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Alan Guth on new insights into the 'Big Bang' - 0 views

phys.org/...03-alan-guth-insights-big.html

scibyte124 Inflation

shared by Mars Base on 22 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Q: Can you explain the theory of cosmic inflation that you first put forth in 1980?
  • usually describe inflation as a theory of the "bang" of the Big Bang
  • describes the propulsion mechanism that drove the universe into the period of tremendous expansion that we call the Big Bang
  • ...49 more annotations...
  • The original Big Bang theory was really a theory of the aftermath of the bang
  • described how the universe was cooled by the expansion, and how the expansion was slowed by the attractive force of gravity
  • Inflation proposes that the expansion of the universe was driven by a repulsive form of gravity.
  • According to Newton, gravity is a purely attractive force, but this changed with Einstein and the discovery of general relativity
  • General relativity describes gravity as a distortion of spacetime, and allows for the possibility of repulsive gravity
  • Modern particle theories strongly suggest that at very high energies, there should exist forms of matter that create repulsive gravity
  • Inflation
  • proposes that at least a very small patch of the early universe was filled with this repulsive-gravity material
  • During the period of exponential expansion, any ordinary material would thin out, with the density diminishing to almost nothing
  • The repulsive-gravity material actually maintains a constant density as it expands, no matter how much it expands
  • While this appears to be a
  • violation
  • of the conservation of energy, it is actually
  • consistent
  • a peculiar feature of gravity: The energy of a gravitational field is negative
  • As the patch expands at constant density, more and more energy, in the form of matter, is created
  • But at the same time, more and more negative energy appears in the form of the gravitational field that is filling the region
  • The total energy remains constant, as it must, and therefore remains very small.
  • It is possible that the total energy of the entire universe is exactly zero, with the positive energy of matter completely canceled by the negative energy of gravity
  • At some point the inflation ends because the repulsive-gravity material becomes metastable
  • decays into ordinary particles, producing a very hot soup of particles that form the starting point of the conventional Big Bang
  • point the repulsive gravity turns off, but the region continues to expand in a coasting pattern for billions of years to come
  • inflation is a prequel to the era that cosmologists call the Big Bang, although it of course occurred after the origin of the universe, which is often also called the Big Bang.
  • Q: What is the new result announced this week, and how does it provide critical support for your theory?
  • The early universe, as we can see from the afterglow of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, was incredibly uniform,
  • to have structure form at all, there needed to be small nonuniformities at the end of inflation
  • The tiny nonuniformities that did exist were then amplified by gravity
  • these nonuniformities—which later produce stars, galaxies, and all the structure of the universe—are attributed to quantum theory
  • The temperature nonuniformities in the cosmic microwave background were first measured in 1992 by the COBE satellite
  • have not generally been seen as proof of inflation, in part because it is not clear that inflation is the only possible way that these fluctuations could have been produced.
  • The stretching effect of inflation,
  • also acts on the geometry of space itself, which according to general relativity is flexible
  • Space can be compressed, stretched, or even twisted.
  • The geometry of space also fluctuates on small scales, due to the physics of quantum theory, and inflation also stretches these fluctuations, producing gravity waves in the early universe.
  • The new result,
  • is a measurement of these gravity waves, at a very high level of confidence.
  • They do not see the gravity waves directly, but instead they have constructed a very detailed map of the polarization of the CMB in a patch of the sky.
  • They have observed a swirling pattern in the polarization (called "B modes") that can be created
  • by gravity waves in the early universe
  • This is the first time that even a hint of these primordial gravity waves has been detected
  • it is also the first time that any quantum properties of gravity have been directly observed.
  • Q: How would you describe the significance of these new findings, and your reaction to them?
  • The significance of these new findings
  • help tremendously in confirming the picture of inflation.
  • As far as we know, there is nothing other than inflation that can produce these gravity waves
  • it tells us a lot about the details of inflation that we did not already know
  • it determines the energy density of the universe at the time of inflation, which is something that previously had a wide range of possibilities.
  • By determining the energy density of the universe at the time of inflation, the new result also tells us a lot about which detailed versions of inflation are still viable, and which are no longer viable
  • The current result is not by itself conclusive, but it points in the direction of the very simplest inflationary models that can be constructed.
Mars Base

