From household pets and tollways, through to goods in transit and railway cars, RFID tags are appearing in more places, making it easier to track and identify objects.
RFID, or radio frequency identification, tags are small electronic devices that contain information and can be scanned, a bit like a barcode. But unlike barcodes, RFID tags don’t need to be ‘seen’ by the scanner and multiple tags can scanned at once.
The technology behind RFID was first used in 1945 by Russian scientist Léon Theremin to create a listening ‘bug’ called The Thing. But it wasn’t until 1969, that US engineer Mario Cadullo designed and built the first RFID tag.
Most of the time the Sun is quiet, shining in space beaming out light and heat. But every eleven years it gets cranky – covered in dark spots and fiery eruptions. This is a time called solar maximum, or solar max for short.
Twenty years ago, the answer this question was ‘only one that we know’. Most astronomers believed that the Sun was no different to most stars in the universe. So if we had a star with planets and moons – a solar system – than why don’t others.
