Unit 3 Article Summary Spencer Meyer

            Nasa has launched a new mission to mars involving a rover that will investigate the loss of the planet's water and the slow erosion of its atmosphere.  Nick-named (Maven) Mars atmosphere and volatile  evolution, this rover was launched from the cape canaveral in air-force station only a few days ago. Costing over $671 million, Maven will spend the next ten months hurtling through space before arriving at mars. It well then travel around mars in an elliptical orbit using 8 instruments to measure the slow decay of the planet's atmosphere. Scientists hope this new information will help them better understand how Mars went from a warm wet planet to a cold desert. Maven is a huge step in new technology that many astronauts hope will get them ever closer to sending humans to mars (estimated to happen in 2030). India just sent a similar space craft to mars just 13 days before Maven was launched. However, Maven will arrive 2 days earlier in September 2014. Both of these space craft will be in different positions around Mars at different times allowing scientists to get more of a 3D image.

MAVEN rover 

Physics Unit 1 Article Summary

              Up until now the universe was thought to be flat shaped or infinite. New research that involves measuring the amount of energy left over from the big bang has left us to believe the universe is saddle shaped. By measuring the temperature from different parts of the sky, scientists can estimate how the universe is shaped. This is because the Big Bang left a cosmic microwave background (thermal wave) that effects the earth in different ways. On one side of the earth the temperatures of the sky are effected as much as 10% causing the hot spots to be hotter and the cold spots to be colder. This leads us to believe that the universe is favored in one direction. That would prove that our universe is not flat, but rather an open universe shaped like a saddle. It could how ever appear to be flat, but have a curvature of less than 1 percent. Another theory is that our universe is an ever expanding bubble. Their may be other universes expanding but our universe would never come in contact with them.