Allan. 18. Future physician scientist.
Welcome to my blog. Science, music, oddities, ramblings, art, and whatever else I decide to post on here.
Additionally, I am a member of the team at HOLY MOLECULES, BATMAN! Feel free to check us out using the link below in this sidebar.
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Let's explore the universe together.
| ENTP - "Inventor". Enthusiastic interest in everything and always sensitive to possibilities. Non-conformist and innovative. 3.2% of the total population. |
- People I follow
Cloud systems in Neptune’s southern hemisphere (via Voyager)
Great collection of iconic vehicles from Sci-Fi by Josh Ln including the DeLorean from Back to the Future, The Millenium Falcon from Star Wars, The Ghostbusters’ Station Wagon, The Enterprise and The Tardis from Doctor Who.
Mars Might Have a Lot More Water Than We Knew
Researchers have discovered evidence that there’s a lot more water on Mars–at least on parts of Mars–than anyone previously thought. Using new technology, scientists examined the water content in meteorites from the planet, and it points to a lot of it…
cnet:
Unmanned Air Force space plane lands after secret mission
Wrapping up a classified 469-day mission, an unmanned Air Force space plane dropped out of orbit and returned to Earth on Saturday, executing an automated landing to close out the program’s second test flight.
ROBO-SHUTTLE
An extraordinary outburst produced by a black hole in a nearby galaxy has provided direct evidence for a population of old, volatile stellar black holes.
The discovery, made by astronomers using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, provides new insight into the nature of a mysterious class of black holes that can produce as much energy in X-rays as a million suns radiate at all wavelengths.
Mars, from Viking 1. NASA
Triton: The Outer Most Ocean in The Solar System
A new day dawns on Triton. It’s going to be a cold one, much like the last. And the one before that… and every day since the moon settled into its present orbit around Neptune. Even the volcanoes here spew out cold gases and liquid water rather than hot magma. But below the frigid surface, which registers a temperature of -235 °C, there’s something more clement: a liquid ocean.
At first glance, Triton seems to be just another icy moon – a featureless, barren world spinning around Neptune, the outermost planet of our solar system. But Triton is different.
For one thing, it orbits Neptune backwards, moving in the opposite direction to Neptune’s rotation. It’s the only large moon in the solar system to do so. Satellites can’t form in these “retrograde” orbits, so Triton must have begun life elsewhere before being captured by the gas giant. It looks a lot like Pluto, and probably came from the same place – the inner edge of the Kuiper Belt, close to Neptune.
The Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past Triton in 1989, sending back images of the moon’s frozen surface. They revealed signs of cryovolcanism – the eruption of subsurface liquids which quickly freeze when exposed to the cold of the outer solar system. As such, Triton joins a short list of worlds in the solar system known to be geologically active.
Its surface ice is unique, too: largely composed of nitrogen, with some cantaloupe-textured terrain, and a polar cap of frozen methane.
New Research Confirms The Existence of Dark Matter
Image: Don Dixon
Fans of dark matter can rest easy. A study published last month raised eyebrows by suggesting that our cosmic neighbourhood is empty of the extra mass needed to hold the galaxy together. But a re-analysis shows that the dark matter was there all along.
Dark matter is the mysterious, invisible stuff that makes up 83 per cent of the matter in the universe. It is responsible for keeping galaxies from flying apart despite their high spinning speeds, and has aided our understanding of how structures in the universe formed.
The most popular theories say that dark matter is a hitherto undetected particle called a WIMP (weakly interacting massive particle) that is shy of interacting with ordinary matter through any force except gravity.
But several underground detectors waiting for WIMPs have come up empty, or with conflicting results. If the galaxy is so full of dark matter, why hasn’t it shown up yet?
In April, a team led by Christian Moni-Bidin of the University of Concepcion in Chile thought they had a solution: the WIMPs aren’t actually there.
The team tracked the motions of more than 400 stars within 13,000 light years of Earth to estimate the mass of matter – visible and dark – in the sun’s local neighbourhood. They concluded that the mass they found could be explained by the visible matter alone, with no need for dark matter.
But the team made a subtle error, say Jo Bovy and Scott Tremaine of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
Moni-Bidin and colleagues considered stars whose orbits take them far above or below the Milky Way’s main bright disc, and used the speed at which they orbit the centre of the galaxy to figure out how much of a pull they feel from the nearby mass of stars and dark matter. They assumed that the stars’ speeds would be the same no matter how far they were from the galactic centre. Observations of dust clumps have shown that this assumption is true for young stars orbiting in the galactic disc, which mostly move in a near-perfect circle.
But the stars that orbit high above or far below the disc can’t have circular orbits, Bovy says. The only stars that reach such great heights have been kicked away from the disc by matter in the galaxy’s spiral arms, which sent them on highly elliptical orbits.
Full Article: Crisis averted: Dark matter was there all along
Momentary Break to Show You an Awesome GIF for my Black Hole Presentation
Thought you might enjoy this demonstration of gravitational lensing depicted if the Earth orbited a black hole. Back to work now.
NASA must really be short on funds if they’re whoring themselves out to Angry Birds.
Nikon COOLPIX P90
Took a picture of my eye and I can swear I can make out the Earth with the moon above in my pupil.
