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Tag: Earth

  • Earth Facing Sixth Mass Extinction

    Earth Facing Sixth Mass Extinction

    The Earth may be on the brink of a sixth mass extinction, due to human activity, according to the academic journal Science.

    The Earth’s most recent mass extinction event occurred roughly 65 million years ago, when an asteroid wiped out 75% of all existing species, including the dinosaurs.

    Commenting on the progression of Earth’s present defaunation, or loss of species, Science author Sacha Vignieri said, “human impacts on animal biodiversity are an under-recognized form of global environmental change. Among terrestrial vertebrates, 322 species have become extinct since 1500, and populations of the remaining species show 25% average decline in abundance.”

    The team of biologists and ecologists who contributed to the study revealed that a third of all vertebrates on the planet are presently threatened or endangered. Vignieri cites “overexploitation, habitat destruction and impacts from invasive species” as ongoing threats, but warns that climate change due to human activity will emerge as the leading cause of defaunation. Likewise, diseases that come from pathogens introduced by humans have become a factor.

    Paleoecologists estimate that modern man has driven approximately 1,000 species into extinction during our 200,000 years on the planet. Since the sixteenth century, man has killed off hundreds of animals, including the passenger pigeon and the Tasmanian tiger. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, there are another 20,000 species threatened today.

    Though, research has suggested that the widening extinction trend can be reversed.

    Humans presently use half of the planet’s unfrozen land for cities, logging or agriculture. Reforestation and restoration of lost habitats, coupled with relocation and recolonization efforts can assist in the “refaunation” of species driven from their native locales.

    Based on data published in Nature in 2011, it will take a century or two to assure another mass extinction event at the present rate of global depredation.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Asteroid Near Earth Is “Disconcerting” For Experts

    “What would you do if an asteroid were about to hit Earth?”

    You know, there’s a lot of “doom-porn” circulating about this near-earth asteroid due to whiz by Sunday morning. And that’s alright; a little rational fear helps spur us into action so that we can seek a logical solution. So should you be scared out of your mind about asteroid 2014 HQ124?

    Well, not about this one.

    We have nothing to fear about this particular NEO (that just means “near earth object”) hitting us. The massive rock ball will whiz by with a berth of about 777,000 miles. However, it reminds the experts of just how vulnerable we are. As Bob Berman of the online Slooh community observatory explained:

    “What’s disconcerting is that a rocky/metallic body this large, and coming so very close, should have only first been discovered this soon before its nearest approach.” Indeed, they didn’t even see it until April 23rd of this year. He went on to add, “If it were impact us, the energy released would be measured not in kilotons like the atomic bombs that ended World War II, but in H-bomb type megatons.”

    That might sound extreme – but it makes sense. Remember Russia’s asteroid last year?

    That strike, which left more than 1,200 people injured, was only about 50 to 60 feet wide. Can you imagine if it had been the size of a football stadium? Some others have tried to – and what they envisage of the aforementioned hypothetical H-bomb scenario would be wiped out metropolitan areas and a crater about 3 miles across. As predicted by asteroid impact expert Mark Boslough, of Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico: “An event like that would break windows over 100 kilometers away.” He also added:

    “This one would definitely be catastrophic if it hit the Earth.”

    So why didn’t we see it early enough?

    Simply put, it’s harder to see smaller stuff – and space debris is no exception. Larger rocks can be observed early on. But when it comes to smaller asteroids that don’t line up neatly with the sun, we don’t see them so easily. What happens is they sometimes get less light (kind of like the moon’s phases), so they only are partially visible – or not at all – until they’re super close. So where can we get some light to see them? Well, there is one good solution. Much like “Predator” of the Sci Fi flick could locate Schwarzenegger’s character, we too can view this alien matter accelerating toward us by using infrared technology – in a telescope. This bad boy would sit between earth and the sun, generating a cosmic-collision course version of Google Earth, by mapping the paths of traveling rubble.

    Great. So why don’t they just use one of those?

    Well, they’re trying their hardest. For example, the guys over at B612 foundation are working on this telescope called Sentinel that they hope to launch by 2018.

    That sounds like a really long time to be dodging cosmic bullets, doesn’t it?

    Yeah, you’re right. It is. And that’s where the “solution” part we mentioned earlier comes in. If you get a little nervous when you see all these asteroid reports, you’re welcome to quell your fears by playing the video above and checking out what these heroic dudes are doing. After I did, I decided to give a little donation – mostly because I’m lazy and refuse to move from this pale blue dot on which I’m living.

