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Mars Base

Huge Dust Devil on Mars Captured in Action - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...vil-on-mars-captured-in-action

scibyte37 mars

shared by Mars Base on 08 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • A towering dust devil, casts a serpentine shadow over the Martian surface in this image acquired by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
  • Mars orbiters, rovers and landers have all captured devils in action before
  • whirlwind on Mars lofting a twisting column of dust more than 800 meters (about a half a mile) high, with the dust plume about 30 meters or yards in diameter.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • on Feb. 16, 2012
  • Amazonis Planitia region of northern Mars
  • Evidence of many previous whirlwinds, or dust devils, are visible as streaks on the dusty surface shown in the image
  • like on Earth, winds on Mars are powered by solar heating
  • Mars is now farthest from the Sun,
  • though the exposure to the Sun’s rays is now less, even so, the dust devils are moving dust around on Mars’ surface
  • Dust devils occur on Earth as well as on Mars
  • spinning columns of air, made visible by the dust they pull off the ground
  • Unlike a tornado, a dust devil typically forms on a clear day
  • ground is heated by the sun, warming the air just above the ground
  • eated air near the surface rises quickly through a small pocket of cooler air above i
  • the air may begin to rotate, if conditions are just right.
Mars Base

Best Views Yet of Historic Apollo Landing Sites - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...-historic-apollo-landing-sites

scibyte37 Archeology apollo

shared by Mars Base on 08 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • LROC image of the Apollo 11 landing site, acquired Nov. 5, 2011
  • Nov. 5, 2011 from an altitude of only 15 miles (24 km). This is the highest-resolution view yet of the Apollo 11 landing site
  • Lunar Module’s descent stage, a seismic experiment monitor, a laser ranging reflector (LRRR, still used today to measure distances between Earth and the Moon) and its cover, and a camera can be discerned in the overhead image
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • as well as the darker trails of the astronauts’ bootprints, including Armstrong’s jaunt eastward to the rim of Little West crater
  • the total area Neil and Buzz explored it would easily fit within the infield of a baseball diamond!
  • Armstrong’s visit to the crater’s edge was an unplanned excursion. He used the vantage point to capture a panoramic image of the historic site:
  • Previously the LROC captured the Apollo 15 landing site, which included the tracks of the lunar rover — as well as the rover itself
  • Arizona State University featured the latest similarly high-resolution view of the Apollo 12 site
  • This location has the honor of being two landing sites in one: Apollo 12 and the Surveyor 3 spacecraft, which had landed on April 20, 1967 – two and a half years earlier!
  • the US flag planted by Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean isn’t itself visible, the shadow cast by it is.
  • Apollo 12 was the only mission to successfully visit the site of a previous spacecraft’s landing, and it also saw the placement of the first Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP), which included a seismometer and various instruments to measure the lunar environment
Mars Base

Big Solar Storm Packed Small Punch | Solar Flare 2012 | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/solar-storm-earth-effects.html

scibyte37 sun

shared by Mars Base on 09 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • triggered weaker-than-expected disruptions
  • Early forecasts showed that the oncoming CME could boost solar radiation in space and trigger geomagnetic storms on Earth, potentially disrupting satellites, power grids and other electronic infrastructure.
  • effects of the solar tempest have been milder than scientists originally predicted
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • due to the orientation of the CME and Earth's magnetic fields
  • "If it's oriented more southward, which is opposite to Earth, then we expect a stronger storm, but it appears that this one was very much north oriented
  • orientation of the magnetic field in the CME is a big determining factor for how strong or weak the event is going to be
  • coronal mass ejection has a cloud of particles, but also embedded in that is a magnetic field structure
  • while it hasn't packed much of a punch so far, this ongoing solar storm is the largest one scientists have seen in more than five years
Mars Base

