Tag: environments (page 2 of 3)

New data that fundamental physics constants underlie life-enabling universe

January 19, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Excerpt from spacedaily.com For nearly half a century, theoretical physicists have made a series of discoveries that certain constants in fundamental physics seem extraordinarily fine-tuned to allow for the emergence of a life-enabling universe.Thi...

View Article Here Read More

New EAGLE Simulation Shows Galaxies as They Really Are ~ Video

January 13, 2015 / / 0 Comments


The EAGLE simulation of the universe generates a more accurate picture of galaxies than any simulation of this size before it.



Excerpt from space.com

Galaxies come in all different shapes and sizes, and a massive new simulation of the universe has captured that galactic variety with more accuracy than any simulation before it, according to a new study.

Using a simulation called EAGLE (Evolution and Assembly of GaLaxies and their Environments), researchers from multiple institutes in Europe have cooked up a dazzling simulation of the universe that contains tens of thousands of galaxies.



A sample of the new simulation can be seen in the video above. It shows the evolution of the universe in a region 25 megaparsecs cubed (about 81 million light years).



"This is really a staggering success, I think it's fair to say," Rob Crain from Liverpool John Moores University and a member of the group that built EAGLE, told Space.com. The researchers are part of a collaboration called the Virgo Consortium for Cosmological Supercomputer Simulations. "Go to our previous generation of simulations, and the galaxies all look like big spherical blobs. Now they form disks and bars and irregular galaxies and different types of ellipticals."

A computer simulation is like a recipe for the universe. Scientists have to start with a list of ingredients and instructions — which actually means a description of the physics that underlie the current universe. While many simulations can recreate the major cosmic ingredients (like stars and galaxies), the subtleties are harder to achieve (like the shape, mass and distribution of those stars and galaxies).

The bottom right corner of the screen shows the time after the Big Bang (denoted by "t"). In the early universe, matter is dispersed and hazy, but gradually coalesces into a sort of web, with long strands of material connecting nodes where galaxies are clustered. At 1:06, the simulation starts again from the beginning and shows the three major components of the model: dark matter (labeled as CDM), gas (the red globs are gas clouds where stars are often born), and stars. The full EAGLE simulation contains an area 100 megaparsecs cubed.

One goal of the EAGLE group was to produce a simulation large enough that it contained all types of galaxies seen in the universe. This allows the researchers to find out if the physics they programmed into EAGLE are accurate for all galaxies, and if they produce the correct number of galaxies in the universe.




Schaye said the picture of the universe created by the EAGLE simulation "is not perfect, but for astronomers the level of agreement is very impressive. It seems we have the main ingredients in place."

View Article Here Read More

Google’s ‘goofy’ new self-driving car a sign of things to come

December 22, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Google's latest prototype of its self-driving vehicle was unveiled Monday, Dec. 22, 2014. (Google photo) Excerpt from mercurynews.comMOUNTAIN VIEW -- Google unveiled its first "fully functional" prototype for its own self-driving car Monday and plans...

View Article Here Read More

Top 10 Ridiculously Common Science Myths

November 30, 2014 / / 0 Comments






listverse.com
There is nothing better than a bit of mythbusting (which accounts for the popularity of the television program of the same name), so here we are again, presenting you with a new list of terribly common misconceptions and myths – this time about science.

10
Evolutionary Improvements
Evolution Std.Jpg
The Myth: Evolution causes something to go from “lower” to “higher”
While it is a fact that natural selection weeds out unhealthy genes from the gene pool, there are many cases where an imperfect organism has survived. Some examples of this are fungi, sharks, crayfish, and mosses – these have all remained essentially the same over a great period of time. These organisms are all sufficiently adapted to their environment to survive without improvement.
Other taxa have changed a lot, but not necessarily for the better. Some creatures have had their environments changed and their adaptations may not be as well suited to their new situation. Fitness is linked to their environment, not to progress.

