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...Solar System, it is important that we do not accidentally contaminate untouched and unspoilt extraterrestrial environments in any way. In this free course you will learn about ‘Planetary Protection’ and why it is critical for our future exploration and use of space. This course has been developed with support from the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) Planetary...

...Energy are fast reactors and thorium. ...Special topic 1: Fast reactors Nearly all of the reactors for the generation of electricity in operation are ‘thermal’ reactors, such as the PWR type described earlier. The term thermal refers to the slowing down of the fast neutrons emitted in nuclear fission (energies measured in MeV) to energies characteristic of the...

...solar system’s ninth planet upon discovery by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. He’d been looking for a planet where faulty data suggested a planet-sized body was perturbing the orbit of Neptune. This, he felt, was it – and the world agreed. Pluto’s mass was at first thought to be roughly the same as the Earth’s, but by 1948 estimates had shrunk it to the size of Mars....

...energy, will be explored. You will also look at the various types of particle reactions, and the fundamental interactions that govern their behaviour. Subatomic particles are the building blocks of the Universe and an understanding of the reactions between these particles is crucial in order to have an appreciation of how the Universe works, how it began, and how we came...

...energy for this kind of exercise, it’s darn hot out in the desert? So let’s see if we can work out how much energy our ambulance crew would expend to get that truck up the slope. One way of doing this is to use trigonometry. What the crew are effectively doing is lifting the truck up vertically from the bottom of the slope to the top. We know that they have a distance...

...solar system, such as Europa and Ganymede (moons of Jupiter) and Enceladus and Titan (Saturn), which may be habitable today. His work involves lab and field work to track how ocean chemistry and microorganisms can be delivered from the oceans to the icy surface. Team Mars [Dr. Susanne P. Schwenzer] Dr. Susanne P. Schwenzer Associate Director, AstrobiologyOU Susanne is a...

...energy, such as moving matter around within a solid without risking melting or changing the basic shape of a component. On the other hand, it can be a real nuisance. It can make magnetic disks 'forget'. It can leave materials 'sapped' of their strength. Just a few degrees of temperature change can make some things unrecognisably different. Temperature really does present...