Saturday, June 20, 2015

How did this happen!? This is devastating to the blog. Unfortunately...

Part 2 of what was going to be about exoplanet discussion, cannot be retrieved from the hard drive, at least not in a way that I know of. That's really unfortunate, as I already had thousands & thousands of words typed down. Today I selected paste & to my dismay, only a link showed up. That would have been quite fascinating stuff if I had a way of retrieving the text, which careful attention went into. I had so many ideas which I'm sure many, many, people would find fascinating. If you can help with this problem, please do. Otherwise, wish me luck.
HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? I don't recount turning off my computer & when I got to it today it was asleep. All I did was copy the text, & was going to paste it, but as luck would have it, that's not how it worked out. I'm not sure if I should spoil what the info was going to be about, but I guess there's time to thing about that too hehe.

Friday, June 19, 2015

Exoplanet discussion- Part 1: atmosphere

Let's talk about exoplanets. There is a multitude of questions that may come up when it comes down to it.  Let's assume we're talking about an earthlike planet
1) What if gasses are distributed or concentrated differently?
The atmosphere may have higher or lower amounts of gasses than here on Earth. For example, there may be twice as much oxygen, or 25% of the carbon as compared to Earth. Then we could also explore other gasses such as nitrogen, hydrogen, helium, methane, etc.
A planet with twice as much oxygen as Earth would likely have life that's larger than here one Earth. We have evidence for this. In prehistoric times, Earth went through a period of time in which our atmosphere contained large amounts of oxygen. This then caused animals' lungs to grow larger to contain more oxygen, which is pretty interesting since you may have thought otherwise. Obviously, a planet with less oxygen than Earth would have smaller animals. You may be wondering how humans from Earth arriving there would be effected. That depends on how low or high the oxygen levels are compared to Earth. With less oxygen, of course it would have adverse effects and may even cause brain damage in extreme cases. With more oxygen, the less obvious effects may occur. One of these include abnormally high red blood cells. Another, yet interesting, effect that may occur is that the high oxygen levels may have positive effects for people with breathing problems. How about effects on the ecosystem? One example of such an effect would be on animal life, which may be more abundant. Also, if there are any bodies of water, there may be more fish if the water has more oxygen. A planet with more carbon could have adverse effects if we landed there. Rain would be more acidic, but that doesn't have to mean aquatic life would suffer. In fact, here on Earth aquatic life including coral reefs have been found to thrive just as well under acidic water. Of course, more carbon= an atmosphere that insulates heat better, which may make a world habitable, or not. Supposedly, excess amounts of CO2 may cause plants to deteriorate. So the debate on climate change here on Earth helps to gather such interesting information.
More Methane on a planet would be like carbon. Like carbon, Methane is a greenhouse gas. Scientists think it may have contributed Earth's past climate. Interestingly, if you had a planet just like Earth but much hotter, & this planet had an ice age, the role of methane and/or carbon would come in handy. Methane has the ability to trap ten times as much heat as CO2, which traps a few times as much heat as oxygen. Methane is a very abundant gas on Europa, which features geography much like Earth. Unfortunately, Europa isn't suited for life. However, it is believed that Europa may have geysers. If that's the case, there may be hotspots where life could cling on. Exoplanets will turn out to be much more interesting than one would likely expect.
High amounts of gasses, especially CO2 & methane, could be a problem when it comes to humans industrializing a world, as a warming atmosphere fills up with pollutants more easily as opposed to a cool atmosphere. Ironically, Carbon itself is known to be an air purifier.


Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Week of June 15, 2015 in science (daily update)


Mysteries of human vision

So, as you may know, this blog isn't necessarily "out of this world". Sometimes I write about things that are more "down to Earth". So, let's explore the mysteries of forbidden colors- what are they? You can read quite a lot about this mystery here.
What's interesting that I've once read about is this girl who has a really good talent in painting. She doesn't paint in forbidden colors, however, she paints with intriguing combinations of colors. The scene doesn't look the same to a regular person as it does in the paintings. The paintings are more vivid. It's thought that she sees more colors than a regular person. In other words perhaps, she doesn't see purple as we see it, but actually has purple receptors.
Blite (Black-white)
You heard right. I've had such a vision. This one, however, is one where you can forget about eye tracking. I close one of my eyes & with enough experience, the view from the other eye starts to get filled in with static. I'm unsure if this is exactly Black-white, but I'm sure it's quite close.
Seeing into the future
Could we someday be able to create goggles that let us see other stuff too. For example, goggles could let us see temperature, or sound? So maybe here on Earth such technology wouldn't offer us much, but now imagine looking at the night sky.
You most likely can't see UV light
A normal human being doesn't have the ability to see UV. However, when it comes to people, there are some, yet rare, exceptions. Some individuals are able to detect UV-A light. In the past, & perhaps in today's world as well, when people would go into cataract surgery, mistakes were quite possible. Sometimes the portion of the eye that protects against UV light would be damaged. So, the patient might then see the world slightly differently than others. This ability has been used in the past in the military. People with this ability would be used on ships. Ships would issue light signals using UV light so enemies wouldn't be able to notice, & the observer would signal others as to what the signal's message was. The effect of such vision on an artist, for example, would be that a painting would be more blue than what a normal artist would recreate. 

