Tag Archives: Space

Jul 19 2012

A Hole In Mars

What created this unusual hole in Mars? The hole was discovered by chance on images of the dusty slopes of Mars’ Pavonis Mons volcano taken by the HiRISE instrument aboard the robotic Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter currently circling Mars. The hole appears to be an opening to an underground cavern, partly illuminated on the image right. Analysis of this and follow-up images revealed the opening to be about 35 meters across, while the interior shadow angle indicates that the underlying cavern is roughly 20 meters deep. Why there is a circular crater surrounding this hole remains a topic of speculation, as is the full extent of the underlying cavern. Holes such as this are of particular interest because their interior caves are relatively protected from the harsh surface of Mars, making them relatively good candidates to contain Martian life. These pits are therefore prime targets for possible future spacecraft, robots, and even human interplanetary explorers. –LINK–

Jul 7 2012

Jaw Dropping Long Exposure Photos from Space

These amazing long exposure photographs were taken by astronaut Don Pettit from aboard the International Space Station during Expedition 31.

As the ISS circles Earth at roughly 17,000 miles per hour, Flight Engineer Don Pettit takes 30-second exposures with a stock digital camera, then stacks those exposures into single frames that produces 10-15 minutes of exposure. The rotation is fast enough for long exposures to blur the earth into bright strips of light, as well as capturing star trails, aurora, and flashes of lightning splattered all across the surface of the Earth.

View more photos at this Flickr set VIA: –AMUSING PLANET–

Jul 7 2012

Govt Adviser: Aliens Might be JellyFish W/ Orange Butts

Forget little green men. Aliens may look like giant jellyfish with orange bottoms, a leading space scientist has claimed.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock, a satellite expert and government adviser, said it is likely that there is extra-terrestrial life – it is just more alien than you’d imagine.

Rather than being the little green men so beloved of Hollywood directors, they may look like football-field sized jellyfish, complete with onion-shaped appendages and an orange underbelly or bottom.

Generated from silicon, rather than the carbon that is the basis of life as we know it, the creatures are able to live off light absorbed through their ‘skin’ and chemicals sucked in through their giant mouths.

Jun 28 2012

New 350 Foot Crop Circle

It appeared overnight, a mysterious snake-like crop circle weaving across a wheat field in Wiltshire.

The 350ft-long installation is marked out of a field near the 200-year-old Alton Barnes White Horse chalk figure.

Dubbed a Venus ‘sunfish‘, the circle is thought to capture the ‘transit of Venus‘, an astronomical phenomenon which began last week and will continue until the beginning of July.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2165517/Crop-circles-capture-transit-Venus-phenomenon-planet-passes-Earth-Sun.html#ixzz1z7rrbnzL

Jun 25 2012

What Does It Mean for a Civilization to be a Million Years Old?

We thought it would be interesting to revisit Carl Sagan’s great question: “What does it mean for a civilization to be a million years old? We have had radio telescopes and spaceships for a few decades; our technical civilization is a few hundred years old … an advanced civilization millions of years old is as much beyond us as we are beyond a bushbaby or a macaque.”

 

–FULL ARTICLE–