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Steven Soter
Steven Soter is an astrophysicist currently holding the positions of scientist-in-residence for New York University's Environmental Studies Program and of Research Associate for the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. He is a proponent of the International Astronomical Union's definition of planet. Education Soter received his bachelor's degree in astronomy and physics from UCLA in 1965 (advisors George Abell and Peter Goldreich) and his doctorate in astronomy from Cornell University in 1971 (advisors Thomas Gold, Carl Sagan, and Joseph Burns). Career in astrophysics In 1974, Soter suggested that dust produced by meteoritic bombardment of Saturn's moon Phoebe might orbit the planet until colliding with Saturn's moon Iapetus and be responsible for the unique dark-bright dichotomy of the latter. Although not the unique cause, dust originating from Saturn's irregular satellites was later found in data from the Cassini spacecraft to indeed play a ...
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Physical Cosmology
Physical cosmology is a branch of cosmology concerned with the study of cosmological models. A cosmological model, or simply cosmology, provides a description of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the universe and allows study of fundamental questions about its Cosmogony, origin, structure, Chronology of the universe, evolution, and ultimate fate.For an overview, see Cosmology as a science originated with the Copernican principle, which implies that astronomical object, celestial bodies obey identical physical laws to those on Earth, and Newtonian mechanics, which first allowed those physical laws to be understood. Physical cosmology, as it is now understood, began with the development in 1915 of Albert Einstein's general relativity, general theory of relativity, followed by major observational discoveries in the 1920s: first, Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe contains a huge number of external Galaxy, galaxies beyond the Milky Way; then, work by Vesto Sli ...
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UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California State Normal School (now San José State University). This school was absorbed with the official founding of UCLA as the Southern Branch of the University of California in 1919, making it the second-oldest of the 10-campus University of California system (after UC Berkeley). UCLA offers 337 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines, enrolling about 31,600 undergraduate and 14,300 graduate and professional students. UCLA received 174,914 undergraduate applications for Fall 2022, including transfers, making the school the most applied-to university in the United States. The university is organized into the College of Letters and Science and 12 professional schools. Six of the schools offer undergraduate degre ...
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Blue Planet (film)
''Blue Planet'' is a 1990 IMAX film directed by Ben Burtt, and produced by the IMAX Space Technology corporation for the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, as well as Lockheed Corporation. Filmed with the cooperation of the NASA, it was written, edited, and narrated by Toni Myers. Partially filmed from orbit during Space Shuttle missions, the film is about the planet Earth. The changes and constants are highlighted, and the film attempts to show how fragile and unique Earth is. Origins of the planet, how it has changed, what man's role in change is, and other issues are discussed. The film features footage that was filmed from space, underwater, computer animations based on satellite data, and a variety of views from the surface to illustrate the topics. Summary ''Blue Planet'' opens showing how the Apollo 11 Moon landing gives humanity a first whole and contemplative view of Earth. It then follows the Mission to Planet Earth (MTPE), a 1989 mission using th ...
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Ann Druyan
Ann Druyan ( ; born June 13, 1949) is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning American documentary producer and director specializing in the communication of science. She co-wrote the 1980 PBS documentary series ''Cosmos'', hosted by Carl Sagan, whom she married in 1981. She is the creator, producer, and writer of the 2014 sequel, '' Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey'' and its sequel series, '' Cosmos: Possible Worlds'', as well as the book of the same name. She directed episodes of both series. In the late 1970s, she became the Creative Director of NASA's Voyager Interstellar Message Project, which produced the golden discs affixed to both the ''Voyager 1'' and ''Voyager 2'' spacecraft. She also published a novel, ''A Famous Broken Heart'', in 1977, and later co-wrote several best selling non-fiction books with Sagan. Early life Druyan was born in Queens, New York, the daughter of Pearl A. () and Harry Druyan, who co-owned a knitwear firm. Druyan's early interest in math a ...
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Science News
''Science News (SN)'' is an American bi-weekly magazine devoted to articles about new scientific and technical developments, typically gleaned from recent scientific and technical journals. History ''Science News'' has been published since 1922 by Society for Science & the Public, a non-profit organization founded by E. W. Scripps in 1920. American chemist Edwin Slosson served as the publication's first editor. From 1922 to 1966, it was called ''Science News Letter''. The title was changed to ''Science News'' with the March 12, 1966 issue (vol. 89, no. 11). Tom Siegfried was the editor from 2007 to 2012. In 2012, Siegfried stepped down, and Eva Emerson became the Editor in Chief of the magazine. In 2017, Eva Emerson stepped down to become the editor of a new digital magazine, Annual Reviews. On February 1, 2018 Nancy Shute became the Editor in Chief of the magazine. In April 2008, the magazine changed from a weekly format to the current biweekly format, and the website was ...