Monday, June 15, 2015

A summary of this weeks science articles 6/1


The Oort star

The "Oort Star" -- Did a Rogue Star Pass Through Our Solar System?A group of astronomers from the US, Europe, Chile and South Africa have determined that 70,000 years ago a dim star is likely to have passed through the solar system's distant cloud of comets, the Oort Cloud. No other star is known to have ever approached our solar system this close - five times closer than the current closest star, Proxima Centauri. While the close flyby of Scholz's star likely had little impact on the Oort Cloud, "other dynamically important Oort Cloud perturbers may be lurking among nearby stars." Currently, Scholz's star is a small, dim red dwarf in the constellation of Monoceros, about 20 light years away. However, at the closest point in its flyby of the solar system, Scholz's star would have been a 10th magnitude star - about 50 times fainter than can normally be seen with the naked eye at night. Info

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Mysteries of the universe

Fermi bubbles, antimatter
Fermi bubbles are giant features of a galaxy, including our own galaxy, that stretch for roughly 35,000 light years, about half the diameter of the Milky Way. What makes them extremely interesting is that they emit gamma rays, the most dangerous form of radiation. The edge of the bubbles emit the most energetic gamma rays. You may ponder this question: could this be a key to the mystery of dark matter? Interesting how gravitational lensing is round. Another fascinating aspect of the universe is named the Fermi Paradox. If you're looking for  a website with fascinating articles, you'll really like www.waitbutwhy.com. This is where you'll find more info about the paradox.
Antimatter presents an intriguing scientific mystery. As it turns out, the amount of matter and antimatter in the universe should've been equal, cancelling out each other. However, this was not the case and significant amount of matter remained. Antimatter is the opposite of matter. As it turns out, it's been theorized by engineers that antimatter may someday be harnessed for space travel. If it were true, then this form of energy would allow a spaceship to travel to Mars in five days. Antimatter contains an enormous amount of energy. Just one tenth of a gram could likely cause as much destruction as an apocalyptic, if not, near apocalyptic, asteroid. Scientists have so far been able to make anti-hydrogen, which has been found to destroy hydrogen. The problem with antimatter as a fuel source is that it takes enormous amounts of energy to produce. It is estimated that to produce approximately 1 gram of it, it would take thousands of years of electricity production to go into the process. In fact, it may even take over a million years just to obtain that much antimatter. Then again, such a small amount would contain an enormous amount of energy. Until quite recently, a new form of antimatter has been discovered in near Earth orbit by ISS astronauts. This form of antimatter is called a positron, the antimatter equivalent of an electron. It is thought that the antimatter belt surrounding Earth can be used as a fuel source. One particle of say, anti-helium, would likely be able to destroy many millions of helium atoms, kind of like aerosols destroy ozone. Since matter still remains in the universe, it seems as though there is more than there is antimatter. The reason for this remains unclear. Perhaps there is a mysterious, yet misunderstood, relationship between antimatter & dark energy or antimatter & dark matter.

Friday, June 12, 2015

Mysteries of the universe

Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Expansion
Dark matter is a relatvely recent discovery. Scientists theorize its existence due to at least four other discoveries:
1. Galaxies apparently spin faster than light
2. The Andromeda Galaxy is moving towards Milky Way
3. Gravitational lensing
4. The universe has much more mass than expected, but when scientists measure the mass of galaxies, including Andromeda, they find that it's greater than it should be.
How is it created? It's unclear how it's created. Scientists theorize that it comes from planets, & what makes the dark matter's creation possible is thought to be due to inequalities in planetary gravity. Interesting once you know about Andromeda, since many other galaxies are moving away from the Milky Way. On the other hand, there's another discovery that is the exact OPPOSITE of dark matter. That is what scientists call dark energy. This dark energy is thought to be the reason for why galaxies are moving away from each other at baffling speeds. Now, let's go back to Andromeda. In this case, dark matter, which is thought to exist in Andromeda, is thought to overpower dark energy.
So, what do I think is really going on?
Well, I theorize that there may be another possibility to Andromeda's approach. Roughly one month ago, there was an article posted on ScienceDaily about Andromeda. Besides dark matter, there is another, literally enormous discovery regarding the galaxy. To be more specific, Andromeda has been observed to have a massive dust cloud surrounding it. The dust cloud has been found to be at least six times as large, and roughly 1000 times as massive as previous measurements. Could this be the key to solving the mystery of dark matter? Dark matter, as well as dark energy, are thought to take up large quantities of space as compared to normal matter. This would make sense, especially with dark energy, since dark energy is what is thought to keep the universe from staying still, let alone collapsing in on itself. Apparently the balance between gravity & dark energy is such that dark energy overpowers gravity. What's fascinating about the expansion of the universe is that although we observers have noticed galaxies moving away from each other quicker near the edge of space, the galaxies in these places are literally being observed many years in the past, during which perhaps the laws of physics may have been different, allowing for matter to exceed the speed of light. Is such a theory even possible? Perhaps not. However, since galaxies are observed so far away & traveling at such speed, could the unimaginable distances & speeds involved somehow cause observations to be flawed? Could something be causing us to perceive things way out there to travel beyond the speed of light? Well, I guess we're not sure. However, here's some food for thought. First of all, I had once pondered what would happen if a spaceship was going at say, 1 mph less than the speed of light, & turned on its headlights. The light would still be going at the same speed and... BINGO! This may perhaps be a key to solving the riddle of expansion. The galaxies aren't going at light speed. Instead, they may be going this fast relative to Earth, if Earth is going in the right direction. This may not seem to explain well enough. However, our Earth is not just orbiting the sun, but also the center of the Milky Way, and this may be the kind of knowledge that is needed in order to answer the riddle. Try to go from here, and see whether you'll end up with a conclusion. The elusive culprit behind expansion

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

A summary of this week's most recent science articles


Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Astronomy this month

June 1 strawberry moon
June 19-20 Jupiter forms a triangle w/Venus & the crescent moon
June 30 Jupiter & Venus near miss during sunset