9
Humans Pop In Space
Ed-White.Jpg
The Myth: When exposed to the vacuum of space, the human body pops
This myth is the result of science fiction movies which use it to add excitement or drama to the plot. In fact, a human can survive for 15 – 30 seconds in outer space as long as they breathe out before the exposure (this prevents the lungs from bursting and sending air into the bloodstream). After 15 or so seconds, the lack of oxygen causes unconsciousness which eventually leads to death by asphyxiation.
8
Brightest Star
800Px-Sirius A And B Artwork.Jpg
The Myth: Polaris is the brightest star in the northern hemisphere night sky
Sirius is actually brighter with a magnitude of ?1.47 compared to Polaris’ 1.97 (the lower the number the brighter the star). The importance of Polaris is that its position in the sky marks North – and for that reason it is also called the “North Star”. Polaris is the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Minor and, interestingly, is only the current North Star as pole stars change over time because stars exhibit a slow continuous drift with respect to the Earth’s axis.
7
Five Second Rule
5Seconds1.Jpg
The Myth: Food that drops on the floor is safe to eat if you pick it up within five seconds
This is utter bunkum which should be obvious to most readers. If there are germs on the floor and the food lands on them, they will immediately stick to the food. Having said that, eating germs and dirt is not always a bad thing as it helps us to develop a robust immune system. I prefer to have a “how-tasty-is-it” rule: if it is something really tasty, it can sit there for ten minutes for all I care – I will still eat it.
6
Dark side of the Moon
179077120 (1)
The Myth: There is a dark side of the moon
Actually – every part of the moon is illuminated at sometime by the sun. This misconception has come about because there is a side of the moon which is never visible to the earth. This is due to tidal locking; this is due to the fact that Earth’s gravitational pull on the moon is so immense that it can only show one face to us. Wikipedia puts it rather smartly thus: “Tidal locking occurs when the gravitational gradient makes one side of an astronomical body always face another; for example, one side of the Earth’s Moon always faces the Earth. A tidally locked body takes just as long to rotate around its own axis as it does to revolve around its partner. This synchronous rotation causes one hemisphere constantly to face the partner body.”


5
Brain Cells
Brain Cell.Jpg
The Myth: Brain cells can’t regenerate – if you kill a brain cell, it is never replaced
The reason for this myth being so common is that it was believed and taught by the science community for a very long time. But in 1998, scientists at the Sweden and the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California discovered that brain cells in mature humans can regenerate. It had previously been long believed that complex brains would be severely disrupted by new cell growth, but the study found that the memory and learning center of the brain can create new cells – giving hope for an eventual cure for illnesses like Alzheimer’s.
4
Pennies from Heaven
Empirestatebuilding.Jpg
The Myth: A penny dropped from a very high building can kill a pedestrian below
This myth is so common it has even become a bit of a cliche in movies. The idea is that if you drop a penny from the top of a tall building (such as the Empire State Building) – it will pick up enough speed to kill a person if it lands on them on the ground. But the fact is, the aerodynamics of a penny are not sufficient to make it dangerous. What would happen in reality is that the person who gets hit would feel a sting – but they would certainly survive the impact.
3
Friction Heat
20050825-Meteor-Artist-Impression-110436.Jpg
The Myth: Meteors are heated by friction when entering the atmosphere
When a meteoroid enters the atmosphere of the earth (becoming a meteor), it is actually the speed compressing the air in front of the object that causes it to heat up. It is the pressure on the air that generates a heat intense enough to make the rock so hot that is glows brilliantly for our viewing pleasure (if we are lucky enough to be looking in the sky at the right time). We should also dispel the myth about meteors being hot when they hit the earth – becoming meteorites. Meteorites are almost always cold when they hit – and in fact they are often found covered in frost. This is because they are so cold from their journey through space that the entry heat is not sufficient to do more than burn off the outer layers.
2
Lightning
Lightning.Jpg
The Myth: Lightning never strikes the same place twice
Next time you see lightning strike and you consider running to the spot to protect yourself from the next bolt, remember this item! Lightning does strike the same place twice – in fact it is very common. Lightning obviously favors certain areas such as high trees or buildings. In a large field, the tallest object is likely to be struck multiple times until the lightning moves sufficiently far away to find a new target. The Empire State Building gets struck around 25 times a year.
1
Gravity in Space
Astronaut Banjo.Jpg
The Myth: There is no gravity in space
In fact, there is gravity in space – a lot of it. The reason that astronauts appear to be weightless because they are orbiting the earth. They are falling towards the earth but moving sufficiently sideways to miss it. So they are basically always falling but never landing. Gravity exists in virtually all areas of space. When a shuttle reaches orbit height (around 250 miles above the earth), gravity is reduced by only 10%.
Inspired by an excellent LiveScience Article. This article is licensed under the GFDL because it contains quotations from Wikipedia.