Full Titanic site mapped for 1st time - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...-03-full-titanic-site-1st.html

scibyte37 Titantic

shared by Mars Base on 09 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • April 10, 1912 file photo, the Luxury liner Titanic departs Southampton, England
  • Researchers have pieced together what's believed to be the first comprehensive map of the entire 3-by-5-mile Titanic debris field
  • Marks on the muddy ocean bottom suggest, for instance, that the stern rotated like a helicopter blade as the ship sank, rather than plunging straight down
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • sonar imaging and more than 100,000 photos taken from underwater robots to create the map
  • Explorers of the Titanic
  • have known for more than 25 years where the bow and stern landed
  • previous maps of the floor around the wreckage were incomplete
  • mapping took place in the summer of 2010 during an expedition to the Titanic led by RMS Titanic Inc., the legal custodian of the wreck
  • joined by other groups, as well as the cable History channel
  • Details on the new findings
  • are not being revealed yet
  • the network will air them in a two-hour documentary on April 15, exactly 100 years after the Titanic sank
  • high-resolution photos - 130,000 of them in all
  • self-controlled robots known
  • along the ocean bottom day and night
  • moving at a little more than 3 miles per hour as they traversed back and forth in a grid along the bottom
  • photos were stitched together on a computer to provide a detailed photo mosaic of the debris
  • layout of the wreck site and where the pieces landed provide new clues on exactly what happened
  • Computer simulations will re-enact the sinking in reverse, bringing the wreckage debris back to the surface and reassembled
Mars Base

Four-winged dinosaur's feathers were black with iridescent sheen - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...feathers-black-iridescent.html

scibyte37 dinosaur

shared by Mars Base on 09 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • team of American and Chinese researchers
  • color and detailed feather pattern
  • Microraptor, a pigeon-sized, four-winged dinosaur that lived about 130 million years ago
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • fossilized plumage, which had hues of black and blue like a crow
  • earliest record of iridescent feather color
  • Although its anatomy is very similar to birds, Mircroraptor is considered a non-avian dinosaur
  • placed in the group of dinosaurs called dromaeosaurs that includes Velociraptor
  • color displayed by many modern birds is produced partially by arrays of pigment-bearing organelles called melanosomes
  • t a hundred of which can fit across a human ha
  • melanosome's structure is constant for a given color
  • imaging power of scanning electron microscopes, paleontologists recently started analyzing the shape of melanosomes in well-preserved fossilized feather imprints
  • comparing these patterns to those in living birds, scientists can infer the color of dinosaurs that lived many millions of years ago
  • Iridescence is widespread in modern birds and is frequently used in displays
  • Statistical analysis of the data predicts that Microraptor was completely black with a glossy, weakly iridescent blue sheen.
  • researchers also made predictions about the purpose of the dinosaur's tail
  • Once thought to be a broad, teardrop-shaped surface meant to help with flight
  • researchers think that the tail feather was ornamental and likely evolved for courtship and other social interactions, not for aerodynamics
  • actually much narrower with two elongate feathers
  • findings also contradict previous interpretations that Microraptor was a nocturnal animal because dark glossy plumage is not a trait found in modern nighttime birds.
Mars Base

Apollo 11: 'A stark beauty all its own' - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...12-03-apollo-stark-beauty.html

scibyte37 Archeology

shared by Mars Base on 09 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • image of the Apollo 11 landing site captured from just 24 km (15 miles) above the surface provides LRO's best look yet at humanity’s first venture to another world
  • Armstrong and Aldrin's surface activities were quite restricted. Their tracks cover less area than a typical city block
  • Apollo 15, 16, and 17, which had the benefit of a Lunar Roving Vehicle
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Apollo 12 and 14, which allowed for more time on the surface
Mars Base

The iceberg's accomplice: Did the moon sink the Titanic? - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...s-accomplice-moon-titanic.html

scibyte37

shared by Mars Base on 07 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • The iceberg’s accomplice: Did the moon sink the Titanic?
  • suggested that an unusually close approach by the moon on Jan. 4, 1912, may have caused abnormally high tides
  • moon and sun had lined up in such a way their gravitational pulls enhanced each other
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • once-in-many-lifetimes event occurred on that Jan. 4
  • Where did the killer iceberg come from
  • ultimate cause of the accident was that the ship struck an iceberg
  • well-known as a “spring tide
  • moon’s perigee—closest approach to Earth—proved to be its closest in 1,400 years, and came within six minutes of a full moon
  • Earth’s perihelion—closest approach to the sun—happened the day before
  • the odds of all these variables lining up in just the way they did were, well, astronomical.
  • this configuration maximized the moon’s tide-raising forces on Earth’s oceans
  • researchers looked to see if the enhanced tides caused increased glacial calving
  • to reach the shipping lanes by April
  • any icebergs breaking off the Greenland glaciers in Jan. 1912 would have to move unusually fast and against prevailing currents
  • the answer lies in grounded and stranded icebergs
  • icebergs travel southward, many become stuck in the shallow waters off the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland
  • Normally, icebergs remain in place and cannot resume moving southward until they’ve melted enough to refloat or a high enough tide frees them
  • single iceberg can become stuck multiple times on its journey southward, a process that can take several years
  • unusually high tide in Jan. 1912 would have been enough to dislodge many of those icebergs and move them back into the southbound ocean currents
  • they would have just enough time to reach the shipping lanes for that fateful encounter with the Titanic.
  • But an extremely high spring tide could refloat them
  • ebb tide would carry them back out
  • where the icebergs would resume drifting southward
  • could explain the abundant icebergs in the spring of 1912
  • Mars Base on 07 Mar 12
     
