If someone ever tells you that scientists don’t have a sense of humor, tell them this story. Last summer, NASA launched the probe Juno to study the largest planet in our solar system: Jupiter. In Roman mythology, the head god is named Jupiter. Like his Greek counterpart, Zeus, he has lots of affairs with women. Several of Jupiter’s moons are named after these mistresses. In that same mythology, however, Jupiter is married to Juno. So, NASA sent Juno, his wife, to check up on Jupiter and his many mistresses. After having waited 400 years to make that joke, NASA saw the opportunity, and they took it. In all seriousness though, scientists are just now beginning to publish their initial results from Juno about Jupiter, and they are fascinating. Juno is the closest man-made object to get to Jupiter (and any other planet besides Earth). Here are three of the biggest discoveries we’ve made so far about the gas giant: Unlike the other gas giant NASA is currently studying, Saturn, Jupiter’s north pole is chaotic. It has large storms that reach for miles across the planet. One storm stretched longer than 870 miles across. That’s longer than the distance between New York and Chicago! Can you imagine a storm that big on Earth? I can’t! Jupiter may not have a core in the way Earth has a core. Scientists have long believed that at the center of planets lay a small ball of heavy elements that was easy to identify as the core. However, after Juno, scientists are beginning to suspect that the “mass may be spread out” according to NASA astrophysicist Jack Connerney. This is revolutionary in the way people think about planets and will no doubt change the way we approach studying other gas giants in the future as well! Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jupiter’s magnetic field is ten times stronger than Earth’s magnetic field. This isn’t that surprising, at least to me, since the gas giant is so much larger than our planet. However, Juno also discovered that the dynamo might be visible. A dynamo, or the force that causes each planet to have a magnetic field, has often left scientists perplexed about how they form. Earth’s own dynamo is not visible on Earth, leaving us pretty much in the dark when it comes to that. However, Juno’s early results are showing that she is getting close to the dynamo and that it is relatively close the surface. NASA is hopeful that they will get a clearer picture of Jupiter’s dynamo with each of Juno’s orbits. Of course, this list barely scratches the surface about all of the information that Juno has relayed back to Earth. To find out more you check out this article from Pop Science, which inspired this article. You can also go to NASA’s page for the Juno mission to stay up to date with the latest findings and see the latest pictures of the gas giant from Juno herself. Written by Staff Writer Becca Brunner Becca is a recent college graduate who lives in Tampa, Florida. From a young age, she has been fascinated by the stars and how beautiful the universe is. When she’s not writing for our blog, she can be found reading the latest YA novel, catching up on Dr. Who, or just hanging out with friends in coffee shops. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Betsy Asher Hall/Gervasio Robles
Read MoreLately, I have wondered about us. How is it that we can’t find our way to all the knowledge that exists out there already. How come we don’t live our life from a place of awe. Maybe not always but to find a moment each day to marvel at this very strange place we call the universe. This very strange place is made by math, geometrical shapes and music. And you know what else? Everything happens in cycles. I mean don’t you wonder why? Why the math, the geometry and the sounds? Why is it the way it is? So today I am going to ask you to just read this Star Letter and hold the information with you for the day. If all the below facts are true then our whole existence is beyond what we can imagine. This is one of the reasons why I am not afraid of death. I don’t think this perfectly made universe is here by accident. Nothing is accidental as you will see below. I am going to start with some math. Don’t be alarmed by it. I promise I will keep it simple and just share a little at a time. This one is about the Great Pyramid. There are so many interesting facts about the pyramids. Did you know that if you multiply the height of the pyramid by a thousand million, you are left with 98,000,000 miles, which corresponds approximately to the distance between the earth and the sun? How incredible is that? How did they know what the distance between the Earth and the sun was then? And why was it so important for them to use that distance for the height of the pyramid? Just so incredibly mysterious. Now I will take you to sounds and music. Did you know that according to Dr. Kaku “physics is nothing but the laws of harmony that you can write on vibrating strings. What is chemistry? Chemistry is nothing but the melodies you can play on interacting vibrating strings. What is the universe? The universe is a symphony of vibrating strings. And then what is the mind of God that Albert Einstein eloquently wrote about for the last 30 years of his life? We now, for the first time in history have a candidate for the mind of God. It is, cosmic music resonating through 11 dimensional hyperspace. We are nothing but melodies. We are nothing but cosmic music played out on vibrating strings and membranes. Obeying the laws of physics, which is nothing but the laws of harmony of vibrating strings.” Can you believe that? We are nothing but melodies. (Click to Tweet!) Wow. He goes on to say “the very purpose of physics is to find an equation … which will allow us to unify all the forces of nature and allow us to read the mind of God.” Math and music together finding a bridge to divinity. Beautiful. Awe inspiring and absolutely worth thinking about. And there are so much more incredible findings out there and I will leave you with just a glimpse of one more fact. That we live in cycles. In what Penrose calls "conformal cyclic cosmology", the beginning and the end of the universe are in effect the same. The fate of our universe can actually be reinterpreted as the big bang of a new one: "Our universe is what I call an aeon in an endless sequence of aeons." We come back over and over again. During this big bang, the ones before and the ones that are yet to come. All I am asking you today is to take these 3 or 4 things I shared with you and hold them with you for a while. When life throws you big problems and lots of grief just remember the magic of the universe. In the end, we all come back many times to live, to sing, to be in harmony and to find each other again through this crazy cyclical and mathematically musical universe we live in. Christina Christina Rasmussen is the creator and founder of The Life Reentry® Institute, Second Firsts, The Life Starters and Star Letters. Christina is on a crusade to help millions of people rebuild, reclaim, and relaunch their lives using the power of their own minds. Christina’s work has been featured on ABC News, NPR, The White House Blog, and MariaShriver.com. She is the bestselling author of Second Firsts: Live, Laugh, and Love Again, which has also been translated in Chinese and German and is currently working on her second book on expanding the mind in ways that allows co creation with the forces of the universe. She is also writing her first work of fiction: a science fiction story about a woman on a quest to start over and begin a new life.