    I’ve grown quite fond of it and I hear the alternative worlds are fairly inhospitable.

    “If I could get one million people to see that view of Earth, then I could just pass the hat and we could build Sentinel tomorrow.”
    – Ed Lu (CEO/Co-founder, B612 Foundation and former NASA astronaut)

    Image via Youtube

  • ‘The Beast’ Asteroid Set to Pass Earth on June 8th

    ‘The Beast’ Asteroid Set to Pass Earth on June 8th

    On Sunday, June 8th, an asteroid nicknamed “The Beast” will approach uncomfortably close to the Earth – 3.25 times the distance between the Earth and the moon, to be exact.

    The passing is uncomfortable for a couple of reasons: 1) Any space object nicknamed “The Beast” should be fear inducing no matter how close it is; and 2) The massive asteroid was only detected six weeks ago, much too late for NASA or any other agency to have diverted the path of such an asteroid if it was on a collision course with Earth.

    The asteroid, officially named 2014 HQ124, lives up to its nickname when one looks at the numbers behind the story.

    “The Beast” measures in at 1,100 feet (335 meters) in diameter – similar in size to a movie theater, football stadium, or a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. Currently, the asteroid is hurtling through space at a speed of 31,000 mph. If it was to enter Earth’s gravitational field, its speed would increase to 40,000 mph by the time of impact.

    Asteroid impact expert Mark Boslough, of Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, shed some light on how devastating an asteroid of such proportions and traveling at such high speeds would be to the Earth:

    What’s disconcerting is that a rocky/metallic body this large, and coming so very close, should have only first been discovered this soon before its nearest approach. HQ124 is at least 10 times bigger, and possibly 20 times, than the asteroid that injured a thousand people last year in Chelyabinsk, Siberia… If it were to impact us, the energy released would be measured not in kilotons like the atomic bombs that ended World War II, but in H-bomb type megatons… You’d end up with a crater about 3 miles across. An event like that would break windows over 100 kilometers away.

    To add some further perspective, the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima exploded with 15 kilotons of force, while “The Beast” would impact the Earth with a 2,000 megaton explosion. (1,000 kilotons equals 1 megaton.)

    If that news wasn’t disconcerting enough, NASA officials estimate that only 30 percent of the estimated 15,000 near-Earth asteroids measuring 460 feet in diameter have been discovered, while less than one percent of those measuring in with a diameter of 100 feet have been found.

    Image via YouTube

  • Earth Hour: Throwing Shade At Poor Or Good Cause?

    The lights went out over many of the globe’s major landmarks last night.

    From the Great Wall of China and pyramids of Egypt to the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben, there was worldwide participation in the name of the annual trend called Earth Hour. Initiated by the World Wide Fund for Nature in 2007, the act is meant to be a symbolic gesture to raise awareness and demonstrate terrestrial commitment. Those who participate, pay their penance to the planet for their ecological footprint on the last Saturday in March. After flipping the switch at 8:30, they sit in Stygian silence for sixty minutes, thinking about all the Watts they’ve wasted.

    Or maybe they just go to sleep early.

    Whether the masses spent their dark martyrdom meditating on our earth or not, Earth Hour is meant to “celebrate that trend and think about how we can switch the way we use electricity,” according to Keya Chatterjee of the World Wildlife Fund.

    Keya feels that major progress in conservation has been made, saying “In the last 18 months there have been more solar panels installed in the United States than in the previous 30 years. So we’re seeing a real trend.”

    Black-Opera House in Australia with lights sniped for zero dark Earthy:

    But does this incandescent deprivation really motivate any real mass action? Or is it like the “no makeup selfie” craze that mutated from cancer awareness into self-centeredness?

    Environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg, director of Copenhagen Consensus Center, tends to think it sends the wrong message regarding electricity, while ignoring the plight of the numerous impoverished dwelling in perpetual darkness. The best-selling author who calls the practice an “ineffective feel-good event” indicated,“I think it’s a good way to get attention to the main problem of global warming. Namely that, yes it is a real problem but we’re not fixing it. I think we have no sense of the scale involved.”

    Lomborg has said Earth Hour brings up easy dialogue regarding environmental issues – which results in no real resolution. A necessary (albeit tougher) talk, he believes, involves acknowledging the need for new technology in lieu of throwing money in vain at current ones that aren’t working. “We need to invest a lot more in research and development into green technology, which is not yet ready but should be ready so that everyone, and the Chinese and Indians, will buy it,” he suggested, before adding:

    “And that’s the conversation that we’re avoiding by just having this other showcase of how good a person you are by switching off the lights for an hour.”