View Article Here Read More

Fireball Streaks Across Texas Sky ~ Video

November 9, 2014 / / 0 Comments

meteor-11-8-2014-heatmap

Excerpt from amsmeteors.org 

 The flash was bright enough to be picked up by a NASA camera over 500 miles away



The American Meteor Society has received over 200 reports about a bright fireball over San Antonio Texas Saturday night at approximately 8:45 local time or 2:45 Universal Time. Witnesses reported an extremely bright green light that rivaled the brightness of the sun. Bill Cooke (Meteoroid Environments Office Lead / NASA) were able to estimate the peak brightness at >-14 (stellar magnitude), which means we are dealing with a meter class object with a mass of a few (1-2?) metric tonnes!

Below is a 3D trajectory computed from the witness reports. 

 San Antonio Fireball - November 8th, 2014

Texas Fireball - Picture by John Gutierrez @Copyright John Gutierrez - www.Anticipationvideos.com
Texas Fireball – Picture by John Gutierrez @Copyright John Gutierrez – www.Anticipationvideos.com


View Article Here Read More

Ramblings of an Insomniac Sagittarius ~ Is the Ultimate Truth the Ultimate Lesson? By Greg Giles

October 5, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Tonight is my first article in a new series I call Ramblings of an Insomniac Sagittarius. These writings will prove just as billed and just what one would expect from a Sagittarius. Its why you keep us around and its why you invite us to your partie...

View Article Here Read More

NASA Brings Scientists & Theologians Together To Prepare World For Extraterrestrial Contact

September 27, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Arjun Walia, Collective-EvolutionA couple of months ago top U.S. astronomers gathered in front of congress to let them know that extraterrestrial life exists without question. Their main argument was the size of the universe, emphasizing that there are trillions of stars out there, with one in every five most likely harboring an Earth-like planet. It’s also important to keep in mind that planets do not have to be “Earth-like” in order to harbor life. You can read mor [...]

View Article Here Read More

Today’s New Moon Commences Libra Cycle

September 24, 2014 / / 0 Comments

cafeastrology.comA NEW Moon occurs on Wednesday, September 24, 2014, at 2:14 AM EDT. Early Wednesday, a new cycle begins. The Virgo New Moon cycle ends and the Libra New Moon cycle begins. The New Moon in Libra cycle is a good time to commit ...

View Article Here Read More

How Underground Therapists and Scientists Keep Psychedelic Medicine Alive Despite the Gov’t Ban

September 17, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Tom Shroder, AlterNetIn the past decade, after thirty years in the deep freeze, research into the medicinal use of psychedelic drugs, ranging from psilocybin to Ketamine, and from MDMA to LSD, has begun to accelerate. FDA-approved pilot studies and clinical trials using the drugs under controlled conditions and in combination with talk therapy have shown they could be used safely, delivering promising results in a wide range of tough-to-treat maladies, including opiate and tobacco addictio [...]

View Article Here Read More

Early Earth less hellish than previously thought

September 16, 2014 / / 0 Comments


https://i0.wp.com/news.vanderbilt.edu/files/Dixoncoolearlyearthweb.jpg?resize=640%2C327
Artist's illustration of what a cool early Earth looked like. (Artwork by Don Dixon, cosmographica.com)

vanderbilt.edu

Conditions on Earth for the first 500 million years after it formed may have been surprisingly similar to the present day, complete with oceans, continents and active crustal plates.

This alternate view of Earth’s first geologic eon, called the Hadean, has gained substantial new support from the first detailed comparison of zircon crystals that formed more than 4 billion years ago with those formed contemporaneously in Iceland, which has been proposed as a possible geological analog for early Earth.

Calvin Miller standing on a hilly landscape
Professor Calvin Miller (Vanderbilt University)

The study was conducted by a team of geologists directed by Calvin Miller, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Vanderbilt University, and published online this weekend by the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters in a paper titled, “Iceland is not a magmatic analog for the Hadean: Evidence from the zircon record.”

From the early 20th century up through the 1980’s, geologists generally agreed that conditions during the Hadean period were utterly hostile to life. Inability to find rock formations from the period led them to conclude that early Earth was hellishly hot, either entirely molten or subject to such intense asteroid bombardment that any rocks that formed were rapidly remelted. As a result, they pictured the surface of the Earth as covered by a giant “magma ocean.”

