Geodesy
Geodesy is the science of measuring and representing Earth's shape, gravity field, orientation, and positions so maps, GPS, surveys, and height systems line up.
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Science Topics
Browse Qlopedia topics grouped under Science.
298 topics, showing 121-144 on page 6 of 13.
Topics
Atomic Clock
An atomic clock is a precision timekeeper that uses the stable frequency of atomic transitions to define and maintain modern time standards.
Lodestone
Lodestone is naturally magnetized magnetite, a mineral that can attract iron and helped people turn magnetism into practical direction-finding.
Magnetic Compass
A magnetic compass is a direction-finding instrument whose magnetized needle aligns with Earth's magnetic field, helping travelers, sailors, pilots, and surveyors find bearings.
Sextant
A sextant is a precision instrument that measures angles between visible objects, especially a celestial body and the horizon, so navigators can estimate position at sea.
Zeolite
A zeolite is a natural or synthetic microporous aluminosilicate material whose regular channels can adsorb molecules, exchange ions, and support industrial catalysis.
Tardigrade
A tardigrade is a tiny eight-legged animal, nicknamed a water bear, whose ability to enter cryptobiosis helps it survive drying, cold, radiation, and other harsh conditions.
Pulsar
A pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star whose beams sweep across Earth as regular pulses, making it one of astronomy's most precise natural clocks.
Voyager Golden Record
The Voyager Golden Record is a gold-plated phonograph record carried by Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, combining science, music, language, images, and hope as a message from Earth.
Reef Bleaching
Reef bleaching happens when stressed corals lose or expel the algae that give them much of their color and energy, leaving reefs vulnerable to disease, starvation, and death if conditions do not improve.
Nitrogen Fixation
Nitrogen fixation is the conversion of atmospheric nitrogen gas into biologically usable forms, a process carried out by microbes, lightning, and industry that underpins soil fertility and food production.
Dolly the Sheep
Dolly the sheep was the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell, a 1996 breakthrough that showed a specialized cell nucleus could be reprogrammed to build a whole animal.
LIGO
LIGO is the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, a pair of giant instruments that detect tiny spacetime distortions from events such as merging black holes and neutron stars.
Svalbard Global Seed Vault
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is an Arctic backup facility where genebanks store duplicate crop seeds to protect agricultural biodiversity against disasters, conflict, neglect, and long-term change.
Van Allen Belts
The Van Allen belts are regions of energetic charged particles trapped by Earth's magnetic field, important for understanding space weather, satellite design, and human travel beyond low Earth orbit.
Lucy Fossil
Lucy is the nickname for AL 288-1, a remarkably complete Australopithecus afarensis fossil from Ethiopia that helped show how upright walking developed before a human-sized brain.
Mary Anning
Mary Anning was a fossil collector and dealer from Lyme Regis whose careful discoveries of Jurassic marine reptiles helped turn fossil collecting into evidence for deep time, extinction, and early paleontology.
Chien-Shiung Wu
Chien-Shiung Wu was a Chinese-born American physicist whose precision experiments in nuclear physics helped overturn parity conservation and reshape modern particle physics.
Marie Tharp
Marie Tharp was an American geologist and oceanographic cartographer whose maps of the ocean floor helped reveal mid-ocean ridges and strengthened the case for continental drift and plate tectonics.
Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall was a British primatologist and conservationist whose long study of wild chimpanzees at Gombe changed how scientists and the public understood animal behavior, human evolution, and conservation.
Dark energy
Dark energy is the name for the unknown cause of the universe's accelerated expansion, inferred from observations of supernovae, cosmic structure, and the large-scale geometry of space.
Mass spectrometry
Mass spectrometry is an analytical technique that identifies and measures molecules by turning them into ions and sorting them by their mass-to-charge ratios.
Kepler Space Telescope
The Kepler Space Telescope was NASA's first dedicated exoplanet-hunting mission, using tiny dips in starlight to show that planets are common around other stars.
Particle accelerators
Particle accelerators use electric fields and magnets to speed up charged particles, creating beams for physics research, medical treatment, materials science, industry, and isotope production.