    d Russell Doescher, along with Roger Sinnott, senior contributing editor at Sky & Telescope magazine, publish their findings in the April 2012 edition of Sky & Telescope, on newsstands now. "Of course, the ultimate cause of the accident was that the ship struck an iceberg. The Titanic failed to slow down, even after having received several wireless messages warning of ice ahead," Olson said. "They went full speed into a region with icebergs-that's really what sank the
Mars Base

Preserved bone of Pterosaur found in stomach of Velociraptor - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...ecialized-predators-didnt.html

scibyte37

shared by Mars Base on 07 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Scientists have discovered a bone from a pterosaur (giant flying reptile or 'pterodactyl') in the guts of the skeletal remains of a Velociraptor (small predatory theropod dinosaur) that lived in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia some 75 million years ago.
  • Preserved bone of Pterosaur found in stomach of Velociraptor
  • originally recovered from the Gobi Desert in 1994
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • difficult and probably even dangerous for the small theropod dinosaur to target a pterosaur with a wingspan of 2 metres or more, unless the pterosaur was already ill or injured
  • So the pterosaur bone we've identified in the gut of the Velociraptor was most likely scavenged from a carcass
  • Further analysis of the skeletal remains of the Velociraptor showed that it was carrying, or recovering from, an injury to its ribs when it died
  • surface of the bone is smooth and in good condition, with no unusual traces of marks or deformation that could be attributed to digestive acids
  • likely that the Velociraptor itself died not long after ingesting the bone
  • first time that bones from a pterosaur have been uncovered as gut contents from dinosaur remains
Mars Base

Exotic material shows promise as flexible, transparent electrode - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...ble-transparent-electrode.html

scibyte37 electronics

shared by Mars Base on 08 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • An international team of scientists with roots at SLAC and Stanford has shown that ultra-thin sheets of an exotic material remain transparent and highly conductive even after being deeply flexed 1,000 times and folded and creased like a piece of paper.
  • first practical applications: flexible, transparent electrodes for solar cells, sensors and optical communications devices.
  • basic structural unit for bismuth selenide is a five-layer sandwich made up of alternating single-atom sheets of selenium (orange) and bismuth (purple).
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • stacked on top of each other as thicker samples are made
  • selenium-selenium bonds between the units are weak
  • overall material to flex durably without being damaged
  • researchers made and tested samples of a compound in which sheets of bismuth and selenium, each just one atom thick, alternate to form five-layer units. The bonds between the units are weak, allowing the overall material to flex while retaining its durability
  • topological insulator
  • the material conducts electricity only on its surface while its interior remains insulating
  • it is an exceptionally good electrical conductor – as good as gold
  • bismuth selenide is transparent to infrared light, which we know as heat
  • about half the solar energy that hits the Earth comes in the form of  infrared light, few of today’s solar cells are able to collect it
  • transparent electrodes on the surfaces of most cells are either too fragile or not transparent or conducting enough
  • experiments also showed that bismuth selenide does not degrade significantly in humid environments or when exposed to oxygen treatments that are common in manufacturing.
  • bismuth selenide may be useful in communications devices. This material could also improve infrared sensors common in scientific equipment and aerospace systems.”
Mars Base

Mars orbiter catches twister in action - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...rs-orbiter-twister-action.html

scibyte37 mars

shared by Mars Base on 08 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • dust plume is about 30 yards or meters in diameter.
  • The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been examining Mars with six science instruments since 2006
  • This mission has returned more data about Mars than all other orbital and surface missions combined.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • More than 21,700 images taken by HiRISE are available for viewing on the instrument team's website: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu .  
  • can reveal features as small as a desk
Mars Base

