Three rapid bursts of charged particles that erupted toward Earth from the Sun’s burning hot outer atmosphere on Wednesday could lead to stunning auroras across a wide swath of the US and a colorful hue as far south as Florida to start the weekend. Traveling at more than one-and-a-half million miles per hour, the trio … Read more
It’s shadow time, baby! Soon, people living in North America will get to experience their first solar eclipse in almost a decade. Even though the last solar eclipse in North America happened in 2017, the next one isn’t expected until August 2044, so seizing this moment is critical. More than just a peculiar shadow, the … Read more
In other anecdotes, onlookers have reported birds that stop singing, crickets that stopped chirping, or bees that return to their hive, reduce their foraging, or suspend their flight during total darkness. But there are also studies that deny that some of these behaviors occur or can be attributed to the eclipse. Therefore, NASA scientists plan … Read more
If you live in the US and missed the last total solar eclipse in 2017, good news! You’re about to get another chance. There will be a total solar eclipse passing through Texas and the Midwest states on April 8. Remember that in a solar eclipse, the moon’s shadow falls on the Earth. If you’re … Read more
The resort town of Mazatlán, Mexico — where I lived from 2006 until last month — is one of the best spots to witness the total solar eclipse on April 8. Hordes of people are traveling there to experience the event. There was a 1,000% surge in searches for Airbnb listings in North American cities … Read more
It’s shadow time, baby! Soon, people living in North America will get to experience their first solar eclipse in almost a decade. Even though the last solar eclipse in North America happened in 2017, the next one isn’t expected until August 2044, so seizing this moment is critical. More than just a peculiar shadow, the … Read more
But the solar system contains more than two masses. In fact, it started as a big cloud of dust without any planets and without the sun, and every speck of dust had an attractive interaction with every other speck. That’s a lot of complicated stuff going on, but there’s a trick we can use to … Read more
Illustration: Rhett Allain You can see that we have a right triangle with the hypotenuse equal to the distance from the observer’s eyes to the center of the Earth (R + h), with the other two sides being just R and the distance to the horizon (s). Using the Pythagorean theorem, we can solve for … Read more
