Some of you have been asking me, Can we look at atoms under a microscope? The answer is “No”, because atoms are waaaaaay too small to see under an ordinary microscope. How small? Check out this site that compares the sizes of very small objects, and lets you “zoom in” to get a feeling for how small cells and atoms are. You have to zoom all the way in to get to a single carbon atom. It’s hard to even imagine how small that is.
This is a few months old, but I hadn’t seen it before. It’s a slideshow of 13 pictures taken from the Hubble Space Telescope, each selected by an astronomer for being awesome. Each picture also has that scientists explanation of why it’s awesome that you can listen to. Slides 3, 7, and 13 are my favorites.
That picture might look a little blurry, but it’s actually a picture of one single molecule. A group of scientists working for IBM just took the first-ever picture of a single molecule, and this is it. It’s a molecule called pentacene. Pentacene is used in some electronics, and it’s got kind of a cool shape: it’s a chain of five hexagons. (Notice how each ring has six sides?)
What does it look like when two galaxies crash into each other? Well, it’s hard to know because galaxies can be made up of up to 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000!) stars and take billions of years to complete their crash. We’ve got computers, though, that can make simulations. Here’s one:
Keep in mind that the collision in the video would actually take place over about 3 billion years.
All students and families will also receive my cell phone number at the beginning of the school year. Feel free to call me at any time, since I turn my phone off when it would be inconvenient to answer.