Bigelow Inflatable Module Will be Added to Space Station - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...will-be-added-to-space-station

scibyte77 BigelowAerospace

shared by Mars Base on 12 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • The next addition to the International Space Station will likely be an inflatable module from Bigelow Aerospace
  • NASA announced today they have awarded a $17.8 million contract to Bigelow to provide a new module for the ISS
  • This would be the first privately built module to be added to the space station
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • previous reports have indicated the inflatable module would be used for adding additional storage and workspace, and the module would be certified to remain on-orbit for two years
  • In 2006 Bigelow launched their Genesis I inflatable test module into orbit and according to their website, it is still functioning and “continuing to produce invaluable images, videos and data for Bigelow Aerospace
  • A second Genesis module was launched in 2007 and it, too, is still functioning in orbit.
  • even though the outer shell of their module is soft, as opposed to the rigid outer shell of current modules at the ISS, Bigelow’s inflatable modules are more resistant to micrometeoroid or orbital debris strikes
  • uses multiple layers of Vectran, a material which is twice as strong as Kevlar
Mars Base

First hints of gravitational waves in the Big Bang's afterglow - 0 views

phys.org/...avitational-big-afterglow.html

scibyte124 Inflation

shared by Mars Base on 22 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • As the last untested prediction of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, finding gravitational waves is a big deal.
  • Scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in the US have announced
  • what they believe is the indirect detection of gravitational waves in the afterglow of the Big Bang.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • The BICEP discovery provides further indirect evidence for the existence of gravitational waves
  • the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor for finding a double pulsar that strongly supported these "ripples" in spacetime
  • Before this announcement
  • we could measure the universe back to about a minute after the Big Bang.
  • The finding
  • has allowed us to study the universe when it was a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second old
  • tiny changes in temperature that were discovered by the COBE satellite (winning the 2006 Nobel Prize)
  • Alternative theories to inflation do not produce gravitational waves so
  • is strong evidence not only of the gravitational wave background but also inflation itself.
  • there has still been no direct detection of the gravitational radiation.
  • The first direct detection should follow in a few months
  • It is envisaged that the experiment will directly detect gravitational radiation coming from astrophysical sources from nearby galaxies
Mars Base

Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...son_Microwave_Anisotropy_Probe

scibyte88 WMAP

shared by Mars Base on 31 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • a spacecraft which measures differences in the temperature of the Big Bang's remnant radiant heat – the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation – across the full sky
  • The WMAP spacecraft was launched on June 30, 2001,
  • The WMAP mission succeeds the COBE space mission and was the second medium-class (MIDEX) spacecraft of the Explorer program.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • WMAP's measurements played the key role in establishing the current Standard Model of Cosmology
  • WMAP data are very well fit by a universe that is dominated by dark energy in the form of a cosmological constant
  • The anisotropies then are used to measure the universe's geometry, content, and evolution; and to test the Big Bang model, and the cosmic inflation theory
  • he map contains 3,145,728 pixels, and uses the HEALPix scheme to pixelize the sphere
  • The telescope's primary reflecting mirrors are a pair
  • that focus the signal onto a pair of
  • secondary reflecting mirrors.
  • shaped for optimal performance: a carbon fibre shell upon a Korex core, thinly-coated with aluminium and silicon oxide.
  • The secondary reflectors transmit the signals to the corrugated feedhorns that sit on a focal plane array box beneath the primary reflectors
  • The receivers are polarization-sensitive differential radiometers measuring the difference between two telescope beams.
  • To avoid collecting Milky Way galaxy foreground signals, the WMAP uses five discrete radio frequency bands
  • The WMAP's trajectory and orbit
  • The WMAP observes in five frequencies, permitting the measurement and subtraction of foreground contamination (from the Milky Way
  • Foreground contamination is removed in several ways
  • First, subtract extant emission maps from the WMAP's measurements; second, use the components' known, spectral values to identify them; third, simultaneously fit the position and spectra data of the foreground emission, using extra data sets
Mars Base

