Articles by James Fite

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

On this trek through time, we land on a much more familiar planet than in the previous eons. It’s an ancient and still alien Earth, but over the course of about two billion years, the world went through extreme changes,… Read More

Welcome to the fastest moving planet in our solar system: Mercury. In fact, speed isn’t the only record it holds. It’s the smallest, the closest to the sun, and the one with the shortest year as well. Mercury is a… Read More

Did you know Earth has a sister planet? Some even use the term evil twin! Venus is similar to Earth – it is the only other of the inner planets with any significant atmosphere. Yet it’s still alien enough to… Read More

It’s time once again to travel back in time to the early age of Earth’s formative years – This time, to just after the violent Hadean Eon. When Earth finally emerged from the fire and turbulence of that first formative… Read More

Was there ever life on Mars? Could it be humanity’s next celestial destination? For thousands of years, Earth’s little red neighbor has inspired questions and legends alike. Mars – Bringer of War Mars, the fourth planet from the sun, is… Read More