A Hole in Mars
Credit: NASA, JPL, U. Arizona
Back in 2007, black spots were discovered on Mars that are so dark that nothing inside can be seen. Quite possibly, the spots are entrances to deep underground caves capable of protecting Martian life, were it to exist.
The unusual hole pictured above was found on the slopes of the giant Martian volcano Arsia Mons. The above image was captured three weeks ago by the HiRISE instrument onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter currently circling Mars.
The holes were originally identified on lower resolution images from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft, The above hole is about the size of a football field and is so deep that it is completely unilluminated by the Sun. Such holes and underground caves might be prime targets for future spacecraft, robots, and even the next generation of human interplanetary explorers.
Well then there goes my sleep
But my brain knows better, it picks you up and turns you around.
“When I look up at the night sky, and I know that, yes, we are part of this Universe, we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up—many people feel small, because they’re small and the Universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars.” - Neil DeGrasse Tyson [x]
The Filipina who proved Einstein right
Meet Reinabelle Reyes, a 28-year-old astrophysicist who astounded scientists all over the world when she proved Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity on a cosmic scale. That was when she was only 26.
Einstein’s theories have been verified many times, but it took Reyes and her Princeton University collaborators to verify his Theory of General Relativity, beyond the confines of our solar system.
Led by Reyes, the research team made headlines back in 2010 when they showed how galaxies up to 3.5 billion light years away are clustered together in exactly the way General Relativity predicts. They came up with a new astronomical measurement, which indicates how galaxies are pulled together by gravity, just as Einstein theorized.
Her findings also support the existence of Dark Energy—a force greater than gravity once merely imagined by scientists. This is a big deal, because, even NASA tells us, pinning down the exact properties of Dark Energy is among the most significant problems facing science today. According to the NASA website, Dark Energy “is the deepest mystery in physics, and its resolution is likely to greatly advance our understanding of matter, space, and time.”
Reinabelle Reyes is among the scientists involved in unraveling this profound mystery.
Floating Water Bridge
Known as the water thread experiment, this phenomenon shown above seems to defy the intuitive laws of everyday physics. The experiment was first demonstrated in 1863 by British Engineer William Armstrong.
Two containers of deionized water, placed in some sort of insulator (glass beakers work fine), must be connected by a thin thread and exposed to a high-voltage charge (one beaker receives the positive charge, and the negative to the other.) At a critical voltage threshold, a water bridge forms between the two containers across the thread - which remains even when the containers are separated!
Typically, the diameter of this bridge is no more than 1-3 mm, but can remain intact as far as an 25mm! The surface temperature, due to the voltage, rises from about 20 °C (68 °F) up to 60 °C(140 °F)! The longest that the phenomenon has lasted is 45 minutes.