    There were billions more than Bjorn who didn’t dim the lights last night either.

    That’s because they lack lights to turn off.

    “1.3 billion people still don’t have access to modern forms of electricity,” explained Lomborg, “About three billion people use fuels like dung and cardboard and twigs to keep warm and cook. This is the world’s biggest environmental problem. Not global warming, not even outdoor air pollution, it’s indoor air pollution that kills 4.3 million people.”

    What are your thoughts on the conservation conversation?


    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Asteroid 2014: Cosmic Monster Missed Earth This Morning

    A couple million miles may not sound like much of a “close call” with an asteroid.

    But compare it to the vast and empty light years upon light years surrounding this oxygenated rock ball we ride around on in infinite space, and 1.6 million miles isn’t much wiggle room between us and a structure racing past at 27,000 miles per hour.

    At three football fields in diameter, this near-miss is exactly what the asteroid 2000 EM26 did when it whizzed by Earth during the witching hours Tuesday morning.

    Unfortunately, the Canary Islands based robotic telescope service that was meant to photograph the asteroid malfunctioned. At the climactic moment, the equipment froze over and couldn’t capture 2000 EM26 (which means that super cool above image isn’t the actual behemoth sky boulder – sorry ’bout it).

    “We continue to discover these potentially hazardous asteroids – sometimes only days before they make their close approaches to Earth,” said Paul Cox, technical and research director of Slooh – which tracks potentially hazardous objects in space.

    Cox went on to say, “Slooh’s asteroid research campaign is gathering momentum with Slooh members using the Slooh robotic telescopes to monitor this huge population of potentially hazardous space rocks.

    Bob Berman, a Slooh astronomer, added: “On a practical level, a previously unknown, undiscovered asteroid seems to hit our planet and cause damage or injury once a century or so, as we witnessed on June 20, 1908, and February 15, 2013.”

    The latter date Berman is referring to is, of course, Russia’s meteor encounter from roughly a year ago:

    Despite its smaller length of 65 feet, that rock still managed some damage. When it exploded over Chelyabink, it reportedly did so with the power of about 20 atomic bombs. The blast shattered glass, leaving more than 1,500 with injuries – and even more with concerns about our sitting-duck status against astral assailants.

    Although 2000 EM26 posed no planetary threat upon its passing, Cox stresses that the search for celestial threats is ongoing:

    “We need to find them before they find us!”

    Image via Youtube

  • Winter Solstice: Prepare For A Really Long Night

    Saturday night, Dec. 21st will be the longest night of the year — it will be Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. This means that North America will get only 9 hours and 32 minutes of sunshine as the night stretches on for more than 14 hours of darkness. The solstice will begin at 12:11 p.m. on Saturday.

    During this time, the sun will be overhead along the Tropic of Capricorn, at 23.5 degrees south. Locations north of the equator will see the sun follow its shortest arc across the southern sky. The Earth’s North Pole will be at its maximum tilt away from the sun. In Washington DC, the sun will be above the horizon for 9 hours and 26 minutes but the day will be even shorter for cities in Canada that are closer to the Northern Pole.

    The opposite will be the case in the Southern Hemisphere, as Earth’s South Pole will be pointing towards the sun, thus the Southern Hemisphere will have its longest day.

    File:Earth-lighting-winter-solstice EN.png

    After Dec 21, the nights will again start becoming shorter because the sun spends more time on the horizon until March 20 when there will be the same length of day and night because the axis of the Earth will be vertical.

    Again, the days will continue to grow longer through to the summer, and on June 21, we’ll experience the longest day of the year.

    Watch video of a short Arctic day

    Image via Wikipedia (1),(2)

  • 8.8 Billion Earth-Like Planets Inhabit the Milky Way

    8.8 Billion Earth-Like Planets Inhabit the Milky Way

    The AP via NBC News took notice of a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: apparently, Earth is one of 8.8 billion similar planets in the Milky Way that fall inside the “Goldilocks zone,” the area around a sun where a planet’s orbit is neither too hot nor too cold for life.

    A NASA press release cites Kepler Telescope data as ushering in a new era of astronomy. Data from Kepler was used in the recent study; that data helped to conclude that 22 percent (+/- 8 percent) of the stars in the Milky Way have Earth-like planets.

    Kepler examined only a fraction of our galaxy (42,000 stars), and the 8.8 billion figure is just an extrapolation, but the findings are revolutionary. If there are 8.8 billion stars in the Milky Way, then that means there are at least 8.8 billion Earth-like planets. Geoff Marcy, a University of California-Berkeley planet hunter and a co-author of the study, said “Just in our Milky Way galaxy alone, that’s 8.8 billion throws of the biological dice.”

