When will Halley’s Comet reappear?

Halley’s comet will reappear in 2061. The comet which was named after the British astronomer, Edmund Halley, last appeared in 1985/86.

Edmund Halley was the first person to recognize that comets traveled in orbits. He was able to expand on Sir Isaac Newton’s laws and principles about motion and gravity. Halley used Newton’s mathematical formulas to correctly predict when the comet would reappear. Halley  made these predictions in his Synopsis Astronomia Cometicae, published in 1705. Continue reading

Which Planet has the Most Moons?

Jupiter has the most moons. As of 2009, Jupiter has 63 known satellites or moons.

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. It is the fifth planet from the sun and was named after the Roman god Jupiter. It is considered one of the gas planets with the others being Uranus, Neptune and Saturn. Jupiter is mainly made up of hydrogen, and is about one quarter helium. Scientists speculate that it may have a rock core. It rotates in about ten hours on its own axis and take about 12 years to make one orbit around the sun.

Jupiter’s largest moons were discovered by Galileo Galilei. Galileo, was an Italian astronomer, philosopher, mathematician and physicist. He was born on Feb. 15th 1564 and died on the 8th of Jan. in 1642. He discovered the moons of Jupiter and published his findings in 1610. Another astronomer, Simon Marius claimed to have observed the moons at the same time, however since he did not publish his findings the credit is given to Galileo.
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Science Trivia

chemistry labScience is truly wonderful. Thanks to science we have travelled to the moon and back, we have sent probes into deep space that will reach the outer limits of our solar system. Science has given us ways of communicating with people all over in the world in just fractions of a second. It has enabled us to understand and eliminate many diseases. However, there is the other part of science, the strange, the weird and the just plain odd experiments that really make you wonder.

One such strange study was done by the Institute of Coastal Research in Sweden. Their study involved listening to the sounds that herrings make. More specifically, actual herring farts. Yes, they were listening and recording herring farts.

Belly button lint (BBL) was the subject of another research project. Some of the final conclusions of the study were that males have more BBL than females and older hairy males had more BBL than their younger counter parts. The study was also able to conclude that people who had outies had virtually little or no lint. They also determined that the color of the lint had a direct relationship to the color of clothing worn by the person.

One study compared the distance that a dog flea can jump vs. the distance that a cat flea can jump. Continue reading