Astronomy
Observation of the cosmos.
Recent Tidbits:
Stories, Quotes, and FAQs.
The wisdom builder tidbits that feed the columns, articles, and trainer.
ASTRONOMY
Featured Story
Science
Story
13.4 Billion Years Ago
Galaxies are Born
Verified. Empirically supported and rationally deduced.
Expanding Universe
Galaxies emerged quickly from an initially simple universe. They started within a few hundred million years of the Big Bang. Observations confirm that gravity wasted little time turning primordial gas into organized systems, even before features we now consider typical. Such as central supermassive black holes commonly found in galaxies.
Featured QUOTE
Updated This Week
Philosophy
Quote
“We are all connected to each other biologically, to the Earth chemically, and to the rest of the universe atomically.”
- Carl Sagan
- circa 1980
We Are Stardust
Carl Sagan had many similar quotes to this.
Carl Sagan reminds us that we are intimately connected to the universe. The particles that form our bodies are borrowed from a cosmic pool of just 17 particles and four forces. Even more humbling, the molecules within us were forged in the hearts of stars, linking us directly to the vast cosmos that surrounds us. The wise perspective is humbling: we are not separate things dropped into the cosmos—we are temporary arrangements of the cosmos itself.
Featured FAQ
Science
FAQ
How many planets does our solar system have: 8, 9, or 13?
Astronomy
The solar system has 8 planets, not 9, because Pluto is classified as a dwarf planet, and we currently have 5 named dwarf planets for a total of 13. However, astronomers estimate there are likely hundreds of thousands of dwarf planets in our solar system.
Astronomy
“Keep looking up!” --Neil deGrasse Tyson
Space, the final frontier...
“The universe is a self-reconfiguring machine, with nothing being created from the void nor destroyed to nothing. At the core of reality are four forces guiding 17+ particles. We see these particles combine into atoms and molecules. Those molecules bundle into materials, and those materials evolve into life.” –M. A. Prestwood (Paraphrased from chapters 1 & 18 of 30 Philosophers)
Deep-Dive Articles
The Universe Before the Telescope
Before the telescope, the universe was us, the daytime Sun, the Moon chasing it, and the five wandering planets set against a backdrop of stars that sometimes fell.
The Expanding Universe Explained
ΛCDM remains the leading cosmological model because our current best measurements indicate gravity is not strong enough to stop the universe’s expansion.
Must-Reads
Astronomy
The Expanding Universe Explained
ΛCDM remains the leading cosmological model because our current best measurements indicate gravity is not strong enough to stop the universe’s expansion.
Updated Articles
TST COLUMN
21 Jan 2026
History
Article
The Universe Before the Telescope
Astronomy
Thu 11 Apr 2024
(2 years ago)
Updated 1 month ago.