This perception began to change about 30 years ago when geologists discovered zircon crystals (a mineral typically associated with granite) with ages exceeding 4 billion years old preserved in younger sandstones. These ancient zircons opened the door for exploration of the Earth’s earliest crust. In addition to the radiometric dating techniques that revealed the ages of these ancient zircons, geologists used other analytical techniques to extract information about the environment in which the crystals formed, including the temperature and whether water was present.
Since then zircon studies have revealed that the Hadean Earth was not the uniformly hellish place previously imagined, but during some periods possessed an established crust cool enough so that surface water could form – possibly on the scale of oceans.

Accepting that the early Earth had a solid crust and liquid water (at least at times), scientists have continued to debate the nature of that crust and the processes that were active at that time: How similar was the Hadean Earth to what we see today?

Panoramic photo of Miller standing on a hilltop
Calvin Miller at the Kerlingarfjoll volcano in central Iceland.  

Some geologists have proposed that the early Earth may have resembled regions like this. (Tamara Carley / Vanderbilt)
Two schools of thought have emerged: One argues that Hadean Earth was surprisingly similar to the present day. The other maintains that, although it was less hostile than formerly believed, early Earth was nonetheless a foreign-seeming and formidable place, similar to the hottest, most extreme, geologic environments of today. A popular analog is Iceland, where substantial amounts of crust are forming from basaltic magma that is much hotter than the magmas that built most of Earth’s current continental crust.

“We reasoned that the only concrete evidence for what the Hadean was like came from the only known survivors: zircon crystals – and yet no one had investigated Icelandic zircon to compare their telltale compositions to those that are more than 4 billion years old, or with zircon from other modern environments,” said Miller.

Tamara Carley kneeling by a stream
Tamara Carley panning for zircons on the bank of the Markarfljot River in south-central Iceland. (Abraham Padilla / Vanderbilt University)

In 2009, Vanderbilt doctoral student Tamara Carley, who has just accepted the position of assistant professor at Layfayette College, began collecting samples from volcanoes and sands derived from erosion of Icelandic volcanoes. She separated thousands of zircon crystals from the samples, which cover the island’s regional diversity and represent its 18 million year history.

Working with Miller and doctoral student Abraham Padilla at Vanderbilt, Joe Wooden at Stanford University, Axel Schmitt and Rita Economos from UCLA, Ilya Bindeman at the University of Oregon and Brennan Jordan at the University of South Dakota, Carley analyzed about 1,000 zircon crystals for their age and elemental and isotopic compositions. She then searched the literature for all comparable analyses of Hadean zircon and for representative analyses of zircon from other modern environments.

“We discovered that Icelandic zircons are quite distinctive from crystals formed in other locations on modern Earth. We also found that they formed in magmas that are remarkably different from those in which the Hadean zircons grew,” said Carley.

Tiny crystals on black background
Images of a collection of Icelandic zircons taken with a scanning electron microscope. They range in size from a tenth of a millimeter to a few thousands of a millimeter. (Tamara Carley / Vanderbilt)

Most importantly, their analysis found that Icelandic zircons grew from much hotter magmas than Hadean zircons. Although surface water played an important role in the generation of both Icelandic and Hadean crystals, in the Icelandic case the water was extremely hot when it interacted with the source rocks while the Hadean water-rock interactions were at significantly lower temperatures.
“Our conclusion is counterintuitive,” said Miller. “Hadean zircons grew from magmas rather similar to those formed in modern subduction zones, but apparently even ‘cooler’ and ‘wetter’ than those being produced today.”

View Article Here Read More

Galactic Federation of Light Pleiadian High Council May-13-2013

May 14, 2013 / / 0 Comments

The Pleiadian High Council: Telepathic Conversations Have Always Preceded Contact
Channeled by Wes Annac
https://bay148.mail.live.com/default.aspx?rru=home&livecom=1#n=1075341958&rru=inbox&fid=1&mid=80531ea0-bc0a-11e2-ba75-00215ad7b3ac

View Article Here Read More

Galactic Federation of Light Sheldan Nidle April-09-2013

April 10, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Sheldan Nidle’s Update for the Galactic Federation of Light and Spiritual Hierarchy
http://www.paoweb.com/sn040913.htm

You are to rejoin the ranks of a magnificent array of Spiritual Hierarchies and Life Streams

View Article Here Read More
Older posts Newer posts

Deep Space Leaderboard 728x90

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License.
unless otherwise marked.

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy



— Up ↑ —