Home/Posts Tagged ‘space’
Posts Tagged ‘space’
Climate Change, Science & Technology, Weird Stuff, May 3rd, 2012,
By Michael D. Lemonick I’ve never told anyone this before, but when I was a kid, I always wanted a rubber chicken. Many of the comedic heroes of my childhood got to play with them — the Three Stooges, for example, and Soupy Sales (I’m dating myself and revealing my lowbrow side all at once here). It’s not like they were all that hard to find, even before the Internet. I also had a slightly more elevated set of interests, including an endless fascination with the space program. I was too young to be aware of Sputnik, but I watched…
Tags: NASA, NASA rubber chicken, NASA rubber chicken Camilla, space, space exploration
Science & Technology, Videos & Documentaries, Feb 10th, 2012,
The aurora borealis, or ‘northern lights’ is an amazing phenomenon that occurs when a solar wind of charged electrical particles enters the Earth’s magnetic field. When these particles hit the Earth’s upper atmosphere above the Arctic region, the atmosphere produces an incredible spectacle of spectral multi-colored lights that ‘dance’ in the night sky. NASA has recently released a time lapse video composed of some 500 photographs of the aurora borealis taken by digital cameras on the International Space Station. From BBC News: By combining hundreds of stills taken from the International Space Station, they have produced the first ‘moving’ images…
Tags: Aurora Borealis, NASA, Northern Lights, space, video
Science & Technology, Weird Stuff, Feb 2nd, 2012,
By Andrew Freedman NASA released a new, high-resolution “Blue Marble” image of Earth this week, taken from instruments aboard the recently launched Suomi NPP satellite. The image is actually a composite of many pictures from Jan. 4, 2012 that were stitched together, and shows North America in stunning detail. One feature that is notably absent from the picture is snow cover, which is confined to parts of the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada. In many parts of the country, snowfall has been running well below average so far this year. The image was taken by one of the five instruments…
Tags: blue marble, climatecentral.org, earth images, NASA, space
Science & Technology, Videos & Documentaries, Weird Stuff, Jan 29th, 2012,
US Republican presidential candidate and blowhard Newt Gingrich has stated that he will build a base on the moon by his second term should he get elected. Gingrich said he’d like to get there before the Chinese do. Well, the US did put someone there before the Chinese and everyone else back in 1969, though it was the Soviets who first put an unmanned craft on the lunar surface. OK, so they didn’t stay there and colonize as Newt would like. Republican rival Mitt Romney countered that while Gingrich’s moon colony vision is a big idea, it’s not good one….
Tags: Gingrich, lego, moon, Newt, space
Pollution, Science & Technology, Aug 24th, 2010,
Space is not the sterile expanse of nothingness we might picture it to be. In fact, the space around Earth, much like the Earth itself, is littered with our junk. NASA estimates that there are some 18,000 pieces of space trash, each 10cm wide or larger, orbiting the Earth. Honestly, to me that doesn’t sound like that much, but there are a lot more smaller bits of space debris and the amount is ever-increasing. Ad that to the face that its all orbiting at a speed of 18,000 mph (coincidence??) or 21,000 km per hr, which poses a significant danger…
Tags: agency, debris, Earth, ESA, European, junk, Military, orbit, orbiting, satellites, space
Science & Technology, Weird Stuff, Jul 5th, 2010,
A telescope aboard the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Planck satellite has captured the image of the ‘ghost of the Big Bang’. The image is of the afterglow of the birth of the universe, which happened around 14 billion years ago. Cosmic microwaves are detected in order to form the picture of the very young universe. From an article in the Independent: The radiation was released as the first atoms were forming, just 400,000 years after the Big Bang brought matter, space and time into existence. The image depicts the Milky Way, lots of cosmic dust and a ‘galactic web’ where…
Tags: agency, Big Bang, ESA, European, image, picture, Planck, space, telescope, universe
Science & Technology, Weird Stuff, Jun 15th, 2010,
Scientists at the university of Colorado have discovered evidence that suggests that much of Mars was once covered by ocean. From an article by Australia’s ABC News: To test their theory Dr Hynek and Mr Di Achille used global databases of known deltaic deposits and valley networks, together with topography data from a laser altimeter aboard NASA’s Mars Observer spacecraft which is orbiting the red planet. If Mars had that much water 3.5 billion years ago, what happened to it? And did it once support life? While turning its sights towards Mars and Jupiter, NASA has turned away from the…
Tags: asteroid, Earth, Independent, Mars, moon, NASA, Obama, ocean, President, space
Videos & Documentaries, Weird Stuff, Wildlife & Flora, May 8th, 2010,
Rachel Maddow shows off her Google Earth skills and zeros in on that gigantic beaver dam that is so big it is visible from space. The dam is located in Wood Buffalo National Park in Alberta, Canada and is larger than the Hoover Dam. I wrote about the dam on Wednesday and have since seen and heard a few obvious puns such as the one below courtesy of Rachel and msnbc. No ‘leave it to beaver’ jokes yet, however. Rachel Maddow Show: Dam! Beavers live up to “eager reputation” Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the…
Tags: Alberta, beaver, dam, Google Earth, Maddow, Rachel, space
Climate Change, Weird Stuff, Wildlife & Flora, May 5th, 2010,
A massive beaver dam discovered in the forests of Northern Alberta, Canada is the world’s largest. So big that it is visible from space, the dam – located in Alberta’s Wood Buffalo National Park – measures 2,790 feet (850 meters) long. Known as ‘nature’s builders’, beavers construct dams out of mud, stone and timber in order to give themselves still, deep water for access to food and protection from predators. Beavers also build lodges within the calm waters created by the dams. The lodges have two rooms: one for drying off and one for living. Since beavers are nocturnal, they…
Tags: Alberta, beaver, beavers, Canada, dam, dams, lodges, space, visible
