THE ULTIMATE
On this day, January 4th, mathematician scientist Isaac Newton was born, the discoverer of a range of scientific laws and principles such as gravity, planetary motion orbitting around the sun, tidal motion and that light can be split into its component colours of the rainbow.
He was born at Woolsthorpe Manor House, Lincolnshire, England - at that time the calendar siad it was 25th December, but with later changes to the calendar he was born on what we know as January 4th. His theories created a new view of science that dominated scientific thought until the development of the Theory of Relativity by Einstein in the 20th Century. "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." This quote of Isaac Newton's gives credit to the other mathematician scientists who came before him, that enabled him to make his discoevries and theories.
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June 20th this year marks the Summer Solstice the longest day of the year for those in the Northern Hemisphere, it is Midsummer.
This is when the Earth is tilted on its axis on its orbit around the sun, so that the North Pole is at its closest to the Sun, For Arctic regions this means they have continuous sunlight for 24 hours! Whilst the Northern Hemisphere, marks Midsummer, in the Southern Hemisphere - for example, for Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina, it's Midwinter and they are having the their Midwinter, their Winter Solstice. The Summer Solstice in Northern Hemisphere has long been a time of festival and ritual, most famously, at England's Stonehenge, in Wiltshire of Salisbury Plain. There are plenty of other stone mounment aligned with the Solstices across the British Isles, including in Ireland, as well as in Europe, such as in France. Stonehenge, sees hundreds of people attend each year to see the sun rise between one of the stone 'arches' that make the ring of Stonehenge, and over the more distant 'heel' stone outside of the henge. Those that attend may be modern pagan and New Age belief followers, who believe in spirituality associated with nature, many of whom will see themselves as a continuation of an ancient Celtic to Stone Age set of beliefs in Britain that were present before Christianity - they may call themselves Druids. Stonehenge has many numerous theories for why it was built, and how it was built - was it a temple to the sun? was it a place of healing? or was it a place for remembering the dead? Or was it all of these and more? Was it built by magic as suggested by Merlin in Arthurian legend? Or how did the inner smaller 'Bluestones' get from coastal West Wales, in the Preseli Mountains, to Salisbury plain? across the land around 250 miles, or floated on boats around South Wales and South West England, then Northwards across the land to Salisbury Plain? And why at Salisbury Plain - what was special about this area to early Britons? Due to Coronavirus, this year people are not able to visit Stonehenge, but you van witness the sunrise on 21st June (the Summer Solstice sunrise depends on how the days are counted, and there is little difference to the spectacle a day either side) as English Heritage are airing the sunrise live on their Social Media accounts. you can find out more about Stonehenge, and the Solstices at the English Heritage website below - oh, and fingers crossed for a clear sky tomorrow morning! https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/stonehenge/things-to-do/solstice/ The United States is set to see its first crewed launch of a spacecraft since the Space Shuttle programme was ended in 2011.
NASA is to utilise the Space X company's rockets to send two astronauts to the International Space Station, in what is also a first, as it will be the first time a company rather than a nation-state has launched people into space. Space X is the company founded by Elon Musk, having created Pay Pal and Tesla. The launch will be at 16:33 locat time, 20:33 GMT, 21:33BST. The Crew Dragon capsule, pictured below, will be launched by a Falcon 9 rocket, from the same launchpad that launched Apollo 11 to the moon. On this day, May 25th 240 BCE, Halley's Comet was first recorded in China, in the Records of the Grand Historian, or Shiji.
It may have been commented upon in Greece and China prior to this. A later recording in 87 BCE appears on Babylonian tablets that can be seen at the British Museum. Halley's comet is famously depicted in the Bayeux Tapeestry, having been seen by the Anglo-Saxons in 1066, and they saw it as a bringer of doom. It is called Halley's Comet, after Edmund Halley who in 1705, used Isaac Newton's laws of gravity and motion to calculate that three comet appearances, were actually the same comet returning around every 76 years. He went on to predict it would return in 1758. Unfortunatley, Halley died in 1742. Late in 1758 the comet returned first being seen by a German farmer and amateur astronomer. A French astronomer named it Halley's Comet after Edmund Halley. The return of Halley's Comet proved Isaac Newton's principles, and was the first object kown to orbit the Sun other than the planets. Though, the Babylonian and Jewish authorities in ancient times may have recognised that it returned, was 'periodic', as a passage notes a star returning once every 70 years. The last sighting of Halley's Comet was in 1986, where a European space probe named Giotto closed in on it flying through the comet's tail. It was called Giotto, after the artist who painted a Christian Nativity scene, using Halley's Comet, as the Star of Bethlehem. Next sighting 2061! On this day, Mat 23rd 1707, Carl Linnaeus was born in Rashult, Sweden.
