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Summer has just ended but the sun has yet to start to "warm up". Our star is a huge furnace that doesn't always work the same way but, like our mood, has ups and downs. There are times when the…
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We call them "Martians" because, in science fiction, Mars has always been the natural home of extraterrestrials. In fact, of all the planets in the solar system, Mars is the prime candidate to host life, after Earth, of course. Indeed,…
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While the temperatures of the last days of winter and the first shoots and buds on the trees had already announced it, on 20 March spring officially began again at 4:49 a.m. (Italian time). At that exact moment, the Sun…
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In our galaxy, the Milky Way, there are over 100 billion stars. Around us, we have discovered 100 billion more galaxies: we have not yet been able to see beyond them. Therefore, doing a simple multiplication, today we know that…
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First steps on the Moon Next 21st July, at 4:56 am Central European Time, it will be exactly 50 years since the first, momentous, landing of human beings on the Moon. Let's go back to 1969 to relive those moments…
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In 2034, a drone with eight propellers called Dragonfly will fly over the frozen surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. NASA will launch Dragonfly in 2026 as part of the New Frontiers research programme. The module transporting Dragonfly to Titan…
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If someone asks you “When does summer begin?”, very probably you would answer that it begins on the summer solstice, which this year falls on 21 June. Yet a meteorologist might say that it had already begun some time earlier,…
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In Italy, St. Lucy’s night is known traditionally as “the shortest night of the year”, but due to the passage of the Geminid meteor shower, it will also become the “brightest night of the year”. In fact, the night between…
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The Christmas comet 46P/Wirtanen is crossing the sky. 46P is one of the large family of young comets: these are short-period celestial bodies affected by Jupiter’s gravitational force and for this reason their orbit passes by us frequently. 46P appears…