Julian+S

=**The Search For Life On Mars**=

Below is a theory on how the universe was created; The universe exploded out of nothing In a brief flash it was though to expand to the size of the earth. Electrons, protons, quarks, anti-quarks neutrons, and all matter was created Once the temperature got down to 3000k electrons can start to orbit protons and make elements In areas where matter was unevenly spread galaxy's were formed, the matter in one area started to compact, and get denser until it eventually formed a galaxy, as the rings of a galaxy were created when the matter was spun around one point to condense it. The Milky Way and how big it really is; The milky way is a flat disk with a bulge in the center On the left is the sun, on the other side is a dwarf galaxy merging with the milky way. In the central bulge there are many old red and yellow stars, packed in more than 10 thousand times more than the stars near the sun. There is supposedly a big black hole at the neculeas of the bulge. The sun takes 250,000,000 years to orbit around the galaxy once. Stars form in cold dark clouds of gas and dust in interstellar space A blast wave from an exploding start or some other cause causes clumps or cores form. Each core starts to collapse and circle inward from gravity, at the same time the energy of the falling gas heats up the center of the core. Eventually the surrounding cores clear away and the star is left alone where is can be a star Everything about a star, if fixed by its mass. When stars like the sun die they start an odd path of events until it becomes 100 time larger, then shrinks until its about 1/10th the size of its original, and then slowly fades away. The sun is a star, and the closest one to our planet; The sun is a star, not any different than any star in the galaxy other than it is closer to us. Only during a solar eclipse the suns outer most layer: the corona streams out from over the visible yellow disk of the photo-sphere the temperature of the gas of the corona is millions of degrees. The suns heat blows outwards towards the crust while there are rolls of hot gas that are heating and cooling: raising and falling, The sun eventually lets out bursts of heat called solar flares, that travel to the earth, the earths magnetic field funnels heat downwards into the poles of the earth, smashing into the sky making the aurora's The sun also has a magnetic field much stronger than the earths. The suns magnetic field controls most of the suns solar phenomena. Our solar system looks alot different now then it did before; In the early solar system there were rock particles constantly colliding and making bigger particles, until they formed into the first 4 planets, which then started to orbit the sun. these large objects also became asteroids, planetesimal's or moons of other planets. then the inter planets were formed, and started to orbit the sun along with the outer planets. The remaining rock particles were shot out to the empty parts of space, or became part of the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Venus
 * == From Big Bang to Ga l a x i e s ==
 * == The Milky Way Galaxy ==
 * == Lives of the Stars ==
 * == The Sun ==
 * == History of the Solar System ==

Hubble Deep Field Academy.
The past week, our class of rookie astronomers have been learning from a website about the Hubble Deep Feild Academy. The Hubble Deep Field is just images taken from the Hubble Telescope our way far in space! The first thing we did was create questions we had about the Deep Field. Then we compared our questions to the astronomers questions: How many objects are there in the HDF? To answer this question the astronomers estimate there are about 132,840,000,000 different objects in the feild. These objects can be st ars, or galaxies that are spiral elliptical, or irregular shaped. Another question was how far away these objects were, this is determined by how much light they give off, stars or galaxies. As a galaxy, its color changes.Galaxies with young stars appear blue, while galaxies with old stars appear red.Galaxies with stars of varying ages may appear to be a combination of colors. For example, a galaxy with some old and young stars may appear to be a combination of blue and red. They use a method called "representative sampling" to obtain their estimate. The sky is divided into sections of equal size and the number of galaxies in one section are counted. The count from that one section is then multiplied by the total number of sections in the sky.



=The History Of Rockets=

The First Signs Of Rocketry.
The first sign of rocketry would be the Hero Engine, or aleopile. It was made by Hero Alexandria, by mounting a hallow sphere on top of a kettle. The sphere had pipes filling water into the sphere from the kettle. Then the heat made would cause the water inside the sphere to boil, and turn into gas. The gas would then funnel out through two L-shaped p ipes propelling the sphere into a rotation. This was one of the first signs of rocketry because it was the first moment of an object being propelled by gas, just like today's rockets.