    William Borucki, an Ames/Kepler science principal investigator, said “The impact of the Kepler mission results on exoplanet research and stellar astrophysics is illustrated by the attendance of nearly 400 scientists from 30 different countries at the Kepler Science Conference… We gather to celebrate and expand our collective success at the opening of a new era of astronomy.”

    William Chaplin, professor of astrophysics for the University of Birmingham in the UK, said “Kepler has revolutionized asteroseismology by giving us observations of unprecedented quality, duration and continuity for thousands of stars. These are data we could only have dreamt of a few years ago.”

    The next step in the search for extraterrestrial civilizations involves atmospheric observations. Kepler’s total count for “Goldilocks” worlds comes out to 3538, but most of those would not be capable of holding carbon-based life. Since hundreds of Earth-like worlds are missed for every one Kepler spots, the 22 percent figure is considered final and accurate. MIT astronomer Sara Seager concurred, saying “Everything they’ve done looks legitimate.”

    [Image via NASA.gov]

  • Saturn Moon Titan Has Something Earth Needs

    Saturn Moon Titan Has Something Earth Needs

    Our solar system seems to be shrinking. Planning on moving to Mars? The idea sounded crazy in the past; however, recent strides show that this may become a reality within the near future.

    Now evidence has surfaced that a moon within our solar system has more in common with Earth than what may have been originally thought.

    One of Saturn’s moons, Titan, was recently discovered to contain a necessary component in the creation of plastic used on Earth. While orbiting Saturn, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft noted that Titan’s atmosphere contains propylene, which is an ingredient in developing plastic needed on earth. Car bumpers, storage containers, eating utensils, and many other items all require propylene.

    The discovery was made by NASA prior to the government shutdown through Cassini’s composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS) instrument. The spacecraft has been in Saturn’s orbit since 2004, and will continue to orbit the planet until 2017.

    Michael Flasar, who serves as the principal CIRS investigator, released a statement where he explained why the discovery was difficult to make, proving the competency of the program.

    “This measurement was very difficult to make because propylene’s weak signature is crowded by related chemicals with much stronger signals. This success boosts our confidence that we will find still more chemicals long hidden in Titan’s atmosphere,” Michael Flaser said.

    The following is a NASA radar image that Cassini captured depicting two moons “kissing” each other on the surface of Titan. The title of the image is referred to as “Titan’s Kissing Lakes” to substantiate the obvious depiction.

    Conor Nixon, who is a NASA planetary scientist, served as the lead author of the research paper that explained this discovery of Titan’s atmosphere. He shared the news with the September 30th issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

    “This chemical is all around us in everyday life, strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene. That plastic container at the grocery store with the recycling code 5 on the bottom, that’s polypropylene,” Conor Nixon said.

    The following video provides more information about Saturn’s moon, Titan, and the connection between Titan’s atmosphere and that of earth’s atmosphere.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqyR_NfTw9s

    [Images Via Wikimedia Commons/ Titan’s Globe Image Kissing Lakes Image Both Courtesy of NASA]

  • Life on Earth Can Last At Least Another 1.75 Billion Years

    In a new study conducted at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, researchers have estimated that the earth will be able to support life for another 1.75 to 3.25 billion years, unless there’s a nuclear holocaust, a planet-killing asteroid event, or some other errant catastrophe in the interim.

    What will inevitably do earth in are astronomical forces that will push the planet out of its habitable zone, and into the hot zone. These zones are defined by the state of a planet’s water. Liquid water exists on earth, as it’s just the right distance from the sun to prevent it all from freezing or evaporating. Over billions of years, the earth will slowly enter the hot zone, which has prompted researchers to take a look at other planets in our solar system.

    The study’s primary concern was to get a better idea of how extraterrestrial life might evolve elsewhere, and how long it takes a sentient species to evolve, against a planet’s time in a habitable zone. The team calculated that earth’s habitable zone classification might span a maximum of 7.79 billion more years, though we’ve already ran through 4.5 billion of those. Mars still has another 7 billion years, and is the closest – so moving there would be anyone’s best bet. Other planetary habitable zone lifetimes in our solar system range from 1 billion to 54.72 billion years.

