Believe it or not, this strange looking tuber is actually edible! It’s called celery root or celeriac and is actually tastier than it looks. It is quite popular in French cuisine and is beginning to catch hold in America. As you might guess, it is related to celery. The main difference is that most of … [Read more…]
Sunchokes, also called Jerusalem artichokes, are tubers that come from the plant that looks like the picture on the left. They are often mistakenly destroyed as a weed when it is actually edible and quite tasty. They are ready to harvest right before they bloom. They have a slightly nutty flavor and you can use … [Read more…]
You might have seen a segment on the 6 O’Clock News about this idea called “Mars One” and now you’re scratching your head. Send people to live on Mars by 2023? It sounds like science fiction. However, the founders of the non-profit organization Mars One are perfectly serious. They’re just starting to get rolling on … [Read more…]
“Woooormhooole!” It’s a common enough scene in science fiction movies. A spaceship is about to activate its warp drive and falls into a wormhole. Somebody discovers a stable wormhole with an alien civilization inside. My favorite? Contact. They build a spacecraft that makes use of a wormhole “transit system.” Have you ever wondered how much … [Read more…]
For as long as our ancestors have been recording history, they have been looking up at the night sky. They were curious about the little twinkling lights they saw far above them. Over time, they began to notice that some of those twinkling lights moved in relation to the others. The Greeks called these moving … [Read more…]
In the past, the Sun was surrounded by many myths and legends. The Greeks believed that the Sun was carried by a golden chariot driven by the god Helios. Some civilizations believed that lunar eclipses occurred when the sun was being eaten by a dragon, while others believed they occurred when the sun and moon … [Read more…]
Asteroids are widely believed to be the rocky leftovers from the formation of our solar system. They can range in size from a few meters in diameter to several hundred meters across. While most asteroids inhabit the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, the orbits of some asteroids can take an elliptical that brings them … [Read more…]
Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh on February 18, 1930 at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ. The observatory’s founder, Percival Lowell, had predicted a planet with a mass seven times that of Earth beyond Neptune’s orbit. However, at an apparent magnitude of 15, Pluto was 2.5 magnitudes too dim to be the expected planet. Pluto … [Read more…]
Neptune is the eighth planet of our solar system, named for the Roman god of the sea for its blue color. After Uranus was discovered, observers used Newtonian physics to predict another planet orbiting farther out. French astronomer Urbaine Le Verrier and English astronomer John Couche Adams used the mathematical models of the time to … [Read more…]
The sixth planet out from the sun, Saturn is named for the Roman god of the sowing of seed. Galileo is generally given the credit for discovering Saturn in 1609, but some sources believe that the Assyrians were the first to document observations of Saturn around 700 B.C. They called it the “Star of … [Read more…]