On this day in physics: 24 January 1947, Happy Birthday to Dr. Michio Kaku, theoretical and popular physicist. I first heard of Michio reading his book Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension. Michio has been making his way into more into the media spotlight, currently making him maybe the most popular scientists outside of Stephen Hawking and Neil Degrasse Tyson.
Word of the day- ISS is an acronym (Like FBI, KFC, NATO, or VIP) for the International Space Station. Its first component was placed in orbit in 1998 and is referred to as a "habitable artificial satellite". It is the largest artificial body in orbit and can be often seen with the naked eye from the surface of the planet (more on this in a minute). It has been continuously inhabited since November 2000. It provides a place for long term experiments to take place, which can be monitored by human researchers. Crew stay on board the space station for continues 6 month increments, and then rotate out with other researchers from U.S., Russia, Japan, Canada and Europe. The gravity in th ISS is actually not much less than that of earth, but because it is orbiting, and in a perpetual state of freewill, there is a perceived weightlessness. It stays somewhere between 205 and 270 miles above the earth and maintains this height with something known as "reboot maneuvers", or else it would eventually come crashing back to Earth. It makes roughly 15 orbits a day.
Killer Resource: ISS Finder App- Find every single change to see the ISS across your view of the sky.
Keywords: ISS, International, Space, Station, Research, Orbit, Gravity
