The 2017 total solar eclipse

One of the most important solar events is happening this summer. A total solar eclipse is when the moon is completely blocks the sun. It will like nighttime, and the only things that will be visible are the outer edges of the sun's corona.

On August 21, starting at 16:48:33 UTC, this is happening along a strip of land across the United States. The darkness will last around three minutes. This will include places from Oregon and South Dakota. In other places in the continental United States, northern Mexico, and southern Canada, you will only see a partial solar eclipse, but it will be epic nonetheless.

Most astronomers, professionals and amateurs alike, are marking this day as a vacation as this is a rare occurrence. On the day, people numbering in the tens of millions will be driving to the path of totality. Hotels are already filled, so anyone who wants to experience it will have to find an alternative.

The next total solar eclipse will happen in 2019.

Click here to see NASA's video


Remember to wear protective eyewear, as looking directly at the eclipse will still be harmful to your eyes!

Cities under the path of totality will no doubt host viewing stations so one might consider going there.

To any one who is chasing the three minutes of complete totality, good luck on your endeavors and to anyone who wants to view a partial eclipse, that is cool, too!

Ancient whales had average hearing

Yes, ancient whales' hearing was different from modern day whale hearing. Over the years, they developed an acute sense of hearing specializing in either high frequency sounds or low frequency sounds. A report published on June 8 claimed that their ancestors heard sounds that were somewhere in the middle of those two frequency ranges.

A CT scanner was used on two 45 million year old fossils of whales that were unearthed in Togo. It revealed that the inner ear bones were not as developed as modern whale ears, although they possessed some components of modern whale ears.


This new information debunked a controversial theory stating that ancient whales already had either high frequency or low frequency hearing. As it turns out, it is neither.

An ancient whale.

SpaceX successfully reused an old Falcon 9 booster

On March 30, 2017, SpaceX successfully launched a reused Falcon 9 booster.

The Falcon 9 is a two stage rocket, which means that the first stage detaches from the main body after launch. But instead of crashing back on Earth, it lands back at a specified destination.

I believe that this is definitely a big milestone in space travel as recycling old rockets saves both time and money. Since we live in a world where technology is rapidly advancing, these achievements are certainly big.

SpaceX plans to reuse an old Falcon 9 booster that was used in January in a June 17 launch.

A Falcon 9 rocket

The circumcenter of a triangle

The circumcenter of a triangle is point where the three perpendicular bisectors of each side intersect. A perpendicular bisector is a line drawn onto each side of the triangle so that it bisects and is perpendicular to that side. 
One interesting fact about the circumcenter of a triangle is that it is the center of the circumcircle, which is unique to every triangle. It has the three points of the triangle on it. 

The three perpendicular bisectors, the circumcenter, and the circumcircle of a triangle. 

The incenter of a triangle

The incenter of a triangle is point where the three angle bisectors of each side intersect. An angle bisector is a line drawn from an angle of that triangle so that it splits the angle into two equivalent angles.

The three angle bisectors and the incenter of a triangle.

The orthocenter of a triangle

The orthocenter of a triangle is point where the three altitudes of each side intersect. An altitude is a line drawn from a vertex of that triangle to the opposite side so that it forms a right angle with that side.

The three altitudes and the orthocenter of a triangle.

The centroid of a triangle

The centroid of a triangle is point where the three medians of each side intersect. A median is a line drawn from a vertex of that triangle to the opposite side so that it bisects that side.


The three medians and the centroid of a triangle.

How elements were created

At the birth of the universe, not all elements existed.
During the big bang, large amounts of Helium and Hydrogen were created, along with some Deuterium and Lithium. High temperatures allowed nuclear fusion to take place, creating some light elements.

Stars came next. Less massive ones could only convert hydrogen to helium, but stars bigger than our sun could convert the helium into elements such as oxygen and carbon. Even bigger ones could make everything up to iron. Nothing higher than iron could be made with fusion.

There is just one more factor left: supernovae. When a star explodes, instead of fusion, neutrons from different atoms collide to make heavier elements, giving us everything else.

Drawing regular polygons

Which regular polygons can you draw with a pencil, compass, and straightedge? Is there some formula to it? At first, it might appear to be a bit random. 3,4,5,6, and 8 sided shapes all can be drawn. However, there is a rule for this.

Any regular shape that has a product of a power of 2. can be drawn This makes sense, because you can keep on splitting a square or hexagon into smaller and smaller pieces, but you can't split a heptagon into smaller pieces because you can't construct it in the first place.

For odd numbers though, the of regular sides have to be a Fermat prime, which is defined as 2^(2^n) + 1. When we substitute n for the first few positive integers, (plus zero) we get:

2^(2^0) + 1 = 2^1 + 1 = 3

2^(2^1) + 1 = 2^2 + 1 = 4 + 1 = 5

2 ^(2^2) + 1 = 2^4 + 1 = 16 + 1 = 17

All regular polygons with those number of sides can be constructed.

This sequence gets inflated quite quickly, as here are the next few terms: 257, 65537, 4294967297, and 18446744073709551617.

So to anyone who wants to construct a 18446744073709551617-gon, I wish you good luck as that might take you a very long while.

Types of clouds #7

Next up is the cumulonimbus cloud. What a mouthful. It is a combination of cumulus (heap) and nimbus. (rainstorm) This pesky cloud is associated with thunderstorms and atmospheric instability. These are the clouds that are usually referred to thunderheads and can even develop into tornadoes. They generally need three things to form: moisture, an unstable air mass, and a lifting force, most often heat.

Some of space's weirdest exoplanets #15

Remember #10, the planet with the triple star system? Well, this planet just took it to a whole notha level! Known as Kepler-64b, this lucky planet orbits a quadruple star system. It has a circumbinary orbit, which means that it orbits around two stars instead of one. How this system probably works is that there are two pairs of stars orbiting around each other. The sky of this planet would undoubtedly be very cool with four stars on it.

Some of space's weirdest exoplanets #14

PSR B1620-26 B is a planet 13600 light years away. It is known as the oldest planet ever, and being an astonishing 12.7 billion years old! In comparison, the universe is 13.772 billion years old. It orbits a double star system that consist of a white dwarf and a pulsar.

Some of space's weirdest exoplanets #13

KELT-9b is a Jupiter-like gas giant orbiting its super hot parent star, KELT-9, 650 light-years away. It orbits from such a short distance that it completes one orbit once every one and a half days and only one side faces its star. The surface temperature on KELT - 9b's day side can reach up to a blazing in 4300 degrees Celsius! That is hotter than most surfaces of dwarf stars! Such heat makes it a very special planet. Water and carbon dioxide molecules likely cannot exist because of the extreme temperatures.

Its star isn't helping matters, because it is bigger and hotter than our sun. The abundance of ultraviolet radiation is destroying this planet's atmosphere, causing it to expand, making it 2.8 times massive than Jupiter but only half as dense.

The planet is receiving so much radiation that bits of its surface are being blasted away and forming a comet-like tail behind the doomed planet. Eventually, it will be completely gone if it is a gas giant or if it has a rocky core, then its atmosphere would be completely stripped away.