Recent content by poldi

Its really quite amazing how much information can be found online with just a bit of searching. Galaxies do not appear to conform to Kepler's laws of motion. In our galaxy, young stars are in the spiral arms, older stars are in the halo. Andromeda is actually moving towards us. The farther...

In many countries (including Canada), the real Christmas trees you buy are farmed, they are not wild trees being harvested. They take less energy to grow (fake trees are manufactured so they use energy to make them, which contributes to greenhouse gases) and can (and in many places are) sent to...

I wish I could get someone else to do my job at work while I take the credit and the paycheck. Must be nice to be in school these days... 1. Hydrosphere - water. Lithosphere - rock. Atmosphere - air. 2. Maps are flat, 2-dimensional representations. Globes are spherical 3-dimensional...

The insurance rates probably haven't gone up much, since there are so few crashes (Roswell was just one, none since then). Last time I was in space, they pilot didn't use the Internet (since that only works on Earth). The pilot used the Ethernet to get Google Universe maps, order a pizza to...

There is no star that is bright enough or close enough to the south rotational pole for people to use for southern hemisphere navigation. At present, the naked-eye star nearest to the south pole in the sky is Sigma Octantis (about 1 degree away from the actual pole). Its apparent magnitude is...

1. Not just planets have the relationship. Gravity is proportional to the mass of the object and inversely proportional to the square of its radius. 2. No, I don't think that - science states that it does. 3. The greater the mass, the greater the gravity and therefore the greater the escape...

1. Not just planets have the relationship. Gravity is proportional to the mass of the object and inversely proportional to the square of its radius. 2. No, I don't think that - science states that it does. 3. The greater the mass, the greater the gravity and therefore the greater the escape...

They are searchlights (like at movie openings or sports events). Unless there is low fog or low clouds, you won't see the beams of the searchlights, you will only see where the light strikes higher clouds.

A UFO is, by definition, an Unidentified Flying Object. So that object is, by definition, a UFO. The image could be any number of things (Photoshop, or a helicopter with special antennae come to mind). But just because I can't identify the object in that photo doesn't automatically mean that...

Not sure what a "pep" is - they were a tasty chocolate treat when I was a kid. UFOs are real - they are Unidentified Flying Objects. If we knew what they were (for example, if they were extraterrestrial spacecraft piloted by intelligent aliens) then they would be unidentified anymore and...

Since we are mammals, we tend to think that only mammals can be intelligent. But that is not necessarily reality. On Earth, mammals evolved into intelligent beings but under other circumstances and environments, intelligence could arise in insects, reptiles, birds or some other life form. Even...

If you read about elliptical and spiral galaxies, you will learn not only the answer to this question, but a lot of other things. Ellipticals are thought to form by the merger of spirals - the mergers cause a lot of stars to form from the remaining dust and gas in the merging galaxies. The...