NASA Buys Private Inflatable Room for Space Station | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/inflatable-module-bigelow.html

scibyte77 BigelowAerospace

shared by Mars Base on 12 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • NASA officials have said that BEAM could be on orbit about two years after getting an official go-ahead
  • The module will likely be launched by one of the agency's commerical cargo suppliers, California-based SpaceX or Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp
  • The company wants to launch and link up several of its larger expandable modules to create private space stations, which could be used by a variety of clients.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Bigelow is also eyeing a possible outpost on the moon, for which the company envisions using its BA-330 modules (so named because they offer 330 cubic meters of usable internal volume).
  • Several BA-330 habitats, along with propulsion tanks and power units, would be joined together in space and then flown down to the lunar surface.
  • Lunar dirt would be piled over the modules to protect against radiation, thermal extremes and micrometeorite strikes.
Mars Base

NASA's LDSD 'Flying Saucer' Test--Update - Mars Science Laboratory - 0 views

mars.jpl.nasa.gov/...index.cfm

scibyte134 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 08 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • NASA's flying saucer-shaped test vehicle is ready
  • for its first engineering shakeout flight.
  • The Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) will gather data about landing heavy payloads on Mars and other planetary surfaces
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • As NASA plans increasingly ambitious robotic missions to Mars, laying the groundwork for even more complex human science expeditions to come, accommodating extended stays for explorers on the Martian surface will require larger and heavier spacecraft
  • use a helium balloon -- that, when fully inflated, would fit snugly into Pasadena's Rose Bowl
  • to lift our vehicle to 120,000 feet
  • A fraction of a second after dropping from the balloon, and a few feet below it, four small rocket
  • stabilize the saucer.
  • A half second later, a
  • solid-fueled rocket engine will
  • sending the test vehicle to the edge of the stratosphere
  • "Our goal is to get to an altitude and velocity which simulates the kind of environment one of our vehicles would encounter when it would fly in the Martian atmosphere," said Ian Clark, principal investigator of the LDSD project at JPL
  • to fly the two supersonic decelerator technologies that will be thoroughly tested during two LDSD flight tests next year.
  • The SIAD-R, essentially an inflatable doughnut that increases the vehicle's size and, as a result, its drag
  • . It will quickly slow the vehicle
  • where the
  • the largest supersonic parachute ever flown, first hits the supersonic flow
Mars Base

Private Groups Set Sights on Deep Space | Mars, the Moon & Asteroids | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/ht-deep-space-exploration.html

scibyte84 PrivateSpaceTravel

shared by Mars Base on 28 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • The nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation announced
  • (Feb. 27) that it aims to launch two people on a 501-day Mars flyby mission in January 2018
  • main goals are to generate excitement about space travel and test out technologies that will be needed to put boots on Mars in the future
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • mission would combine a commercial space capsule and inflatable module into a single spacecraft that will carry a man and a woman, possibly a married couple, to Mars and back. 
  • A number of companies and nonprofit organizations are developing plans to visit Mars, the moon and asteroids, for a variety of purposes
Mars Base

