Cosmic Rays `Cosmic’ means universal and as the name suggests, these rays are universal but arc still a mystery to mankind since man cannot explain their origin. These rays have been in the Earth’s atmosphere since Earth was formed without effecting anything. They were discovered about 60 years ago when it was seen that a sealed container of air had electrical conductivity in it. The container was shielded with various kinds...

The First Man in Space Man made his first journey into space in the year 1961. The distinction of this feat goes to Yuri Gagarin who went into space in a Russian built `Vostok’ spacecraft on the 12th of April 1961. He made his first orbit around the Earth and returned in 108 minutes. The mission was soon followed by the American John Glenn in a Mercury spacecraft on 20th February...

Spots on the Sun If we observe the Sun, by projecting it’s image through a pair of binoculars onto a white piece of cardboard, we would see that it has black spots on it, these are known as ‘Sun spots’. These black spots are areas which get cooled down on the Sun’s surface because of the pull from the Sun’s own magnetic field acting upon that area. Sun spots generally appear...

The Sun’s Changing Colour When we see the sun during the daytime it is like a bright yellow ball of fire but in the mornings and evenings we see it as a bright and glowing orange ball. In reality the Sun does not change it’s colour, this effect is produced by the earth’s atmosphere which acts as a light red filter. In the day time the Sun is high in the...

Jupiter-Fastest Spinning Planet Besides being the largest planet in our system, Jupiter also has the distinction of being the fastest spinning planet. It takes just nine hours and fifty minutes to rotate once on it’s axis. In other words Jupiter has a day of only four hours and fifty five minutes. A unique thing about Jupiter’s rotation is that, since the planet is largely gaseous, different parts of the planet rotate...

Life on other Planets It cannot be said with conviction that the Earth is the only planet with any life on it because astronomers and space scientists are still trying to look for life on other planets. From what we know of other planets it is however established that life supporting conditions do not exist on any other planet in our universe. To be able to support life the planet must...

Planets and their Moons There are nine planets and close to sixty known moons in our Solar system. We have one moon with our planet, Mercury and Venus have none, and nearly all the others circle the giant outer planets with 23 moons circling Saturn and 16 around Jupiter. One of the moons called Titan which circles Saturn is 5120 kilometres across in size and is in fact bigger than both...

The Weightless Space On the Earth everything is held on to the ground by the force of gravity, when we try to lift any object we try to counter the force of gravity, it is a result of this force that we feel weight. Out in space a spacecraft is held in orbit because of the Earth’s gravitational pull. The Astronauts within the spaceship don’t have anything holding them down, because...