scuola energia e ambiente
Universe
Do you want a galaxy, ready to be served?
Here is the recipe you need:
Take at least 100 billion stars and interstellar gas you desire. Add interstellar dust and dark matter, as required. Cook the mixture at a temperature of 1032K and do not forget the fundamental ingredient: gravity!
Leave it all to cool for at least a billion years… and ready! you have a galaxy that you can serve! It seems easy to create a new galaxy, but really we did not know what a galaxy was, until a very few time ago. In the past, we didn’t have powerful observation instruments as today, so galaxies seemed small regions, placed everywhere in the skies and featured by a bright vagueness, called, exactly, nebulas.
subjects dealt with in Universe
Galaxies
Have you been invited to an astronomical dinner, and you don't want to come hempty-handed? Here we have the perfect…
The birth of galaxies
If the universe shows us an expansive motion, it is natural to suppose that, if we would be able to…
Energy and matter
At present, we still don't know the real composition of our Universe! Researchers found several evidences about the existence of…
special reports
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29 November 2012 / Space
Exobiology
A strange message We are on board a probe that has gone down in the pages of history because it…
28 January 2014 / Space
Gaia satellite scanning the sky
Ready, set ... go! On December 19, 2013 the new satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA) called GAIA (Global…
14 May 2014 / Space
Another Earth in the Universe
A world similar to the Earth Finally the news we were waiting for, for so long, has arrived. It was…
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31 March 2014 / Space
A day on board the International Space Station
A day in space Every day, on board the ISS (International Space Station), the one and only human outpost in…
11 March 2013 / Space
Curiosity’s recent discoveries
New information from the Red Planet A few months after the start of its mission on Mars, NASA’s Curiosity rover…
23 January 2013 / Space
Close encounter with a comet
Introduction 2013 will definitely be remembered as the year of asteroids and comets. These smaller objects of the Solar System…
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6 March 2014 / Space
A beam of antimatter could help to unravel the secrets of the Universe
Trapping antimatter! At the end of January 2014 it was announced that at the CERN in Geneva an international collaboration,…
17 December 2012 / Space
The end of the world
The end of the world: false beliefs and scientific theories The idea of the end of the world has always…
13 September 2013 / Space
The phenomenon of gravitational lenses
The phenomenon of gravitational lenses If we look carefully at the image taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, of the…
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29 November 2012 / Space
Exobiology
A strange message We are on board a probe that has gone down in the pages of history because it…
28 January 2014 / Space
Gaia satellite scanning the sky
Ready, set ... go! On December 19, 2013 the new satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA) called GAIA (Global…
-
14 May 2014 / Space
Another Earth in the Universe
A world similar to the Earth Finally the news we were waiting for, for so long, has arrived. It was…
31 March 2014 / Space
A day on board the International Space Station
A day in space Every day, on board the ISS (International Space Station), the one and only human outpost in…
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11 March 2013 / Space
Curiosity’s recent discoveries
New information from the Red Planet A few months after the start of its mission on Mars, NASA’s Curiosity rover…
23 January 2013 / Space
Close encounter with a comet
Introduction 2013 will definitely be remembered as the year of asteroids and comets. These smaller objects of the Solar System…
29 November 2012 / Space
Exobiology
A strange message We are on board a probe that has gone down in the pages of history because it…
28 January 2014 / Space
Gaia satellite scanning the sky
Ready, set ... go! On December 19, 2013 the new satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA) called GAIA (Global…
14 May 2014 / Space
Another Earth in the Universe
A world similar to the Earth Finally the news we were waiting for, for so long, has arrived. It was…
from the Multimedia section
curiosities
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Neutrinos
Neutrinos are extremely light neutral particles; for a long time, it was believed that they were massless. Now we know…
The comet’s tail
Comets are “dirty snowballs” that spend most of their life at the edges of the Solar System. Due to gravitational…
The definition of a dwarf planet
Astronomy, like all scientific disciplines, is continuously evolving. Along with it, even its classification structure is subjected to periodic up-dates.…
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The PP cycle
Nuclear fusion within the stars begins with the different passages of hydrogen transformation into helium. Stars that are going through…
Children of the stars
We are made of star dust. The iron in our blood, the oxygen we breathe, the calcium in our bones,…
The Olbers paradox
Why is the sky dark at night? What seems like an obvious question, actually needs a more complex explanation. If…
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A black hole in our galaxy
All the existing galaxies, and our Milky Way too, hide in their centres giant black holes, with masses estimated in…
The cosmic microwave background radiation
In 1965, while studying the ground noise of a radio antenna, two technicians of the Bell Telephone Laboratories heard a…
Cosmic collision
When two galaxies start to approach, the tidal attraction forces deform their structures, creating sometimes particular forms, like filaments or…
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Neutrinos
Neutrinos are extremely light neutral particles; for a long time, it was believed that they were massless. Now we know…
The comet’s tail
Comets are “dirty snowballs” that spend most of their life at the edges of the Solar System. Due to gravitational…
-
The definition of a dwarf planet
Astronomy, like all scientific disciplines, is continuously evolving. Along with it, even its classification structure is subjected to periodic up-dates.…
The PP cycle
Nuclear fusion within the stars begins with the different passages of hydrogen transformation into helium. Stars that are going through…
-
Children of the stars
We are made of star dust. The iron in our blood, the oxygen we breathe, the calcium in our bones,…
The Olbers paradox
Why is the sky dark at night? What seems like an obvious question, actually needs a more complex explanation. If…
Neutrinos
Neutrinos are extremely light neutral particles; for a long time, it was believed that they were massless. Now we know…
The comet’s tail
Comets are “dirty snowballs” that spend most of their life at the edges of the Solar System. Due to gravitational…
The definition of a dwarf planet
Astronomy, like all scientific disciplines, is continuously evolving. Along with it, even its classification structure is subjected to periodic up-dates.…