Planck's most detailed map ever reveals an almost perfect Universe - 0 views

phys.org/...3-planck-reveals-universe.html

scibyte87 PlanckConstant

shared by Mars Base on 22 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • the most detailed map ever created of the cosmic microwave background
  • the relic radiation from the Big Bang
  • was released
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • revealing the existence of features that challenge the foundations of our current understanding of the Universe
  • The image is based on the initial 15.5 months of data from Planck and is the mission's first all-sky picture of the oldest light in our Universe, imprinted on the sky when it was just 380 000 years old.
  • At that time, the young Universe was filled with a hot dense soup of interacting protons, electrons and photons at about 2700ºC
  • protons and electrons joined to form hydrogen atoms, the light was set free
  • As the Universe has expanded, this light today has been stretched out to microwave wavelengths, equivalent to a temperature of just 2.7 degrees above absolute zero.
  • that correspond to regions of slightly different densities at very early times, representing the seeds of all future structure: the stars and galaxies of today
  • According to the standard model of cosmology, the fluctuations arose immediately after the Big Bang and were stretched to cosmologically large scales during a brief period of accelerated expansion known as inflation.
  • Planck was designed to map these fluctuations across the whole sky with greater resolution and sensitivity than ever before
  • By analysing the nature and distribution of the seeds in Planck's CMB image, we can determine the composition and evolution of the Universe from its birth to the present day
  • because precision of Planck's map is so high, it also made it possible to reveal some peculiar unexplained features that may well require new physics to be understood
  • Since the release of Planck's first all-sky image in 2010, we have been carefully extracting and analysing all of the foreground emissions that lie between us and the Universe's first light
  • revealing the cosmic microwave background in the greatest detail yet
  • One of the most surprising findings is that the fluctuations in the CMB temperatures at large angular scales do not match those predicted by the standard model
  • their signals are not as strong as expected from the smaller scale structure
  • Another is an asymmetry in the average temperatures on opposite hemispheres of the sky
  • This runs counter to the prediction made by the standard model that the Universe should be broadly similar in any direction we look
  • a cold spot extends over a patch of sky that is much larger than expected.
  • The asymmetry and the cold spot had already been hinted at with Planck's predecessor
  • NASA's WMAP mission, but were largely ignored because of lingering doubts about their cosmic origin
  • One way to explain the anomalies is to propose that the Universe is in fact not the same in all directions on a larger scale than we can observe
  • In this scenario, the light rays from the CMB may have taken a more complicated route through the Universe than previously understood, resulting in some of the unusual patterns observed today.
  • ultimate goal would be to construct a new model that predicts the anomalies and links them together
  • we don't know whether this is possible and what type of new physics might be needed
  • the Planck data conform spectacularly well to the expectations of a rather simple model of the Universe, allowing scientists to extract the most refined values yet for its ingredients
  • dark energy, a mysterious force thought to be responsible for accelerating the expansion of the Universe, accounts for less than previously thought.
  • Normal matter that makes up stars and galaxies contributes just 4.9% of the mass/energy density of the Universe
  • Dark matter, which has thus far only been detected indirectly by its gravitational influence, makes up 26.8%, nearly a fifth more than the previous estimate.
  • Planck data also set a new value for the rate at which the Universe is expanding today, known as the Hubble constant
  • At 67.15 kilometres per second per megaparsec, this is significantly less than the current standard value in astronomy
  • The data imply that the age of the Universe is 13.82 billion years.
  • We see an almost perfect fit to the standard model of cosmology, but with intriguing features that force us to rethink some of our basic assumptions
Mars Base

Universe is a teeny bit older than thought | Matter & Energy | Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...a_teeny_bit_older_than_thought

scibyte87 PlanckConstant

shared by Mars Base on 22 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Launched by the European Space Agency in 2009, the Planck satellite scans the sky for the cosmic microwave background, radiation that dates back to about 380,000 years after the Big Bang
  • Planck is essentially a supersensitive thermometer that can probe the temperature of this radiation to millionths of a degree
  • The red spots in the map are about 1 part in 100,000 hotter than the average temperature, while the blue spots are slightly colder
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • the theory of inflation, which posits that, around 10-30 seconds after the Big Bang, the universe briefly expanded faster than the speed of light.
  • Researchers who analyzed the telescope’s data announced that the universe is about 13.81 billion years old, or 80 million years older than previously thought
  • The telescope is still making observations, and in about a year researchers will add
  • data t
Mars Base

Megapixels: Car Airbags That Could Save A Cyclist's Life | Popular Science - 0 views

www.popsci.com/...at-could-save-a-cyclists-life+

scibyte79 AirBags

shared by Mars Base on 22 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • In the United States, only 1 percent of trips are made by bicycle
  • In the Netherlands, which has only 1/18 of the U.S.’s population, that number is close to 26 percent
  • With so many bikes on the road, Dutch company
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • is working on a car airbag that deploys outside the vehicle to reduce bicyclist injuries
  • Upon impact, the airbag, housed under the hood, inflates to cover parts of the windshield and cushion a biker
  • In tests last November, engineers drove a track-guided car into a dummy on a bike at 25 mph, the average speed of a crash
  • Accelerometers in the dummy’s head and neck and pressure sensors embedded in its limbs indicated brain damage and broken bones
  • Dummies in collisions with the airbag had fewer and less severe injuries up to 45 percent of the time
Mars Base

