It's fun to think about how we know stuff. For instance, the sun has a mass of about 2 x 10 30 kilograms. That is such an enormous mass that it's difficult to comprehend. And if it's so difficult for ...

In science, there are thousands of ways to measure the world around us that the average person may never encounter. For example: Pascals to measure pressure, Candles to measure light intensity, and ...

Astronomers cannot directly weigh celestial objects like galaxies; indirect methods are necessary. Mass determination leverages the relationship between gravity and mass, utilizing orbital periods and ...

How do we know the mass of a planet originally appeared on Quora - the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights. Answer by Geoffrey Widdison on ...

The terms weight and mass are often used incorrectly. Phrases like ‘a bag of sugar weighs 1 kg’ are not scientifically correct. This means that a 1 kg mass would be attracted to Earth by a force of 10 ...

Speed can make objects act as if they have more mass, but can you ever make an object appear to have less mass? It’s true that speeding an object up to considerable fractions of the speed of light ...

In my previous post about a floating Saturn, I hinted that I could write about the methods we can use to find the density of Saturn. Oh, and once again, the density of Saturn is lower than the density ...

Black holes sound too strange to be real. But they are actually pretty common in space. There are dozens known and probably millions more in the Milky Way and a billion times that lurking outside. The ...

A team of astronomers used a global network of telescopes to detect the lowest-mass dark object ever observed. The discovery could guide future research into similar dark objects. Ultimately, these ...