    One might wonder why any of this is relevant, considering that human evolution has been but a hiccup in the formation of the solar system, and that we might evolve into space gods like the Q Entity in a billion years – or devolve into planaria-like beings. Either way, single-celled life first appeared on earth roughly 4 billion years ago. Then we had “insects 400 million years ago, dinosaurs 300 million years ago and flowering plants 130 million years ago,” according to research project lead Andrew Rushby, who adds, “anatomically modern humans have only been around for the last 200,000 years — so you can see it takes a really long time for intelligent life to develop.”

    With all the new data, Rushby’s team was able to implement a new system to gauge how long a planet would have, to support the evolution of life, as it exists in a habitable zone. Rushby adds, “Of course, much of evolution is down to luck, so this isn’t concrete, but we know that complex, intelligent species like humans could not emerge after only a few million years because it took us 75 per cent of the entire habitable lifetime of this planet to evolve. We think it will probably be a similar story elsewhere.”

    Regarding exoplanets, the team calculated that Kepler-22b has perhaps been habitable for 6 billion years, and Gliese-581d for 54.7 billion years. As our technology advances, we’ll be able to get a better idea of what’s actually going on in those planets; Rushby adds, “As it stands, we don’t have the technology to explore these planets to discover if there is alien life, but I’d certainly mention Kepler-22b and Gliese-581d as planets that we should keep an eye over the next two or three hundreds years of human existence as our technology develops.”

    Image courtesy of YouTube.

  • Earth Day 2013 Celebrated with Interactive Google Doodle

    For Earth Day 2013, Google is celebrating with an interactive doodle that lets you experience much of what nature has to offer – in animated form, of course. Google’s Earth Day doodle lets you change the seasons, weather, moon, and more.

    “Today we are celebrating Earth Day with an interactive doodle that captures a slice of nature’s subtle wonders. We hope you enjoy discovering animals, controlling the weather, and observing the seasons. Use the sightseeing checklist below to make sure you do not miss anything!” says Doodler Leon Hong.

    Indeed, Google has provided a Doodle checklist. So, click around and have fun.

    Earth Day, as we know it, is celebrated on April 22nd. Back in 1969, the first Earth Day was proposed at a UNESCO conference in San Francisco to be celebrated on March 21st. A month or so later, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson held an additional Earth Day on April 22nd, as an environmental teach-in. In 1990, the April celebration went international, and it is currently celebrated in nearly 200 countries worldwide.

    Last year, Google’s Earth Day doodle was also animated, though not quite interactive. The doodle was a time lapse photo of flowers blooming and eventually forming the Google logo.

  • Radiation Belt Around Earth Discovered by NASA

    Radiation Belt Around Earth Discovered by NASA

    NASA this week revealed that its Van Allen Probes have discovered a third radiation belt around the Earth. Before now, the Earth’s Van Allen belts were thought to be two belts of radiation surrounding the planet.

    The newly discovered belt of radiation was observed for four weeks before a shockwave from the sun blew it apart. The new belt could improve researchers’ understanding of how the belts react to space weather, and in particular solar winds. The research was published this week in the journal Science.

    “Even 55 years after their discovery, the Earth’s radiation belts still are capable of surprising us and still have mysteries to discover and explain,” said Nicky Fox, Van Allen Probes deputy project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. “We thought we knew the radiation belts, but we don’t. The advances in technology and detection made by NASA in this mission already have had an almost immediate impact on basic science.”

    The new belt was detected by the Relativistic Electron Proton Telescope (REPT) on-board the Van Allen Probes. The probes discovered that a region thought to be one belt had actually become two distinct belts with space in between.

    “This is the first time we have had such high-resolution instruments look at time, space and energy together in the outer belt,” said Daniel Baker, lead author of the study and REPT instrument lead at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado. “Previous observations of the outer radiation belt only resolved it as a single blurry element. When we turned REPT on just two days after launch, a powerful electron acceleration event was already in progress, and we clearly saw the new belt and new slot between it and the outer belt.”

    The Van Allen Probes were launched back in August with the mission of studying the Van Allen belts and how space weather can affect them. By December of last year data from the probes was already revealing to scientists just how much influence the sun has over the Earth’s magnetosphere.

    “The fantastic new capabilities and advances in technology in the Van Allen Probes have allowed scientists to see in unprecedented detail how the radiation belts are populated with charged particles and will provide insight on what causes them to change, and how these processes affect the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for science.

  • Mapping The Moon And Mars Discussed At Google

    Google put up a new At Google talk with Ross Beyer from the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute and Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames Research Center, who discusses making maps to explore the Earth, the Moon and Mars.