Read MoreEver since NASA announced that they had found a whole solar system of exoplanets that they believed to be similar to Earth they called TRAPPIST-1, I have been dreaming about the day humans can travel to live there. Since the discovery of the seven planets, scientists are trying to learn as much as they can about the solar system. Yesterday, NASA released new information about TRAPPIST-1’s outermost (and least understood) planet, TRAPPIST-1h. Scientists don’t know a considerable amount about the planet. They do know that TRAPPIST-1h lies six million miles from the solar systems cool dwarf star and receives the same amount of energy that the dwarf planet Ceres, located in our solar system in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, does from our sun. This means that it is likely that the planet is too cold to host life as we know it and is beyond the designated “habitable zone.” However, what scientists did not know was the length of the planet’s orbit. In February, scientists were only able to estimate the duration of the planet’s orbit around the sun. However, astronomers from the University of Washington were able to use data from the Kepler spacecraft to confirm that Trappist-1h orbited the star every 19 days. This confirmation is a bit astounding to scientists since “things are almost never exactly what you expect them to be in this field,” said doctoral student Rodrigo Luger from UW in Seattle. Though NASA does not mention why knowing the orbit of the planet is helpful, it does illustrate just how small the TRAPPIST solar system is if it only takes 19 days for the farthest planet to orbit the sun. This discovery is a collaborative effort by many scientists working on both the K2 missions and the TRAPPIST-1 exploration. Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s scene Mission Directorate at Headquarters in Washington stated that these findings are “a great example of how the scientific community is unleashing the power of complementary data from our different missions to make such fascinating discoveries.” This might not seem like Earth-shattering news, but when you stop and think about it, it really is! Scientists are discovering and exploring a new solar system that could possibly host life. The more we find out about it, the closer we can come to potentially living there. The very existence of TRAPPIST-1 encourages us to keep exploring the universe. Written by Staff Writer Becca Brunner Becca is a recent college graduate who lives in Tampa, Florida. From a young age, she has been fascinated by the stars and how beautiful the universe is. When she’s not writing for our blog, she can be found reading the latest YA novel, catching up on Dr. Who, or just hanging out with friends in coffee shops. Photo Credit: NASA
Read MoreJust because I am happy, it doesn’t mean that I don’t get sad. As a matter of fact, you can feel your sadness even more because of your happiness. It is such a contrasting feeling. Lately, I have been contemplating a lot about friendships and loneliness. And my mind always goes to the stars when I feel sad. The most times I have cried have been when the stars were witnessing me. I don’t cry in front of people often. But in front of the stars it’s easy to do so. They have this magnificence about them that makes you feel like they are protecting you. You feel like they have seen you all along. As if they know you better than anyone else. As if they will never leave you or reject you. They are there always. They are my long time friends, the ones I had growing up. The ones I had when I lost my husband and the ones I have now building this life. They have been the most certain parts of my life. I even have feelings for them. I love them. I want to know more about them. I want to find out all the details that makes them, them. One of my favorites is Jupiter and its moons. Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a giant planet. On average it is the third-brightest object in the night sky after the Moon and Venus. Did you know that Jupiter has at least 67 moons but I can only see the four large Galilean moons with my telescope? I don’t want this letter to be about all the factual details of Jupiter. I want it to be about you finding solace looking for Jupiter at night and shedding some healing tears under the stars. If you are like me you probably find yourself surrounded by many people but always feeling lonely. Always feeling as if nobody can be on your journey and understand how you feel. It’s ok to be like that, and it’s ok to go to the stars for comfort. They are the best listeners you will find unless of course, you know my dear friend Elaine is a professional listener. And one of the kindest souls I know. Stars are professional listeners. They have been listening to you and me for billions of years. (Click to Tweet!) Go every night. Go on cry with them. Go and tell them your dreams. Go and be yourself with them. You might feel lonely but you never are. I say this to myself too. And you know what else, the more you get to express yourself and your strangeness, yes, you and I are a little strange, the less people will understand you. But your soul will be happy. And the stars of course. They will be happy too. See you under the stars tonight. Christina P.S. I also have created a very private Facebook group for people who have stars in their hearts and are strange like us. It’s of course completely free and the most loving and accepting group you will ever find. Send an invite and I will accept it. Christina Rasmussen is the creator and founder of The Life Reentry® Institute, Second Firsts, The Life Starters and Star Letters. Christina is on a crusade to help millions of people rebuild, reclaim, and relaunch their lives using the power of their own minds. Christina’s work has been featured on ABC News, NPR, The White House Blog, and MariaShriver.com. She is the bestselling author of Second Firsts: Live, Laugh, and Love Again, which has also been translated in Chinese and German and is currently working on her second book on expanding the mind in ways that allows co creation with the forces of the universe. She is also writing her first work of fiction: a science fiction story about a woman on a quest to start over and begin a new life.
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