Signore Galilei

This is Philippe, Belgium’s seventh king (and seventh monarch) since the country’s independence from the Netherlands in 1830. Like most European monarchs,1 Philippe is a constitutional monarch with a symbolic role and mostly ceremonial authority. Unlike most monarchs, however, Philippe isn’t officially titled after his kingdom. Instead of “King of Belgium”, Philippe is “King of…

Not all asteroids in the solar system reside in the asteroid belt. The main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter does hold most of our solar system’s asteroids, at least several million, but there are many other smaller groups of asteroids. Almost every gravitationally stable region of the Solar System has at least one known…

Country names aren’t always unique in the world. Look on a world map and you’ll see 2 Koreas, 2 Congos, and a full 4 Guineas. But there are some examples that are more hidden. Specifically, there are many combinations of countries whose names might look different in English, but ultimately come from the same meaning.…

You might have heard that all the ants in the world weigh as much combined as all the humans. That isn’t true. We outweigh ants 5 to 1.1 Termites might have us beat, though.2 Either way, it’s not really a fair comparison. There are thousands of species of ants and termites, and just one species…

Water in the ocean is constantly in motion. Scientists can identify distinct “water masses” in the ocean from different sources, and keep track of them by measuring dissolved salts, human pollutants, and the different isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen in the water molecules themselves. This is how oceanographers have mapped the world’s currents, like the…

Several Egyptian gods are depicted with animal heads. Horus has a falcon head, Anubis has a jackal head, Thoth has an ibis head (except when he’s a baboon), and Set has…uhh, what is that, exactly? Left to right: Horus, Anubis, Thoth, and Set Turns out no one knows for sure. The Greeks called it the…

If you were to add up the mass of all the atoms in the Earth, you’d get a number 3 trillion tons more than the Earth’s actual mass. We didn’t have to count all the atoms down to the Earth’s core to figure this out. It’s a consequence of the laws of physics. Let’s start…

Let me tell you the story of saints Barlaam and Josaphat of India. A king named Abenner, who persecutes Christians, hears from his court astrologers that his son will attain great power and rule over India. But one astrologer predicts that the prince will instead become a great holy man – a Christian. Alarmed, Abenner…

Last week, we talked about how moons in the outer solar system can see total eclipses as good as the ones we see on Earth. To recap, if you’re standing on one big round moon of a planet like Jupiter or Saturn, you can watch another big round moon just barely block out the Sun,…

This past week, there was a total solar eclipse, visible from a path stretching along far northern Russia, Greenland, Iceland, and Spain.  Like many of this year’s eclipse chasers, I was clouded out – though I did have a lovely couple minutes of darkness on an Icelandic fjord. I’m already planning for the next time…