Space & Astronomy
Exploring "Why" questions about Space & Astronomy
479 articles
Why did the Universe NOT Annihilate itself?
Well ultimately there ended up being more matter than antimatter. We still have no idea why this happened and this is one of the big questions science is faced with. If it hadnt then you would be righ
Why did Myspace fail?
When Facebook first came out, it was exclusive to only people who had university email addresses, it was supposed to be a "college student only social network" The exclusivity made people want to be o
Why when we photograph the sky from earth do we see millions of stars that are lightyears away but every picture I have seen taken by astronauts in space the sky is black and starless?
It's purely incidental. You can find plenty of photos taken by astronauts where the stars are quite visible. You just don't see very many, because most photos are taken while a well-lit object is in t
Why don’t we launch rockets into orbit along the equator?
It is slightly more efficient near the equator, which is why most rockets are launched from southern states in the U.S. rather than northern states. However, the increased efficiency of launching from
Why do so many spacestations on tv and movies have the same circular shape with a pod in the middle? Does this serve any real purpose?
In order to easily create artificial gravity you can simply rotate the space station around the central axis (probably the center of the pod).
Why you’re supposed to back into a space when you parallel park
The way most cars steer, there's an effect called "front-end swing" where the front end of the car swings wider during a turn, and the back end of the car kinda just follows along. Because of that, yo
Why does starchy food stick so hard onto kitchenware?
Starch is used as poster glue. The gluten in wheat additionally makes the strands of starch molecules link together to make a tough solid.
Why did the war in Iraq start under Bush?
President George W. Bush was a war hawk that overreacted to perceived threats after 9/11. The popular conservative sentiment after September 11th was that we had ignored the region too long and it bit
why does Microsoft Word sometimes reformat half my document just because I hit enter or delete a space?
The boring answer is that you've deleted a formatting character such as a section break, or you've caused an element in your document to get bumped to somewhere where it triggers a bunch of Word's oth
Why is time distorted in space?
'Why' is a bit of a tricky question to ask about knowledge such as this. We think they are related because that is the most elegant and consistent explanation for the available evidence. The universe