Frequent multitaskers are bad at it: Motorists overrate ability to talk on cell phones ... - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...rs-bad-motorists-overrate.html

scibyte79 multitasking

shared by Mars Base on 24 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Most people believe they can multitask effectively, but a
  • study indicates that people who multitask the most – including talking on a cell phone while driving – are least capable of doing so.
  • data suggest the people talking on cell phones while driving are people who probably shouldn't. We showed that people who multitask the most are those who appear to be the least capable of multitasking effectively
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • The people who are most likely to multitask harbor the illusion they are better than average at it, when in fact they are no better than average and often worse
  • The study ran 310 undergraduate psychology students through a battery of tests and questionnaires to measure actual multitasking ability, perceived multitasking ability, cell phone use while driving, use of a wide array of electronic media, and personality traits such as impulsivity and sensation-seeking.
  • people who score high on a test of actual multitasking ability tend not to multitask because they are better able to focus attention on the task at hand
  • 70 percent of participants thought they were above average at multitasking, which is statistically impossible
  • The more people multitask by talking on cell phones while driving or by using multiple media at once, the more they lack the actual ability to multitask, and their perceived multitasking ability "was found to be significantly inflated
  • People with high levels of impulsivity and sensation-seeking reported more multitasking
  • there was an exception: People who talk on cell phones while driving tend not to be impulsive, indicating that cell phone use is a deliberate choice
  • research suggests that people who engage in multitasking often do so not because they have the ability, but "because they are less able to block out distractions and focus on a singular task
  • The study participants were 310 University of Utah psychology undergraduates – 176 female and 134 male with a median age of 21 – who volunteered for their department's subject pool in exchange for extra course credit.
  • To measure actual multitasking ability, participants performed a test named Operation Span, or OSPAN.
  • The test involves two tasks: memorization and math computation
  • Participants must remember two to seven letters, each separated by a math equation that they must identify as true or false
  • A simple example of a question: "is 2+4=6?, g, is 3-2=2?, a, is 4x3=12." Answer: true, g, false, a, true.
  • Participants also ranked their perceptions of their own multitasking ability by giving themselves a score ranging from zero to 100, with 50 percent meaning average.
  • Study subjects reported how often they used a cell phone while driving, and what percentage of the time they are on the phone while driving
  • also completed a survey of how often and for how many hours they use which media, including printed material, television and video, computer video, music, nonmusic audio, video games, phone, instant and text messaging, e-mail, the Web and other computer software such as word processing
  • researchers looked for significant correlations among results of the various tests and questionnaires
  • people who multitask the most tend to be impulsive, sensation-seeking, overconfident of their multitasking abilities, and they tend to be less capable of multitasking
  • 25 percent of the people who performed best on the OSPAN test of multitasking ability "are the people who are least likely to multitask and are most likely to do one thing at a time
  • 70 percent of participants said they were above-average at multitasking, and they were more likely to multitask
  • Media multitasking – except cell phone use while driving – correlated significantly with impulsivity, particularly the inability to concentrate and acting without thinking.
  • Multitasking, including cell phone use while driving, correlated significantly with sensation-seeking, indicating some people multitask because it is more stimulating, interesting and challenging, and less boring – even if it may hurt their overall performance
Mars Base

Shuttle Enterprise Beneath Shelter on NYC Museum Flight Deck | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/le-enterprise-nyc-display.html

scibyte52 shuttle enterprise

shared by Mars Base on 22 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Two weeks after "landing" on top of the aircraft carrier-turned-Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City, NASA's prototype space shuttle Enterprise is now underneath the inflatable canopy that will house its public display.
  • Enterprise was covered by the opaque-white fabric shelter on Tuesday (June 19) to protect it from exposure to the elements and to meet NASA's display requirements for a climate-controlled facility
  • Some final work configuring the canopy is still underway however, including the removal of scaffolding that supported the fabric being raised, which led to it being deflated again.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • pressurized enclosure extends over Enterprise's tail, which tops out at 57 feet (17 meters) high, and beyond the shuttle's 78-foot (24-meter) wingspan. It occupies the rear of the Intrepid's flight deck with the shuttle's nose pointed out toward the Hudson River
  • display is set to open to the public on July 19
  • visitors the chance to closely view and circle around the prototype winged orbiter
  • The location for the permanent Enterprise exhibit is still to be decided. Intrepid officials told collectSPACE that they are considering locations across the street from where the aircraft carrier is docked and also alongside the museum on the pier.
Mars Base

