salem6sci

February is a time when Americans reflect on the tremendous contributions of people of African descent. While names like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks are known, names of famous black scientists and inventors are not as common. Well, not until now. Let's examine some notable men and women who made great achievements in science, technology and engineering. Here are some examples of giants on whose shoulders we stand.

The supercontinent Pangaea, with its connected South America and Africa, broke apart 200 million years ago. But the continents haven't stopped shifting -- the tectonic plates beneath our feet (in Earth's two top layers, the lithosphere and the asthenosphere) are still traveling at about the rate your fingernails grow. Michael Molina discusses the catalysts and consequences of continental drift.

The supercontinent Pangaea, with its connected South America and Africa, broke apart 200 million years ago. But the continents haven't stopped shifting -- the tectonic plates beneath our feet (in Earth's two top layers, the lithosphere and the asthenosphere) are still traveling at about the rate your fingernails grow. Michael Molina discusses the catalysts and consequences of continental drift.

A great VSauce video that introduces colors and how they work. It also addresses why the sky is blue.

If you look through your glasses, binoculars or a window, you see the world on the other side. How is it that something so solid can be so invisible? Mark Miodownik melts the scientific secret behind amorphous solids.

A father of four, who applied for a one-way-ticket to live on Mars, could be looking at a divorce as a result of his extraterrestrial ambition.

Ken Sullivan made it the next stage of the Mars One project, which could potentially see him making a new life on Mars - but his wife and children are not happy about the news.

Mr Sullivan, who lives in Utah, is among the 1,058 applicants selected so far who could colonise the red planet and never return to their families and friends on Earth.

For the first time in the history of humankind, economical participation in space exploration is a reality. With Mars One's recent launch of a crowdfunding campaign, it's now possible to send a personal item to distances far beyond your wildest dreams. For many, the Mars One mission is the gateway to a new era in man's historic reach for the stars.

For about 50 years, government organizations have been funding and managing space exploration across the globe. Government run exploration, funded by public monies, has provided limited access to most citizens of those countries. In the last few years, private organizations such as Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and Eric Anderson's Space Adventures have made space exploration possible for the mega-rich. A flight with Virgin Galactic 68 miles above Earth goes for a cool $250,000 while the potential 2017 flight to the moon from Space Adventures is rumored to cost an astronomical $150 million. There are others in between, but none as accessible as Mars One. Bas Lansdorp, co-founder of Mars One, has set his sights on involving the everyday man and woman in space exploration

Mars One will establish a permanent human settlement on Mars. Crews of four will depart every two years, starting in 2024. Our first unmanned mission will be launched in 2018. Participate in this mission to Mars through our crowdfunding campaign.

Mars One will establish a human settlement on Mars. You can participate in the first major step: a private Mars Lander and Satellite mission in 2018.

How the Eye Functions - Diagrams of structure of the human eye. How light waves are refracted by lens of eye & focused on the retina. The lens, its position & changes in curvature. Monocular & binocular vision, retina and function.

What does Pikachu have to do with your eyes? Find out in 10 things you didn't know about your eyes.

Music= Around the World by Terry Devine-King

A 2013 meteor explosion above Chelyabinsk, Russia injured more than 1,700 people. It was completely unexpected -- and it could happen again. Here's what NASA's doing to make sure we know how to act when (not if) the next one hits.

This got us thinking: What happens when smaller (and bigger) objects fly into our atmosphere? We used Purdue University's "Impact: Earth!" simulator to find our answers. Our own Bob Al-Greene illustrated the results, as seen in the gallery above.

Some highlights: Rocks the size of basketballs enter our planet about once a month; most burn apart in the atmosphere before they reach the surface. Objects as long as standard school buses (roughly 12 meters around) only sneak into the Earth every 20 years or so - but, as seen in Chelyabinsk, the damage can be much greater.

All results assume the object is traveling at a 45-degree angle, with a density level of 3000 kg/m^3 and a velocity of 11 km/s. Everything is assumed to be seen from 100 kilometers away from the direct impact zone.

Click "Show As List" on the bottom-left of the gallery to view larger images. And check out our Google Hangout with asteroid experts to learn more about what's being done to fend off space rocks, from basketball-sized to London-sized.

A great overview of the reasons that space exploration is worth the money from the Riding on Robots blog.

The Internet's favorite astrophysicist talks about saving NASA, putting a person on Mars, and why he thinks every tweet is "tasty."

The first color pictures from the NASA space probe expedition to Mars have now been published. They look like -- well, they look like pictures of a lifeless, distant planet. They show blank, empty landscapes. They show craters and boulders. They show red sand. Death Valley, the most desolate of American deserts, at least contains strange cacti, vicious scorpions, the odd oasis. Mars has far less than that. Not only does the planet have no life, it has no air, no water, no warmth. The temperature on the Martian surface hardly rises much above zero degrees Fahrenheit, and can drop several hundred degrees below that.

I like to point out that the space program technology transfer is two-way. Many NASA engineers give their expertise and spare time to apply space program technology to problems facing the developing world. In doing so, they learn valuable lessons that will allow us to push space exploration beyond low-earth orbit. The highly efficient engineering approaches that are required in the developing world - robust solutions that do not require a lot of maintenance, resupply or training - are the same approaches we need to employ if we are going to break out of the bounds of low-earth orbit.

Read any debate about space exploration, and this question will invariably come up. "Why should we be spending money exploring space when there are so many problems here on Earth that we need to solve first?" It's a tricky one. I've got a simple answer; space exploration is awesome. Come on, think of space ships traveling to other worlds - that's really cool.

Okay, perhaps I've got too simplistic an argument, so I turned to the astrosphere and posed the question to other space bloggers. Here's what they had to say…

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Mr Baumgartner, who became the first man to break the sound barrier after leaping from 128,100ft above the Earth almost two weeks ago, urged the US Government to divert the money it spends on Mars toon environmental projects on Earth.
"A lot of guys they are talking about landing on Mars," he said. "Because [they say] it is so important to land on Mars because we would learn a lot more about our planet here, our Earth, by going to Mars which actually makes no sense to me because we know a lot about Earth and we still treat our planet, which is very fragile, in a really bad way.
"So I think we should perhaps spend all the money [which is] going to Mars to learn about Earth. I mean, you cannot send people there because it is just too far away. That little knowledge we get from Mars I don't think it does make sense."