Complex Life Found Under Antarctic Ice

The Antarctic ice sheet is one of the two polar ice caps of the Earth. It covers about 98% of the Antarctic continent. Antarctica is considered as a desert as this place is the coldest, driest, and windiest on the earth. It has the highest average elevation of all the continents. Now, NASA ice scientists have found a shrimp-like creature and a possible jellyfish ‘frolicking’ beneath 600 feet of solid Antarctic ice, where only microbes were expected to live.

The Antarctic ice sheet is one of the two polar ice caps of the Earth. It covers about 98% of the Antarctic continent. Antarctica is considered as a desert as this place is the coldest, driest, and windiest on the earth. It has the highest average elevation of all the continents. Now, NASA ice scientists have found a shrimp-like creature and a possible jellyfish ‘frolicking’ beneath 600 feet of solid Antarctic ice, where only microbes were expected to live.
Continue reading “Complex Life Found Under Antarctic Ice”

Ice on Mars

Ice found on mars. Phoenix now seems to have confirmed that similar features on Mars are caused by the same processes as those on this planet.

Scientists say they found evidence of ice on Mars. Nasa’s Phoenix spacecraft discovered evidence of ice in the soil around its landing site on Mars. Following images were acquired by NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander’s Surface Stereo Imager on the 21st and 25th days of the mission, or Sols 20 and 24 (June 15 and 19, 2008). These images show sublimation of ice in the trench informally called “Dodo-Goldilocks” over the course of four days. In the lower left corner, lumps disappear, similar to the process of evaporation.

[Fig.01: Tiny clumps of material in the bottom left of the trench on 15 June (left) are gone by 19 June (right)]

ice found on mars - animated image
[Fig.02: Ice on mars, click to enlarge image]

According to Dr Peter Smith, Phoenix’s principal investigator:

These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it’s ice. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt, but salt can’t do that.

RIP: Ulysses Spacecraft

Over 17 years ago, the Ulysses spacecraft was launched aboard the space shuttle Discovery for a unique NASA/ESA mission. NASA has decided to formally conclude the mission on July 1, 2008.

nasa ulysses photo

Ulysses is a robotic space probe designed to study the Sun at all latitudes. It was launched October 6, 1990 from the Space Shuttle Discovery (mission STS-41) as a joint venture of NASA and the European Space Agency. The spacecraft is equipped with instruments to characterize fields, particles, and dust, and is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG). The Ulysses mission is ongoing, still collecting valuable scientific readings to this day. However in February of 2008, what scientists had always known began to materialize. The power output from the RTG, which is generated by heat from the radioactive decay of plutonium-238, has dwindled to the point where it is insufficient to power some critical internal heaters to keep the spacecraft’s attitude control fuel from freezing.

The Ulysses spacecraft has endured for almost four times its expected lifespan. However, the spacecraft will cease operations because of a decline in power produced by its onboard generators. Ulysses has forever changed the way scientists view the sun and its effect on the surrounding space.

Cosmic Neutrino Background – The Oldest Light in The Universe Found

A neutrino is a neutral particle with very low mass, possibly zero. It has spin 1/2 and so is a fermion. It does not interact with the strong force or the electromagnetic force, but does interact with the weak force (and with gravity if it turns out to have mass). The cosmic neutrino background (CNB) is the universe’s background particle radiation composed of neutrinos. Like the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), the CNB is a relic of the big bang, and while the CMB dates from when the universe was 380,000 years old, the CNB decoupled from matter when the universe was 2 seconds old. It is estimated that the CNB has a temperature of 1.9 kelvins or lower. Neutrinos are notoriously difficult to detect, and because the cosmic neutrinos are so cold, the CNB might never be observed directly.

A Nasa space probe measuring the oldest light in the Universe has found that cosmic neutrinos made up 10% of matter shortly after the Big Bang.

Five years of study data also shows that the first stars took over half a billion years to light up the Universe.

WMAP launched in 2001 on a mission to measure remnants of light left over from the Big Bang.

Scientists say it is collecting a “treasure trove” of information about the Universe’s age, make-up and fate.

=> Cosmic ‘treasure trove’ revealed

The Largest Ocean of The World

Find out about the largest named ocean in the world which covers half the surface of the entire world.

Approximately 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by nothing but water i.e. ocean. It is divided into several principal oceans and smaller seas. There are five major oceanic divisions as follows:

  1. Pacific Ocean
  2. Atlantic Ocean
  3. Indian Ocean
  4. Southern Ocean
  5. Arctic Ocean

The Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth’s oceanic divisions. According to wikipedia:

It extends from the Arctic in the north to Antarctica in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west and the Americas in the east. At 169.2 million square kilometres (65.3 million square miles) in area, this largest division of the World Ocean – and, in turn, the hydrosphere – covers about 46% of the Earth’s water surface and about 32% of its total surface area, making it larger than all of the Earth’s land area combined. The equator subdivides it into the North Pacific Ocean and South Pacific Ocean. The Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the Pacific and in the world, reaching a depth of 10,911 metres (35,798 ft)

The Pacific Ocean Largest Ocean Of The World
Fig.01: The Pacific Ocean Largest Ocean Of The World (credit: International Space Station / NASA)

The Pacific Ocean is the body of water between Asia and Australia in the west, the Americas in the east, Southern Ocean to the south, and the Arctic Ocean to the north. It joins the Atlantic Ocean at a line drawn due south from Cape Horn, Chile/Argentina to Antarctica, and joins the Indian Ocean at a line drawn due south from Tasmania, Australia to Antarctica.

Nasa’s Radiation Resistant Computers

Well on the earth we don’t need a radiation resistant computers. But when you go high in the sky you need the some sort of radiation resistant computers. But what is the need of such computers? Well let me take example of virus, who destroys data and/or just crashes computer completely, it can be frustrating for us. Now just imagine same situation for an astronaut trusting a computer to run navigation and life-support systems, such crash could be fatal.

According to NASA, the radiation that pervades space can trigger such glitches.

When high-speed particles, such as cosmic rays, collide with the microscopic circuitry of computer chips, they can cause chips to make errors. If those errors send the spacecraft flying off in the wrong direction or disrupt the life-support system, it could be bad news.

So NASA’s new project called Environmentally Adaptive Fault-Tolerant Computing (EAFTC) tries to address these problems. The idea is very simple advanced computers that can think clearly even when they’re bombarded by space radiation.