Articles by James Fite

Today, chemistry is one of the core branches of physical science, the segment of natural science that doesn’t focus on living organisms. Like the other sciences, it relies upon tested observations and experiments, aims for unbiased analysis to get at… Read More

How many planets are in our solar system, and what is the one farthest out? The answers  may reveal your age, because things changed after Aug. 24, 2006. On that day, the answers became eight – and Neptune is the… Read More

The eighth planet from our sun, Neptune, is a giant swirly ball of ice and wind, unlike any other world in our solar system. So much remains unknown about what is now considered the most distant planet in our system…. Read More

January marks the beginning of the new year – but that wasn’t always the case. The Gregorian calendar we follow today was inspired by an ancient Roman calendar that, according to legend, was designed by Romulus, the first king of… Read More

All over the English-speaking world, people break out in song on New Year’s Eve. From Australia to Canada, from the United States to the United Kingdom, and from New Zealand to the song’s ancestral home in Scotland, Auld Lang Syne… Read More

As the classic Christmas song says, “Christmas comes but once a year” – and that day is December 25. The holiday is celebrated worldwide as the birthday of Jesus, but no matter how hard you search, you won’t find that… Read More

Yet more polls reveal young adults have a significant lack of trust in such American institutions as the government and the media. The surveys may be new, but the trend is not. As we move into a new year, we… Read More

Earth may be the most unusual planet orbiting our sun. After all, what other can boast life –plant, animal, or otherwise? A close runner-up, however, would be the seventh planet out, Uranus. With temperatures as low as negative 357 degrees… Read More

To many, Thanksgiving may seem like a uniquely American holiday. To be fair, our own version of it is. Celebrating the Pilgrims’ survival of that first harsh year in New England wouldn’t make much sense in Japan, for example. Yet… Read More

It requires no time travel to experience the Phanerozoic Eon – we’re in it right now! Still, the present eon began an estimated 541 million years ago, so things that happened in the beginning would seem pretty wild to the… Read More

Out past Jupiter lies our solar system’s second largest planet, the gas giant Saturn. It is one of the most intriguing members of our system, with its most impressive – but not only – ring system and with its most… Read More

Earth may be the biggest of the inner planets, but it has nothing on the giants of the outer solar system. And there’s no planet in the system bigger than the fifth from the sun, Jupiter. But that isn’t the… Read More