Today in History -  May 20, 1899 – the American Physical Society (APS) is founded for the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of physics. It was originally formed at Columbia University by 36 scientists from 17 institutions who elected Henry Rowland as their first president and A.A. Michelson as the first vice-president. It has [...]

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Today in History – February 14, 1990 -  First photo of the solar system is taken and dubbed the “family portrait” of our solar system as seen from outside. Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977 and it passed Saturn in November 1980. It continued a trajectory that took it out of the solar [...]

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Today in History – December 27, 1571 – Birth of Johannes Kepler.  When Kepler made his calculations from measurements taken by Tycho Brahe and himself, at the turn of the seventeenth century, they had to create many of the instruments that they used.  The types of tedious observations and measurements taken by Brahe and Kepler [...]

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Today in History – December 8, 1993 – First functional GPS (Global Positioning System) was developed. The technology initially developed for military use eventually made its way into our daily lives- most notably in cars and cell phones. Using information from a number of satellites orbiting the Earth (originally with 24, now a total of [...]

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Today in History – September 5, 1977 – Voyager 1 is launched. A second spacecraft, the Voyager 2, was launched earlier on August 20, 1977 but Voyager 1 reached the outer solar system and interstellar space earlier due to its trajectory design for outer space and gravity-assist from Jupiter. Sharing Carl Sagan‘s belief that Earth [...]

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