HOME





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 ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, cultural center of Southern California. With an estimated 3,878,704 residents within the city limits , it is the List of United States cities by population, second-most populous in the United States, behind only New York City. Los Angeles has an Ethnic groups in Los Angeles, ethnically and culturally diverse population, and is the principal city of a Metropolitan statistical areas, metropolitan area of 12.9 million people (2024). Greater Los Angeles, a combined statistical area that includes the Los Angeles and Riverside–San Bernardino metropolitan areas, is a sprawling metropolis of over 18.5 million residents. The majority of the city proper lies in Los Angeles Basin, a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the California State Normal School which later evolved into San José State University. The branch was transferred to the University of California to become the Southern Branch of the University of California in 1919, making it the second-oldest of the ten-campus University of California system after the University of California, Berkeley. UCLA offers 337 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a range of disciplines, enrolling about 31,600 undergraduate and 14,300 graduate and professional students annually. It received 174,914 undergraduate applications for Fall 2022, including transfers, the most of any university in the United States. The university is organized into the College of Letters and Science and twelve professional schoo ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


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 flight using S ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Ann Druyan
Ann Druyan ( ; born June 13, 1949) is an 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 and education Ann Druyan was born in Queens, New York, the daughter of Pearl A. () and Harry Druyan, who co-owned a knitwear firm. Her family was Jewish. Druyan's early inte ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Science News
''Science News'' (''SN'') is an American monthly magazine devoted to articles about new scientific and technical developments, typically gleaned from recent scientific and technical journals. The periodical has been described as having a scope across "all sciences" and as having "up to date" coverage. History ''Science News'' has been published since 1922 by the 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 ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Nature (journal)
''Nature'' is a British weekly scientific journal founded and based in London, England. As a multidisciplinary publication, ''Nature'' features Peer review, 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 2022 ''Journal Citation Reports'' (with an ascribed impact factor of 50.5), 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 the autumn of 1869, ''Nature'' was first circulated by Norman Lockyer and Alexander MacMillan (publisher), Alexander MacMillan as a public forum for scientific innovations. The mid-20th century facilitated an editorial expansion for the j ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Rings Of Saturn
Saturn has the most extensive and complex ring system of any planet in the Solar System. The rings consist of particles in orbit around the planet made almost entirely of water ice, with a trace component of Rock (geology), rocky material. Particles range from micrometers to meters in size. There is no consensus as to what mechanism facilitated their formation: while investigations using theoretical models suggested they formed early in the Solar System's existence, newer data from ''Cassini–Huygens, Cassini'' suggests a more recent date of formation. In September 2023, astronomers reported studies suggesting that the rings of Saturn may have resulted from the collision of two moons "a few hundred million years ago". Though light reflected from the rings increases Saturn's apparent brightness, they are not themselves visible from Earth with the naked eye. In 1610, the year after Galileo Galilei's first observations with a telescope, he became the first person to observe Saturn' ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Science (journal)
''Science'' is the peer review, 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'' cover the full range of List of academ ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Irregular Moon
In astronomy, an irregular moon, irregular satellite, or irregular natural satellite is a natural satellite following an orbit that is irregular in some of the following ways: Distant; inclined; highly elliptical; retrograde. They have often been captured by their parent planet, unlike regular satellites 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; Triton, for example, is a round moon but is considered irregular due to its orbit and origins. , 356 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. Triton is rather unusual for an irregular moon; if it is excluded, then Nereid is the largest irregular moon around Neptune. It is currently thought that the irr ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

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 9 times that of Earth. It has an eighth the average density of Earth, but is over 95 times more massive. Even though Saturn is almost as big as Jupiter, Saturn has less than a third its mass. Saturn orbits the Sun at a distance of , with an orbital period of 29.45 years. Saturn's interior is thought to be composed of a rocky core, surrounded by a deep layer of metallic hydrogen, an intermediate layer of liquid hydrogen and liquid helium, and an outer layer of gas. Saturn has a pale yellow hue, due to ammonia crystals in its upper atmosphere. An electrical current in the metallic hydrogen layer is thought to give rise to Saturn's planetary magnetic field, which is weaker than Earth's, but has a magnetic moment 580 times that of Earth because of Saturn's greater size. Saturn's magnetic field strength is about a twen ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Iapetus (moon)
Iapetus () is the outermost of Moons of Saturn, Saturn's large moons. With an estimated diameter of , it is the third-largest moon of Saturn and the List of natural satellites, eleventh-largest in the Solar System. Named after the Titans, 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 on Iapetus, 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. This is the first moon that Cassini discovered; the second moon of Saturn to be discovered after Christiaan Huygens spotted Titan (moon), Titan 16 years prior in 1655; and the sixth ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]