch on and off within a million years, and the researchers are quite certain that this sort of colossal explosion will happen again in the future.

Filed under: Current Events, Just for Fun, Newsletter, Parents and Kids, Science Facts, What's New | Tagged: Black Hole, Eruption, Explosion, Galaxy, Hydrogen Gas, Light Years, Magellanic Stream, Radiations, stars, Supermassive | Leave a comment »

A Caterpillar-shaped Star Discovered by NASA

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Math Blaster

Have you and your Blasters been keeping up with recent space news? NASA recently found a protostar that is a light-year-long and shaped like a caterpillar. Protostars are knots in its early evolutionary stage, and by collecting gas, dust and other materials from its surrounding region, a protostar may eventually evolve and become young stars.

Photo by NASA

The irregular shape of the star “wanna-be” is caused by the harsh winds from 65 of the hottest, brightest known stars, classified as O-type stars. These stars are blasting ultraviolet radiation at the protostar, effectively dissolving the envelop around it. This sculpts the gas and dust surrounding the protostar into its elongated shape.

Spectroscopic observations show that the protostar is still collecting materials to bulk up its mass. Scientists predict that the final masses of these young stars from that region of the universe may be 1 to 10 times that of our Sun. However, if the O-type stars continue to erode the envelop with radiation, the final masses may reduce. Moreover, to tell whether the stars formed will be “heavy” or “light”, we can only wait.

Filed under: Current Events, Just for Fun, Science Facts | Tagged: Lightyears, NASA, Radiation, science, space, stars, sun | Leave a comment »

Seven Ways to Discover Alien Planets

Posted on August 12, 2013 by Math Blaster

Since the first alien planets were discovered in 1992, scientists have found a whopping 800 planets! In order to find these foreign worlds, astronomers have developed a number of techniques to identify them. Here is an overview of the methods scientists use to find new planets.

Direct Imaging
Perhaps the easiest (and most obvious) way to find a new planet is to take a direct picture of it. Using coronagraphs to block the intense glare of parent stars, telescopes can gather images of distant planets. This method is very common in identifying new worlds.

Pulsar Timing
As the name would suggest, this method is specific to planets around pulsars—small, dense remnants of exploded stars that emit radio waves as they rotate. Irregularities in the pulses’ timing can reveal planets. The first planets discovered beyond our solar system were found using pulsar timing in 1992.

The Transit Method
The transit method watches for small dips in a star’s brightness that occur when a planet crosses (or transits) the face of the star. By looking at the timing of a particular planet’s transit, scientists can calculate variations to find multiple worlds orbiting a star. This practice has been utilized by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, which has identified more than 2,700 potential planets since it first launched in March 2009.

Radial Velocity
Also known as the Doppler method, radial velocity picks up the tiny wobbles an orbiting planet induces on its star’s motion toward or away from the Earth. This technique measures changes in the star’s light as a result of these gravitational pulls. Radial velocity has been especially effective in locating exoplanets.

Gravitational Microlensing
When a large object passes in front of a star, its gravitational field acts like a lens as it bends and magnifies the star’s light. Astronomers use this brightening and fading light—or light curve—to determine the foreground object (usually a star). Scientists then look for secondary light curves, which can be generated by orbiting planets. This method has been helpful in finding planets deep in space that do not have a parent star.

Special Relativity
Special relativity is a new technique where scientists watch for a star to brighten as an orbiting planet “tugs” it with its gravitational pull. This tug causes photons to gather as light is focused in the direction of the star’s motion.

Astrometry
This method relies upon incredibly precise tracking of a star’s movements to identify the gravitational pulls of orbiting planets. Scientists have employed this technique for decades, to varied degrees of success.

With so many ways to find new planets, it is no wonder that we have been able to identify 800 new planets since 1992. As scientists hone these techniques and technology improves, it will be exciting to see what new discoveries are made as we expand our understanding of foreign worlds.