Twin NASA Science Probes Start Lunar Gravity Mapping - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...es-start-lunar-gravity-mapping

scibyte37 Grail

shared by Mars Base on 08 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Twin GRAIL Moon Probes Ebb and Flow Start Lunar Gravity Science Mission
  • have just begun their science mission and will use a precision formation-flying technique to map Lunar Gravity
  • science mapping phase officially began Tuesday (March 6)
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • there is still a lot we don’t know about the Moon says Zuber, like why the near side is flooded with magma and smooth and the back side is not smooth and completely different.
  • formation-flying spacecraft will make detailed science measurements from lunar orbit with unparalleled precision to within 1 micron – the width of a human red blood cell
  • MoonKAMs on both Ebb and Flow were turned on Monday, March 5, and all appears well
  • Bozeman 4th graders will have the opportunity to target the first images a week after our science operations begin
Mars Base

cme_c3.gif (GIF Image, 512 × 512 pixels) - 0 views

www.spaceweather.com/...cme_c3.gif

scibyte37 sun

shared by Mars Base on 08 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Mars Base on 08 Mar 12
     
    Eruption Video
Mars Base

20120307_014400_anim.tim-den.gif (GIF Image, 960 × 600 pixels) - 0 views

iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov/...120307_014400_anim.tim-den.gif

scibyte37

shared by Mars Base on 08 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Mars Base on 08 Mar 12
     
    Prediction gif
Mars Base

Biggest Solar Storm in Years Bombarding Earth Now | Solar Flares & Space Weather | Spac... - 0 views

www.space.com/storm-hitting-earth-today.html

scibyte37 sun

shared by Mars Base on 08 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • the CME did not hit Earth head-on, the material delivered a glancing blow to the planet, and energetic particles will continue to interact with Earth's magnetic field over the course of the day.
Mars Base

Huge Solar Flare's Magnetic Storm May Disrupt Satellites, Power Grids | Space Weather |... - 0 views

www.space.com/magnetic-storm-satellites.html

scibyte37 sun

shared by Mars Base on 08 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • may potentially interfere with satellites in orbit and power grids when it reaches Earth.
  • Early predictions estimate that the CME will reach Earth
  • Typically, CMEs contain 10 billion tons of solar plasma and material
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • March 8) at 7 a.m. EST (1200 GMT), with the effects likely lasting for 24 hours
  • estimates that brightened auroras could potentially be seen as far south as the southern Great Lakes region, provided the skies are clear.
  • The massive sunspot region AR1429 has been particularly active since it emerged on March 2, 2012.CREDIT: NASA/SDO
    • Mars Base
      Mars Base on 08 Mar 12
       
      Image with comparisons of size to earth and jupiter
Mars Base

Sun Fires Off 2 Huge Solar Flares in One-Two Punch | Space Weather | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/ge-solar-flares-erupt-sun.html

scibyte37 sun

shared by Mars Base on 07 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Tuesday
  • One of the flares is the most powerful solar eruption of the year, so far.
  • Both of the huge flares ranked as X-class storms, the strongest type of solar flares the sun can have
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • followed several weaker, but still powerful, sun storms on Tuesday
  • came just days after another major solar flare on Sunday night
  • When aimed directly at Earth, X-class solar flares can endanger astronauts and satellites in orbit, interfere with satellite communications and damage power grids on Earth
  • also amplify the Earth's display of northern and southern lights, also known as auroras
  • five categories: A, B, C, M and X. The A-class flares are the weakest sun storms, while the X-class events are the most powerful solar flares
  • subsets, from 1 to 9, to pinpoint a solar flare's strength. Only X-class solar flares have subcategories that go higher than 9.
  • most powerful solar flare on record occurred in 2003 and was estimated to be an X28 on the solar flare scale
  • The sun is currently going through an active phase of its 11-year weather cycle
  • expected to reach its peak level of activity in 2013
Mars Base

Sun Releases a Powerful X5 Flare - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...n-releases-a-powerful-x5-flare

scibyte37 sun

shared by Mars Base on 07 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • AR1429 released an X-class flare on March 7 at 00:28 UT. (NASA/SDO)
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