Research astronomer Varoujan Gorjian (whose team at NASA is called Structure of the Universe Group) explains Black Holes to five different individuals whose understanding exists at five different levels: a five-year old, a teenager, a grad student studying astronomy, and an expert. In the fascinating video for WIRED, super-personable Gorjian begins by explaining how gravity works and ends up discussing low-luminosity active galactic nuclei. While …
Beginning with some of civilization’s first sketches of objects in the sky and ending with some of our most high-definition satellite imagery, Sun and Moon is a thrilling catalog of important cosmic discoveries. Assembled by Mark Holborn and published by Phaidon, the book presents how we’ve used photography and cartography to explore space and time (and our ever-changing understanding of them) over thousands of years. …
The far side of the moon (often mistakenly referred to as the “dark side” of the moon) never faces Earth due to the sphere’s elliptical orbit and synchronous rotation. For the first time, information—including a photograph—has been transmitted from the hemisphere by way of China’s National Space Administration’s Yutu-2 rover. While this might not seem like that big of a deal, it marks significant achievements and technological …
