Space & Astronomy
Exploring "Why" questions about Space & Astronomy
479 articles
Why does the LOTR movies get special long directors cuts but yet none of the Star Wars movies have any?
One difference is that the LOTR movies were based on very popular books that many people have read. They had to cut out parts of the story to keep the movie to the target length, but the director's cu
Why are there no stars in this picture of the earth as viewed from the moon on apollo11?
Because the earth and moon in that photo are much brighter than the stars, and so the camera's exposure was metered to the earth and moon, which did not allow the stars enough time to come through on
Why is “Size 12 Times New Roman Double Spaced” the standard for essays? What makes it so special?
Size 12 just happens to be a good compromise between fitting lots of information in per page, and being easily readable. Double spaced allows people to follow easily and mark in corrections. Times new
Why is it that when you’re falling from really high up, your arms and legs start spinning around all over the place?
Personal experience, I hope not? It is the person trying to remain upright. By moving their arms around, you are able to adjust your angle.
Why do ‘modern’ flags tend to have stars?
First of all, that cross is only for Scandinavian countries. Look at the flags of Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Spain,... And many of those flags are more modern than othe
Why does Chris Hadfield’s version of “Space Oddity” require a license/contract but tons of other covers on YouTube do not?
As far as I know those other covers are illegal. Most don't get enough views to have anybody notice. Chris Hadfield just chose to do things the legal way.
Why don’t we visit the Moon any more?
There's not all that much on the moon. Even originally, a big driving force behind the manned landings was the political race against the Soviet Union. Without that, the massive cost would have been m
Why don’t clubs have a ‘house set’ of high quality drums so bands don’t need to carry their own space mongering set?
Some clubs do. The problem is that these sets get a lot of use and hardly any maintenance, and so sound crap. It doesn't help that they're usually cheap to begin with.
why did the universe not just immediately collapse into a blackhole?
The matter and energy in the early universe was extremely smoothly distributed. If it had been lumpier, certain regions would've collapsed into black holes, but because the matter was so smoothly dist
why hasn’t any space program accepted astronaut applicants between the ages 20 and 30? why only 35+
They want extremely experienced people to admit into years and years of training. There's just no way you're ready for what they want out of you at age 20 and even 30 is certainly pushing it. That sai