Linnaeus became a botanist and explorer, who develoed the principles for defining species and types of organisms in the plant and animal kingdoms, leading to a uniform system for the naming of plants and animals. He was born in a poor area of Sweden, and was unable to afford attending all the lectures at university, though he was eventually able to by teaching botany. As a young man he devloped his ideas and principles, that he was to set out in a number of works, whilst carrying out studies in Lapland amongst the Sami people, of Northern Scandinavia. He also gained his medical qualifications whilst in the Netherlands, where he began to gain the sponsors he needed in order to publish his ideas. Back in Sweden he practised medicine, but sought to return to the study of botany, and was able to build up a network of exploring botanists, who travelled the world at the time of European exploration, bringing to him more specimens to be placed in the growing tree of life his naming system was steadily mapping. On this day, May 18th 1969, Apollo 10 was launched by NASA.
Apollo 10 was the second Apollo mission to orbit the moon, and acted as a 'dress rehearsal' for the July 1969 moon landing by Apollo 11. Astronauts, Thomas Stafford, John Young and Gene Cernan, flew Apollo 10 31 times around the moon, and released the Apollo Lunar Module to descend towards the moon's surface, before returning to the Command Module at the stage where Apollo 11 would begin the descent stage to land on the moon's surface. The call signs for the mission were from the 'Peanuts' characters 'Charlie Brown' and 'Snoopy'; with 'Charlie Brown' being the nickname for the Command Module, that John Young remained in, and 'Snoopy' being the Lunar Module, which Thomas Stafford and Gene Cernan headed towards the moon surface in and back. You can see 'Charlie Brown' in London's Science Museum, as America's Smithsonian museum, based in Washington D.C. loaned it to London's Science Museum in 1978. On this day, May 15th 1859, Pierre Curie was born in Paris, France.
Pierre Curie is a scientist known for his studies into magnetism, and with his wife Marie Curie into radioactivity, being the first the use the term. They discovered the elements radium and polonium. With his student Pierre also discovered nuclear energy. In 1903 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics along with his wife Marie, and Henri Becquerel. On this day, May 14th 1973, the USA's NASA launched its first Space Station, Skylab.
The Soviet Union had already put a space station into orbit, Salyut. It was the only solely US funded Space Station, and was taken into orbit, by a Saturn V rocket - the last mission for the Saturn V, that had launched the Apollo lunar missions. Skylab contained both Solar and Earth observatories, as well as the laboratory space for over 80 experiments to bec onducted. It was serviced by three crews. One of the first jobs the service crews had to do, was carry out external repairs to the Space Station that occurred during the launch, by attaching sheets to act as shields, these are the golden blankets that appear in the images of the Skylab. It also lost one set of Solar Panels, which gives it its assymetrical shape, as only one set of side solar panels remained. The last crew of astronauts left in 1974, expecting more crews to be launched, however, this didn't happen and in 1979 Skylab orbit was pulled by the Earth's gravity back into the Earth's atmosphere where it broke up, with pieces scattering over Western Australia. It's called the 'Crazy Beast' and for good reason, it was a reasonably large, well bigger than a mouse or rat sized mammal, that lived amongst the last of the dinosaurs!
At around the size of a cat, and would have burrowed like a badger - which was probably how it escaped the dinosaurs to survive, or at least escaped the carnivorous ones. The 66 million year old fossil, was discoverd in Madagascar, and from a time when Madagascar had already broken away as an island. As the fossil breaks a lot of the known rule about mammals at this time it hasbeen called the 'Crazy Beast'! See more on the BBC at... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52465584 On 25th April 1990, the Space Shuttle, launched on the 24th, placed its payload the Hubble Space Telecope into low Earth orbit.
The Hubble Space Telescope sits in low Earth orbit around 600 km above the Earth's surface, and thus is above the clouds that obscure the views of space of Earth based telescopes, and it is near enough to Earth to be serviced by astronauts - this has occurred five times, including correcting a fault in its mirrors discovered within weeks of it becoming operational. Over the 30 years of its operation Hubble has transmitted incredible images across from across depth, breadth of space and time. NASA has released a new image and visualised fly through of an image called 'cosmic reef' for Hubble's 30th Anniversary. This can be seen at www.hubblesite.org as well as available links to a lecture on the Hubble for the 30th Anniversary. |
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