Science Updates

[boxy]

Are you on crack? Everyone knows that it's the pink unicorns that are holding the pathogens in place.

What do they live on? This is utterly mind blowing.

Don't they just get scooped up from the surface/lower atmosphere, and rain back down later? They nay be viable, but inactive at that height.

[AiA in Atlanta]

If Jupiter were our moon:




http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672920/our ... facebook#2


Venus:



Everybody loves Uranus:

[Super Nova]

I would have thought that Jupiter would appear bigger than that considering it's size.

We would be the moon of Jupiter.

[AiA in Atlanta]

I would have thought that Jupiter would appear bigger than that considering it's size.

We would be the moon of Jupiter.

Did you see the film Melancholia where a giant rogue planet appears out of nowhere and Earth becomes captive to it? Well, it is more than that but don't want to spoil it for you.

[Chard]

Being that close to something as massive as Jupiter wouldn't be at all fun, but on the brightside we wouldn't be around long to suffer from the tidal effects to much.

The Moon is a small fraction of Earth's mass, yet its gravity is strong enough to cause the oceans to rise and fall by a couple of meters depending on various factors. Something with thousands of times Earth's mass would cause tidal effect strong enough to cause entire continents to rise and fall by tens of meters. Probably be a bitchin' way to go if you're into surfing.

[Super Nova]

Happy Aphelion!



Today the Earth Falls Towards the Sun
By Christopher Crockett | July 5, 2013 |

Notice anything different today? Is the sun looking a little smaller? Or the Earth moving a little slowly?

Well, today is Aphelion Day.

Around 11 A.M. Eastern, Earth passes through the point in its orbit that is farthest from the sun, a point called the aphelion. After today, we pick up speed as we fall back toward the sun, swinging around the opposite end of our orbit in early January.

Imagine a ball ricocheting off a bat. A loud crack. The ball climbs. Arcing over second base, its ascent slows. Then, for a moment, the ball appears to hover. As if gravity got distracted for a second. At a single point in time, all vertical motion stops. And then, just as casually, the ball falls back to the outfield as gravity regains its senses.

The Earth is the baseball. And we’ve just reached the top of our arc.

Out here, at aphelion, we’re now 152,098,232 kilometers from the sun. Six months from now, we’ll pass through perihelion: the closest approach to the sun. Between aphelion and perihelion, the Earth-sun distance changes by almost five million kilometers. But what’s a few million kilometers among friends? While it’s large compared to human scales (you’d have to circle Earth 125 times to cover the same distance), it’s actually only a 3 percent difference.

And 3 percent is exactly how much smaller the sun appears today than it will at perihelion in January. But even a trained eye wouldn’t notice that discrepancy. You would need to line up pictures of the sun from Earth at these two positions to notice that, yes, the sun’s apparent size does change from now until January.

Even the seasons are oblivious to the change. The dramatic temperature swings from summer to winter are a product of Earth’s tilt, not its orbital path. Today, the northern hemisphere sees more direct sunlight and longer days. South of the equator, the sunlight hits obliquely and the days are shorter.

Whatever your season, enjoy the day. And wave to the sun. We’re on our way back for a closer visit.

Happy Aphelion!

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/obs ... lion-2013/

[Super Nova]

Basic questions answered.

Theoretical physicist and New York University professor Matthew Kleban answers viewer questions.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... hew-kleban

[Super Nova]

There is no surprise for me that there is life there. Where there is water on this planet, there is life.


Antarctic Lake Vostok buried under two miles of ice found to teem with life
A giant lake buried more than two miles beneath the Antarctic ice has been found to contain a "surprising" variety of life. Analysis of ice cores obtained from the basin of Lake Vostok, the subglacial lake that Russian scientists drilled down to in 2012, have revealed DNA from an estimated 3,507 organisms.



While the majority were found to be bacteria, many of which were new to science, there were also other single celled organisms and multicellular organisms found, including from fungi.

The diversity of life from the lake has surprised scientists as many had thought the lake would be sterile due to the extreme conditions.

Lake Vostok was first covered by ice more than 15 million years ago and is now buried 12,000 feet beneath the surface, creating huge pressures. Few nutrients were expected to be found.

However, samples of ice that had formed as water from the lake froze onto the bottom of the glacial ice sheet above have revealed it is teeming with life.

This will raise hopes that life may be found in other extreme environments on other planets. One of Jupiter's moons, Europa, for example, is covered with an icy shell that may hide a liqud ocean below where life could exist.

Dr Scott Rogers, a biologist at Bowling Green State University, in Ohio, and led the DNA analysis of biological material found in the ice cores, said: "We found much more complexity than anyone thought.

"It really shows the tenacity of life, and how organisms can survive in places where a couple dozen years ago we thought nothing could survive.

"The bounds on what is habitable and what is not are changing."

Lake Vostok is around 160 miles long and 30 miles wide, covering an area of more than 6,000 square miles beneath the Antarctic ice sheet.

Among the bacteria found in the samples brought to the surface were those commonly found in the digestive systems of fish, crustaceans and annelid worms, raising the prospect there could be more complex life still living in the lake.

Isolated from the rest of the world for 15 million years, some of the DNA sequences were found to be unique to science and may belong to new species that have evolved in the depths.

Writing in the journal PLOS One, Dr Rogers and his colleagues said: "The sequences suggest that a complex environment might exist in Lake Vostok.

"Sequences indicating organisms from aquatic, marine, sediment and icy environments were present in the accretion ice.

"In addition, another major proportion of the sequences were from organisms that are symbionts of animals and/or plants.

"Over 35 million years ago, Lake Vostok was open to the atmosphere and was surrounded by a forested ecosystem. At that time, the lake, which might have been a marine bay, probably contained a complex network of organisms.

"As recently as 15 million years ago, portions of the lake were ice free at least part of the time. During these times, organisms were likely being deposited in the lake.

"While the current conditions are different than earlier in its history, the lake seems to have maintained a surprisingly diverse community of organisms.

"These organisms may have slowly adapted to the changing conditions in Lake Vostok during the past 15–35 million years as the lake converted from a terrestrial system to a subglacial system."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -life.html

[Rorschach]

Well if nothing else there will be life after the next Ice Age.

[Super Nova]

Well if nothing else there will be life after the next Ice Age.

Yes.

But will we know it.