Tag archives for exploration
Pulling ‘em On
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on May 11, 2009 Besides wondering how much all the dogs ate, I had a few obvious questions for Will, such as Why? and How? Why, Will said, was a mix of the words attributed to George Mallory about climbing Everest—”because it is there”—and a keen desire to experience high latitudes, extraordinary places few or no people had ever…
Posted by Imagine trying to spot a moth flying around the rim of a searchlight. If the light is a few feet from you, there’s a chance you would catch the occasional flicker of motion, but the moth would be largely hidden by the glare. Now imagine the spotlight shines as bright as the sun and is…
Whew! Egypt = amazing. I can’t even begin to describe the wonder and awe of standing inside a pyramid or walking the Avenue of the Sphinxes or sailing in a felucca on the Nile. It really is something everyone should do at some point in their lives. The best part is that it seems I…
The tug-of-war between space-based and ground-based telescopes continues, with today’s release of what’s being called the sharpest full-planet image of Jupiter taken by an on-the-ground observatory. —Image courtesy ESO [versus] Jupiter, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2007 —Image courtesy NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI) An international team used the…
Not every meteor that slams into Earth is a dino-killing whopper. Microscopic meteorites also find their way down to the planet’s surface on a regular basis, but there’s been some debate about where exactly they come from. In the September 1, 2008, issue of Geology, Mathew Genge of Imperial College London reports that a massive…
Welcome to Breaking Orbit, a new blog about planetary science, space exploration, and technology brought to you by National Geographic News. Voyager 1 image of Saturn and some of its moons, courtesy NASA When I joined National Geographic in 2005, the society was in the process of shifting perspectives. Since its foundation in 1888, the…
Posted by Valerie Clark has a quick way to determine whether a frog is toxic or not. She licks them. If it is not dangerous it is certainly nasty. “I don’t recommend this,” Clark told National Geographic News earlier this year. “If you lick the wrong frog it can be very bad.” (Read the story.) Clark studies…