Santorini Bulges as Magma Balloons Underneath - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...lava-santorini-volcano-science

scibyte63 Santorini

shared by Mars Base on 13 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Santorini locals began to suspect last year that something was afoot with the volcano under their Greek island group
  • Wine glasses occasionally vibrated and clinked in cafes, suggesting tiny tremors, and tour guides smelled strange gasses.
  • satellite radar technology has revealed the source of the symptoms. A rush of molten rock swelled the magma chamber under the volcano by some 13 to 26 million cubic yards (10 to 20 million cubic meters)—about 15 times the volume of London's Olympic Stadium—between January 2011 and April 2012
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • even forced parts of the island's surface to rise upward and outward by 3 to 5.5 inches (8 to 14 centimeters).
  • volcano has been quiet for 60 years
  • recent events don't indicate an imminent eruption
  • the earthquake activity and the rate of bulging have both slowed right down in the last few months, it doesn't look as though the volcano is about to start to erupt, and it is quite likely that it could remain quiet for another few years or decades.
  • don't know enough about the lifecycle of large volcanoes in between eruptions to be certain
  • beginning in the January 2011 data, more than a thousand small quakes, most of them imperceptible
  • confirmed a subtle rise in Santorini's surface level with satellite radar images and GPS receivers
  • Catastrophic eruptions on Santorini, which produce mostly pumice rather than lava, appear to occur here about 20,000 years apart
  • The last one, in 1950, oozed enough lava to cover a few tennis courts
  • Despite its relative quiet, Santorini is an ideal location to learn more about processes like the magma chamber's rapid inflation
  • While satellite evidence of swelling magma chambers has rarely been available for an active volcano, the processes the data represent may not be all that unusual
  • some large volcanoes like Santorini and Yellowstone spend hundreds or thousands of years in a state of what you'd call dormancy
  • they'll often have these little restless patches
  • These types of phenomena are likely to be common, but you need the right instruments and technology to detect what are usually rather small changes in behavior."
  • we aren't any closer to knowing if, or when, the next lava eruption might happen
  • likening the recent swelling to someone blowing a big breath into an invisible balloon.
  • don't know how small or big the balloon is, and we don't know whether just one more breath will be enough for it to pop or not
Mars Base

NASA - Curiosity Spotted on Parachute by Orbiter - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...pia15978b.html

scibyte57 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 06 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • The image scale is 13.2 inches (33.6 centimeters) per pixel
  • The parachute appears fully inflated and performing perfectly. Details in the parachute, such as the band gap at the edges and the central hole, are clearly seen. The cords connecting the parachute to the back shell cannot be seen, although they were seen in the image of NASA's Phoenix lander descending, perhaps due to the difference in lighting angles. The bright spot on the back shell containing Curiosity might be a specular reflection off of a shiny area. Curiosity was released from the back shell sometime after this image was acquired.
Mars Base

May 26 - Today in Science History - Scientists born on May 26th, died, and events - 0 views

www.todayinsci.com/...5_26.htm

scibyte131 LookingBackMay

shared by Mars Base on 15 May 14 - No Cached
  • Leeuwenhoek's animalcules
  • In 1676, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek applied his hobby of making microscopes from his own handmade lenses to observe some water running off a roof during a heavy rainstorm. He finds that it contains, in his words, “very little animalcules.” The life he has found in the runoff water is not present in pure rainwater. This was a fundamental discovery, for it showed that the bacteria and one-celled animals did not fall from the sky. When a ball of molten glass is inflated like a balloon, a small droplet of the hot fluid collects at the very bottom the bubble. Leeuwenhoek used these droplets as microscope lenses to view the animalcules. Despite their crude nature, those early lenses enabled Leeuwenhoek to describe an amazing world of microscopic life
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