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Nature (journal)
''Nature'' is a British weekly scientific journal founded and based in London, England. As a multidisciplinary publication, ''Nature'' features peer-reviewed research from a variety of academic disciplines, mainly in science and technology. It has core editorial offices across the United States, continental Europe, and Asia under the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature. ''Nature'' was one of the world's most cited scientific journals by the Science Edition of the 2019 ''Journal Citation Reports'' (with an ascribed impact factor of 42.778), making it one of the world's most-read and most prestigious academic journals. , it claimed an online readership of about three million unique readers per month. Founded in autumn 1869, ''Nature'' was first circulated by Norman Lockyer and Alexander Macmillan as a public forum for scientific innovations. The mid-20th century facilitated an editorial expansion for the journal; ''Nature'' redoubled its efforts in exp ...
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Rings Of Saturn
The rings of Saturn are the most extensive ring system of any planet in the Solar System. They consist of countless small particles, ranging in size from micrometers to meters, that orbit around Saturn. The ring particles are made almost entirely of water ice, with a trace component of rocky material. There is still no consensus as to their mechanism of formation. Although theoretical models indicated that the rings were likely to have formed early in the Solar System's history, newer data from '' Cassini'' suggested they formed relatively late. Although reflection from the rings increases Saturn's brightness, they are not visible from Earth with unaided vision. In 1610, the year after Galileo Galilei turned a telescope to the sky, he became the first person to observe Saturn's rings, though he could not see them well enough to discern their true nature. In 1655, Christiaan Huygens was the first person to describe them as a disk surrounding Saturn. The concept that Saturn's rin ...
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Science (journal)
''Science'', also widely referred to as ''Science Magazine'', is the peer-reviewed academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and one of the world's top academic journals. It was first published in 1880, is currently circulated weekly and has a subscriber base of around 130,000. Because institutional subscriptions and online access serve a larger audience, its estimated readership is over 400,000 people. ''Science'' is based in Washington, D.C., United States, with a second office in Cambridge, UK. Contents The major focus of the journal is publishing important original scientific research and research reviews, but ''Science'' also publishes science-related news, opinions on science policy and other matters of interest to scientists and others who are concerned with the wide implications of science and technology. Unlike most scientific journals, which focus on a specific field, ''Science'' and its rival ''Nature (journal), Nature'' c ...
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Irregular Moon
In astronomy, an irregular moon, irregular satellite or irregular natural satellite is a natural satellite following a distant, inclined, and often eccentric and retrograde orbit. They have been captured by their parent planet, unlike regular satellites, which formed in orbit around them. Irregular moons have a stable orbit, unlike temporary satellites which often have similarly irregular orbits but will eventually depart. The term does not refer to shape as Triton is a round moon, but is considered irregular due to its orbit. As of December 2022, 149 irregular moons are known, orbiting all four of the outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune). The largest of each planet are Himalia of Jupiter, Phoebe of Saturn, Sycorax of Uranus, and Triton of Neptune. It is currently thought that the irregular satellites were captured from heliocentric orbits near their current locations, shortly after the formation of their parent planet. An alternative theory, that they originated ...
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Saturn
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; however, with its larger volume, Saturn is over 95 times more massive. Saturn's interior is most likely composed of a core of iron–nickel and rock (silicon and oxygen compounds). Its core is surrounded by a deep layer of metallic hydrogen, an intermediate layer of liquid hydrogen and liquid helium, and finally, a gaseous outer layer. Saturn has a pale yellow hue due to ammonia crystals in its upper atmosphere. An electrical current within the metallic hydrogen layer is thought to give rise to Saturn's planetary magnetic field, which is weaker than Earth's, but which has a magnetic moment 580 times that of Earth due to Saturn's larger size. Saturn's magnetic field strength is around one-twentieth of Jupiter's. The outer atmosphere is g ...
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Iapetus (moon)
Iapetus () is a moon of Saturn. It is the 24th of Saturn’s 83 known moons. With an estimated diameter of 1,469 km, it is the third-largest moon of Saturn and the eleventh-largest in the Solar System. Named after the Titan Iapetus, the moon was discovered in 1671 by Giovanni Domenico Cassini. A relatively low-density body made up mostly of ice, Iapetus is home to several distinctive and unusual features, such as a striking difference in coloration between its leading hemisphere, which is dark, and its trailing hemisphere, which is bright, as well as a massive equatorial ridge running three-quarters of the way around the moon. History Discovery Iapetus was discovered by Giovanni Domenico Cassini, an Italian-born French astronomer, in October 1671. He had discovered it on the western side of Saturn and tried viewing it on the eastern side some months later, but was unsuccessful. This was also the case the following year, when he was again able to observe it on the western ...
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