    “High-quality planetary maps and 3D terrain models have become essential for NASA to plan exploration missions and conduct science,” says Google in the video description. “This is particularly true for robotic missions to the Moon and Mars, where maps are used for site selection, traverse planning, and planetary science. This is also important for studies of climate change on Earth, where maps are used to track environmental change (such as polar ice movement).”

    “In this talk, we will describe how the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames builds highly accurate, large-scale planetary maps and 3D terrain models from orbital imagery using novel statistical stereographic and photometric techniques,” it says. “Orbital imagery includes data captured by the Apollo missions, on-going NASA and international missions, and commercial providers (such as Digital Globe). The mapmaking software that we have developed (Vision Workbench, Ames Stereo Pipeline, Neo-Geography Toolkit) is available as open-source and is widely used by scientists and mission planners.”

    More recent At Google Talks here.

  • NASA Releases Spectacular New Views of the Earth at Night

    A new NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite has taken photos of the unclouded Earth at night that are of higher detail than any before. NASA today released the images to the public, providing updated desktop wallpapers for thousands of people. Absurdly large versions of the image can be found here.

    The new images depict the glow of both natural and human-made light all across the planet. A new sensor on the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite launched last year has allowed scientists to observe the Earth more accurately than ever during the night. According to NASA, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) sensor is sensitive enough to detect the glow produced by the light from a single ship at sea.

    “For all the reasons that we need to see Earth during the day, we also need to see Earth at night,” said Steve Miller, a researcher at NOAA’s Colorado State University Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere. “Unlike humans, the Earth never sleeps.”

    The video below shows the images as a globe and describes just what it is that is creating the bright parts of the images. Aside from electric light from cities and towns, ships on the Nile River, oil fires in the Middle East, and wildfires in the Australian Outback can be seen. Of particular intrest, as always, is the stark contrast between North Korea and South Korea. The sharp line of the Korean Demilitarized Zone can clearly be seen, illustrating just how different life is for Koreans on either side of the 38th parallel.

  • Van Allen Probes Probe Earth’s Radiation Belts

    NASA this week revealed that the early findings from its Van Allen Probes, which are uncovering the mysteries of Earth’s radiation belts, are already helping researcher’s determine just how much influence the sun has over Earth’s magnetosphere. The probes, launched back in August, are orbiting in areas populated by high-energy and hazardous particles created by the magnetosphere.

    “The sun has been a driver of these systems more than we had any right to expect,” said Daniel Baker, Principal Investigator for the Van Allen Probes Relativistic Electron Proton Telescope (REPT) at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado. “We’re seeing brand new features we hadn’t expected. We expected to see a fairly placid radiation belt system. Instead, we see that the belts have been extraordinarily active and dynamic during the first few weeks. We’re looking in the right places at the right times.”

    Events from the sun, such as solar eruptions and plasma ejections have caused “dramatic” changes in the radiation belts. The Van Allen Probes have measured these changes using identical sets of five instrument suites. Measurements using the Electric Fields and Waves Suite (EFW) and the Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument Suite and Integrated Science (EMFISIS) are helping researchers understand how fields and waves of electricity and magnetism affect charged particles within the belts.

    “The electric field and magnetic field measurements on the Van Allen Probes are the best ever made in the radiation belts,” said Craig Kletzing, principal investigator for EMFISIS at the University of Iowa. “For the first time, we’ve been able to see how long intense low frequency electric fields and waves at the edge of the radiation belts can last – sometimes for over five hours during geomagnetic storms. Before, it was like we could see a car zoom past, but not see anything about the details. Now, we can see what color the upholstery is.”

    NASA also revealed that the Van Allen Probes have been taking a beating in orbit. The inner radiation belt where they orbit is also where the most hazardous and energized particles orbit. The probes were built to be tough, and are discovering that the density of these particles varies at different altitudes, using their Relativistic Proton Spectrometer (RPS) instruments.

    (Image courtesy JHU/APL)

  • Life on Earth Visualized As One Single Day (and Animated)

    A better understanding of our world through short, easy-to-understand animations? Count me in. If you were looking to ruminate on the origins of life, here’s a nice little video that takes you from the first single-celled organism to the present as if it all occurred in one full rotation of the clock.

    Spoiler alert: Humans have only been around for about 77 seconds.

    From AsapSCIENCE, who continues to educate the world on the science behind life’s biggest questions – from morning wood to the zombie apocalypse. And from Let’s Make a Deal to severe intoxication. Man, I love these guys.