Filed under: Newsletter, Science Facts | Tagged: Astronomy, Discovery, Galaxy, Math Blaster, newsletter, Outer Space, Planets, science, stars | Leave a comment »

Astronomers May Have Found New Way to Map Galaxy Centers

Posted on July 1, 2013 by Math Blaster

When a star passes too close to the black hole found in the center of a galaxy, the gravitational force is so strong that it shreds the star apart. As a result, a flare-up is created in the center of the galaxy which fades over a few months. These flare-ups are called quasars. A team from the University of Edinburgh led by Professor Andy Lawrence may have discovered a new way to map quasars. In a large scale survey using the PanSTARRS telescope on Hawaii, Professor Lawrence and his team studied millions of galaxies. While they did find flare-ups, their behavior was different from their initial “star-shredding” predictions.

Unlike normal quasars that fade over a couple months, the ones found by Lawrence and his team faded over a period of years. In addition to this finding, the quasars appeared to be at the wrong distance. Lawrence’s survey identified the quasars to be roughly 10 billion light years away while the galaxies they appeared to be in were only 3 billion light years away. Should the estimated distances of these quasars and galaxies be correct, then Lawrence and his team are actually viewing quasars through a foreground galaxy.

Normally this occurrence has little effect on the brightness of a quasar, but if a single star in the foreground galaxy passes directly in front of the quasar, the resulting gravitational focusing of the light makes the quasar temporarily brighter. This phenomenon, called “microlensing,” has been known for low-level flickering, but this is the first time it has been suggested for such intense effects.

Lawrence believes that this finding could help us map out the internal structure of quasars in a way that is otherwise impossible since quasars are so small. As astronomers discover more developments on this phenomenon, it will dramatically reshape the way we understand the galaxy.

Filed under: Current Events, Newsletter, Science Facts | Tagged: Black Holes, Galaxies, Microlensing, Outer Space, Quasars, stars | 3 Comments »

Planets, Stars, and Moons – Oh My!

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Math Blaster

We all know that our solar system is a vast and unexplored mystery. Throughout the years, scientists have collected data, conducted experiments and engaged in observations on our solar system. With this research, we have learned much about the different components that make up our universe. Some of the main objects that exist in space include planets, stars and moons. Although these three particular extraterrestrial objects are fairly familiar to many of us, do you really know the difference between them

Earth is a planet because it is an object in space that orbits around a star. Each planet has different properties that might be more pronounced in one planet than another, such as density levels and chemical compositions. The various planets in our solar system vary in atmospheric pressure, distance from the sun, and even in color. For decades, scientists classified now dwarf planet Pluto as the ninth planet in our solar system. The International Astronomical Union set a refined definition of what it meant to be a “planet,” which excluded beloved Pluto from the list of eight other planets in our solar system.

Earth’s moon plays a role in our daily lives. However, moons, also known as natural satellites or secondary planets, also exist for and orbit around other planets in our solar system. Moons are referred to as “celestial bodies” that orbit around a planet. The planet, or any other smaller celestial object, is called the moon’s “primary.” All eight planets in our solar system have at least one satellite each, varying in size and other attributes.

To tie everything in our solar system together, we have the sun. The sun is a star, and it is the source of most of Earth’s energy. For clarification, a star is essentially a giant, glowing sphere of plasma that is kept intact by gravity. Some stars are visible from a human standpoint during the night, and these stars also group together in places to form constellations and other astronomical formations.

This basic knowledge about the solar system is sure to enrich your scientific knowledge so that you can help your child when the time comes for them to learn more about our solar system. Encourage your child to use their imagination, and perhaps design and name their own planet. Whatever interesting ideas your child comes up with, continue to help them find inspiration in all the things they learn.

Filed under: Current Events, Just for Fun, Newsletter, Parents and Kids, Technology and Kids, Uncategorized, What's New | Tagged: Earth, Fun facts, science, Science facts, stars, sun | Leave a comment »

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