Nikola Tesla, a Serbian physicist, engineer, and inventor, was penniless and living in a small New York City hotel room at the end of his brilliant and tortured life. But did you know how he got around to paying his overdue bill? Nikola Tesla, a physicist, once paid an overdue hotel bill with a box […]
Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming contributed to developing a standard star designation system and cataloged thousands of stars and other astronomical phenomena. Fleming is best known for discovering the Horsehead Nebula in 1888. But do you know how Williamina Fleming was hired? In the 1880s, the director of the Harvard Observatory was dissatisfied with his staff
Georges Lemaître, an astronomer, had a big idea in 1927. He claimed that the universe began as a single point long ago. He claimed that the universe stretched and expanded to become as large as it is now and could continue to stretch. But do you know what the Big Bang actually is? The Big
Mercury’s highly eccentric egg-shaped orbit is as close to the Sun as 29 million miles and as far as 43 million miles. It travels around the Sun every 88 days at nearly 29 miles per second, faster than any other planet. But did you know that this created double sunrises? Due to Mercury’s slow rotation
A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter that is gravitationally bound. The phrase comes from the Greek word galaxias, which means milky’ and refers to the Milky Way galaxy, which houses the Solar System. Galaxies range in size from dwarfs to giants, each orbiting their galaxy’s center
How Long Does it Take for One Galactic Year to Pass? Read More »
Despite being the fifth largest planet in our solar system, Earth is the only one with liquid water on its surface. The water present on Earth is the very reason for our survival. But have you ever wondered how thin the Earth’s crust is? The Earth’s crust is so thin that it only makes up
How Thin is The Earth’s Crust? Read More »
Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a learned man who rose to the position of chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria. His work is comparable to what is now known as geography study, and he introduced some of the terminologies that are still used today. But did you know that he measured the earth’s circumference? In
How Did Eratosthenes Measure the Earth’s Circumference? Read More »
John Herschel Glenn Jr. was an American aviator in the United States Marine Corps before joining NASA to become one of the first men in space. Glenn was also the first man to go around the earth, but did you ever wonder who verified the computation of that particular mission? When NASA employed electronic computers
Who Verified the Computation of John Glenn’s Orbit Around Earth? Read More »
A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing can escape. Even particles or electromagnetic radiation like light can leave. According to a general relativity theory, a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. But do you know who conceptualized the existence of a black
Who First Proposed the Idea of Black Holes? Read More »
In the past, around the early 20th century, it was quite unusual for women of any nationality to pursue a career in the field of science. A handful of women made their mark in the industry and one, in particular, established her name in the world of astronomy. But what was her contribution to this
How Did Hisako Koyama Contribute to Studying Solar Cycles? Read More »