  • Mars Orbiting Satellite Catches Breathtaking Images

    The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was launched on August 12, 2005 with the express mission of taking hi-resolution photos of the Martian surface. The first photos were returned on September 29 2006 of the Martian surface. The photos below are of the sun rising over Mars over several days and they are breathtaking.

    The views of crepuscular rays sprayed across an alien planet makes one wonder about Mars and what mysteries it has. Did Mars have life millions of years ago that was destroyed? Is it as desolate now as it was a billion years ago? These are questions that we are looking to answer as we edge closer and closer to landing on Mars.

    The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera took this image of the Earth and the Moon at a distance of 88 million miles away from Mars.

  • HD Earth From Space: Taken Using 4 Light Spectrums

    Russian weather satellite Elektro-L is in geostationary orbit, over 22000 miles above the equator. It sends photos to Earth every thirty minutes. The image above is one of them. It combines four light wavelengths, three visible and one infrared. That is why they are so vivid. And why the orange you see in the picture is actually vegetation, being captured in infrared.

    Gizmodo, who posted the picture, also spoke with Robert Simmon, a scientist at the NASA Earth Observatory”

    “Elektro-L is a Russian Satellite similar to GOES (the satellites that provide the cloud image loops shown on the news every night). The images posted by Gizmodo are a combination of visible and near-infrared wavelengths, so they show the Earth in a way not visible to human eyes (vegetation looks red, for example). They’re not any better or worse than NASA images, but they show different things.”

    “It’s a geostationary weather satellite orbiting above the equator at ~54˚ East. Tthe US has two similar operational geostationary satellites over the east and west coasts, EUMETSAT has one over Europe and one over the Indian Ocean, Japan has one over the far western Pacific.”

    Similar high-def pictures exist from NASA, although they do not utilize the near-infrared spectrum that Elektro-L does, and appear exactly as you might see them with the naked eye.

    Just for fun, here are some other views from satellites orbiting earth. This is taken from the International Space Station (ISS).

    No clue where this is from, or even if its real. Enjoy.

    This one is definitely fake. It was created using the open-source animation and rendering software Blender. But it’s still cool, showing the Earth flying through space.

    [source: Gizmodo]

  • Unemployed Game Developer Makes Awesome Solar System

    Christopher Albeluhn found himself unemployed after 7 years as a game developer. Realizing he needed to update his portfolio, he started to work on building a planet Earth in a Unreal Engine 3 as a simple test for a shader idea. The idea quickly got out of hand and he decided to build the entire solar system. Including all 8 planets, the asteroid belt, and real constellations. The model goes as far as to include gravity wells and the height of each planets rotation around the sun.

    Chris currently has his project on indiegogo.com, and while he met his goal of $8,000 dollars, he needs more to complete his real dream. He wants to give his program away to schools and universities as a learning tool. If he gets to $13000, he can donate some copies of The Solar System to Science World in Vancouver BC. With $16000 he will start handing out pc versions for free to school and educational institutions.

    His project became noticed when his roommate got word of a youtube video and posted it to Reddit.com. Within a few days his video had 50,000 views on Youtube and he was on his way. After he reached his goal of $8,000 he made a blog update that said: “So I have achieved the financial security I wanted to complete this project while surviving for the next few months.” The project has 16 days left to make as much money as possible. And remember that the more he gets in donations, the more copies he can give to schools in need.

    Check out the video of the utterly amazing solar system model that he created:

  • Asteroid DA14 Misses Earth In Animated, Data-Backed Video

    For those of you still fretting that Earth will get smacked with a 40 meter-wide asteroid next year even though reliable experts have said that these fears are overstated, here’s a computer-animated rendering of how exactly Earth won’t be in any danger.

    Well, at least as far as asteroid 2012 DA 14 goes.

    The video, which was uploaded by YouTube user CelestiaDev, is daringly accurate with its measured time estimates of the asteroid’s trajectory. Several different vantages are presented that all show the asteroid, while at times looking to collide with earth, completely missing our planet. What’s more is that you’ll see how it does in fact get closer to Earth than many of our own satellites hanging around in orbit.

    The video isn’t just compiled by somebody’s inventive imagination, either: the depiction was constructed using the calculations of Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s HORIZONS solar system data and ephemeris computation service.

    Honestly, though, I’m really not sure if this animation will allay any of the concerns people have about our planet getting hit with an asteroid or if it will actually make them worse because, as the video shows, that asteroid looks to pass frighteningly close to Earth.