The Chines e's Part
The Chinese were the first country to make and use explosives, fireworks, and other explosive pieces of entertainment. The most early piece was the rocket arrow. This was a pouch of surfer saltpeter, and charcoal dust. When lit, this pouch would explode its contents outward through one point. The pouch would then be propelled forward, and could or could not explode mid flight. These pouches were then placed on a rod to give them more stability. These rods then became arrows. These arrows weren't very accurate, but more-so scary, rather to scare your enemy off the battle field, rather than to kill them.

Rocket Description

Rocket Test This experiment was to determine how rockets fly, and how high our would fly, to better know how to get to mars. We started with a rocket building kit, to build a class A rocket, which Is just a weak rocket. After a few days of building, a couple hot-glued fingers, and about 3 bottles of paint, we finished our rockets with even a fully working recovery system to carefully guide the rocket back down the the surface of earth. On launching day we were prepared to see these baby's soar up into the sky! We walked onto the middle school field towards the very back, then with a trundle wheel we measured 100 meters away, where we would use angle guns and trigonometry to find the height the rocket traveled upward. In the end we all had great success with our rockets, we would love to see the incoming 7th gadders next year trying this themselves.

Mars Rover, Egg Drop Experiment
In the Mars Rover Drop experiment, our vehicle was designed to be covered in cushioning materials. We thought this way was best because with the materials given it was hard to do any other way. We saw that most people used a parachute technique, however these parachutes with the materials given, were either very bad, or provided the egg with little protection. We believe that the cushioning technique was best because of all the soft materials give, we believe that no changes are needed to improve the vehicle.

=Lego Mindstorms Robots= Motors on robots can be programed to do many things. The motors used on the lego robots we used are operated for the most part on a little device that records number of rotations it spins. This little device allows us to make the robot motors spin certain amounts rather than just forever. With these motors, we can make our robots do many things, like a normal turn, one wheel rotates while the other is still, turning in the direction of the still wheel. Or you can do a curve turn, one wheel is moving and the other is moving at a faster pace making it move forward while turning. = = Sensors are totally different things, a sensor can detect differnet things, frequencies, lights, and color's. These sensors can help guide a robot. Let it find its path through a course or help you measure things.

** Geology on Mars **
Minerals can be identified many different ways. Geologists mainly use, Streaking, Cleaving, Tasting, Acid Tests, Scratching, and visual hints. In out lab, "An Exploration of Minerals" we used all these ways, to identify mineral s in our own classroom.

Just like Geologists on Earth, the Curiosity will do the same on Mars. It will preform tests using its full lab of instruments on the rock on the surface of Mars to try and prove is Mars was ever a life sustaining planet. It will pick up dirt samples, drill into rocks to collect power, and will preform a laser test, where a laser is shot into a rock, and a camera watches how the rock reflects light back.

=** Characteristics of Life **=

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There are eight things that prove a thing has life, in this paragraph I will be talking about them, and describing them and what they are. The first is that the thing is made of cells. Cells are the fundamental Units of living objects meaning that all living things require them. In which these cells are animal cells, plant cells, and bacteria cells. Living things must also need materials. Meaning that all living things need water, minerals, and air to survive, without those three things, they would die. And to get those three things they take them from the environment around them, plants; the air and ground, animals; their habitat, and bacteria; the thing they live on. Thirdly living things need to be homeostatic. Homeostatic is when a living thing stays the same on the inside, not depending on the climate or what is happening to their body. Also living things expand a great deal of energy to maintain homeostasis. Fourthly, living things need to respond to stimuli. Responding to stimuli is when something responds( the reaction to a stimulus) to a stimulus( Anything that causes living things to react). These living things can respond in two different ways, they can respond negatively, or positively. Negative being when something moves away from the stimuli, and positive being, when something moves towards the stimuli. Reproduction is also an occurrence that has to happen in a species of plant, animal, or bacteria, to survive. They also have to grow which starts small and it gets bigger. Then a living thing must adapt, which is when a living thing changes to fit its environment. It finally must respirate meaning it releases energy stored in the chemical bonds of sugar. Consumers consume this stuff to survive while producers make it. ======

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Recent discovery about how to detect life on other planets was by using a planet's transmission spectrum. I was unable to find much info on the transmission spectrum, I did find that the transmission spectrum is based around energy waves form the sun passing through the atmosphere. This is extremely useful in finding life on planets like ours, that has carbon based life with a large requirement for for carbon dioxide and oxygen in the atmosphere. It would not matter what level of technology the a planet would have to find other life as long as they had they technology to find transmission spectrum's ======