Solar Week - Ask a Question

 Hi Mrs. Martin's 2nd grade class!  Your first question is a tricky one to answer because it seems to assume that everything in space would fall to Earth if it weren't being held to space by some force. But this way of thinking is only true close to Earth. One we travel out away from Earth, things no longer fall towards Earth, ...

Hi Penny,  Great question! The great thing about getting a degree in science is that it is applicable to a wide variety of jobs from computer techs to management at an electric company, from scientist to science writer, from running a high tech company to building any type of technology. Doctors, dentists, nurses - all use science and ...

What great questions you have!! These were some of the questions scientists asked and only just answered in the past hundreds of years. The answer about the Sun is tricky because first I have to ask you to think about the Sun a little different than you think about it right now. The Sun is moving through space with lots of other stars that are ...

Hi Eric, I tried to skateboard when I was in middle school but I just couldn't seem to get the hang of it on the hills. But my husband, who is a scientist, was an avid skateboarder and we still have his skateboard in our house. I think skateboarding is great and there is a lot of physics involved! :) Laura

Hi, This is a fundamental question and I am glad you asked. A year is defined as approximately the length of time it takes to go around the Sun.  So next March 20th, (2009) we will have gone around the Sun about 1 time.  If you watch the stars at night, you will see that the same constellations show up at the same time of ...

Hi Emily, The short answer is "yes!" The longer answer is that we determine the layers in the Sun by certain physical properties and so if you decide to look at the Sun with some new measurements, it may be that these boundaries between layers will move up and down. For example, when we look at the Sun in different colors of light, or ...

Hi Emily, I think we have been lucky and none of our astronauts have been in a solar storm. Since the space station is protected by Earth's magnetic field, it mostly shields astronauts from solar storms. And when we went to the moon, it was around the time of solar minimum, so there were not many solar storms at the time. However, there was ...

Hi Lauren, This is because the Sun lets off mostly white light. Most of the light from the Sun actually comes from the green part of the rainbow, or electromagnetic spectrum. But there is enough light coming from the Sun from the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes can see, which merged together makes white. Laura

Hi Sophia, Good question. The answer has to do with a fundamental aspect of the universe. Planets are mostly spherical because the way that gravity works. Gravity pulls mass together from all directions equally. In space, this leads to a sphere of mass.  It can get much more complicated than this simple answer if there isn't very ...

Hi Caitlin,  I just answered a similar question from Nicole. Here is what I wrote her:  Most of the coronal mass ejections don't interact with Earth's atmosphere, they interact with a different "shield" known as Earth's Magnetosphere. Just like Magnets have an invisible force around them, so does the Earth have ...