    Still. It’s going to miss us by over 13,000 miles. Gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces in nature. We break this force every single day of our lives and we are not 25-mile-wide space rocks. If we can have our way with Earth’s gravitational force anytime we like, you really think our planet’s gravitational pull is gonna be enough to suck in asteroid DA 14?

    It’s seriously not going to happen, people.

  • This Time Lapse Video Of Earth From Space Is Amazing

    Seriously, I don’t want to put your entire week on a downhill trajectory, but in terms of the sheer scope of this video – it’s probably the best thing you’ll see on the internet all week.

    Edited by Michael König, and compiled using images from NASA, this time lapse fly-over of the Earth provides five minutes of childlike amazement.

    The lime lapse sequences are courtesy of astronauts aboard the International Space Station, more specifically the crew of expeditions 28 & 29 operating from August to October 2011. The photographs were apparently taken with a special “low-light 4K-camera,” providing us with the stunning images of Earth as they fly past Auroras and over cities filled with light.

    There are quite a few awesome elements to this video, but in my opinion, it really doesn’t get much better than the incredible images of thunderstorms rippling throughout the clouds as the cameras pass. Truly amazing:

    Like I mentioned before, the images are courtesy of NASA – more specifically the Gateway to Astronaut Photography. That’s a program that hosts the most complete internet collection of pictures of the Earth from space. New photos are added to the database daily, and according to the site, it contains over 1.1 million views of the Earth (675K from the ISS).

    If you want to track the locations in the video, here’s a list provided by König of the various places, in order, from which he culled images:

    1. Aurora Borealis Pass over the United States at Night
    2. Aurora Borealis and eastern United States at Night
    3. Aurora Australis from Madagascar to southwest of Australia
    4. Aurora Australis south of Australia
    5. Northwest coast of United States to Central South America at Night
    6. Aurora Australis from the Southern to the Northern Pacific Ocean
    7. Halfway around the World
    8. Night Pass over Central Africa and the Middle East
    9. Evening Pass over the Sahara Desert and the Middle East
    10. Pass over Canada and Central United States at Night
    11. Pass over Southern California to Hudson Bay
    12. Islands in the Philippine Sea at Night
    13. Pass over Eastern Asia to Philippine Sea and Guam
    14. Views of the Mideast at Night
    15. Night Pass over Mediterranean Sea
    16. Aurora Borealis and the United States at Night
    17. Aurora Australis over Indian Ocean
    18. Eastern Europe to Southeastern Asia at Night

    Can you spot any distinguishable features of Earth? What do you think of the time lapse images in general? Let us know in the comments.

  • An Asteroid Almost Ended Your Life Yesterday

    While you were going about your daily business, maybe sitting in traffic or making dinner, a giant asteroid whizzed by your head, and you narrowly escaped the cold bite of death.

    Ok, when I say “whizzed by your head” I mean about 202,000 miles away and when I say “narrowly escaped death” I mean that NASA scientists knew that it would miss us all along. But hey, a huge space rock flew past Earth last night? Pretty awesome, right?

    And it’s even cooler when you discover just how close 202,000 miles really is in the grand scheme of things. For instance, the average distance between the Earth and the Moon is 239,000. So this asteroid, tagged as the size of an aircraft carrier, came between us and the Moon. It passed by Earth at its closest point around 6:30 EST.

    That’s the closest that an asteroid that large has come to Earth in 35 years.

    The particular asteroid, 2005 YU55, is in an orbit that regularly brings it near Earth, as well as Venus and Mars. But it hasn’t been this close in at least 200 years.

    This time, NASA scientists were able to bounce radar off the asteroid to give us an image equivalent to a “celestial sonogram.”

    During tracking, scientists will use the Goldstone and Arecibo antennas to bounce radio waves off the space rock. Radar echoes returned from 2005 YU55 will be collected and analyzed. NASA scientists hope to obtain images of the asteroid from Goldstone as fine as about 7 feet (2 meters) per pixel. This should reveal a wealth of detail about the asteroid’s surface features, shape, dimensions and other physical properties

    They were able to capture this photo on Monday, and more detailed images are likely to emerge:

    The image shows a fairly spherical asteroid – a shape that not all asteroids takes. For instance, the 1999 JMB asteroid captured in 1999 was an asymmetrical, oddly shaped object.

    Here’s a visual representation of how close YU55 came on Tuesday, courtesy of NASA:

    So this asteroid didn’t send us humans the way of the dinosaurs. It is a reminder, however, that there’s a ton of stuff floating around out there, any and all of which could possibly smack into our sweet little home.

    The 2005 YU55 will pass close to Earth again in 2028.

    [Image Courtesy IMDB]