I Should Never Have Downloaded NASA’s Eyes. Now All I Want To Do Is Watch Planets And Galaxies All

This glorious map helps you keep track of every space mission in the Solar System

We’ve come so far.

Space exploration is pretty amazing right now. Just yesterday, we launched the ExoMars 2016 spacecraft, which will hunt for signs of life on Mars, and by now, the Voyager 1 spacecraft is likely way out in interstellar space. NASA recently announced that it plans to visit Europa, one of the most promising candidates in our Solar System to host life, and even NASA’s chief scientist thinks we’ll find alien life within 20 to 30 years, as long as we keep exploring.

But how do you keep track of all these awesome space missions? To help out,the guys at Pop Chart Lab have created this beautiful poster showing our space exploration to date. It spans all the way from 1959 to 2015, and features over 100 exploratory probes, landers, and rovers.

As you can see on the poster below, the majority of our machines never leave Earth’s orbit. There are a whole lot of crowded lines near our planet, each of which belongs to a space probe or explorer of some kind. But as you get further from Earth, there are less and less of these brave explorers, and you get to see just how far humanity has travelled into our Solar System.

(via Biological & Popular Culture // Dino Pet)

Bio-luminescent dinoflagellates…

The world’s oldest known fossils have been found - and they’re 3.7 billion years old

They could push back evidence for life on Earth by 220 million years.

The oldest fossils ever discovered have been found in Greenland, and they appear to have preserved the earliest signs of life of Earth.

Dated to around 3.7 billion years ago, the fossils contain evidence of stromatolites - layers of sediment packed together by ancient, water-based bacterial colonies - and could push back the origins of life in the fossil record by 220 million years.

Read more… 

Neptune-size exoplanet around a red dwarf star

Goleta CA (SPX) Nov 27, 2015 A team of astronomers have used the LCOGT network to detect light scattered by tiny particles (called Rayleigh scattering), through the atmosphere of a Neptune-size transiting exoplanet. This suggests a blue sky on this world which is only 100 light years away from us. Transits occur when an exoplanet passes in front of its parent star, reducing the amount of light we receive from the star Full article

Cryovolcanoes: Meet the Frozen Volcanoes on Pluto

Scientists spotted a possible ice volcano on the surface of Pluto. At about 90 miles (150 kilometers) across and 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) high. 

Scientists have assembled the highest-resolution color view of one of the cryovolcanoes.

If confirmed, it would be the largest such feature discovered in the outer solar system. More at: http://go.nasa.gov/1mYCtyZ

China and the US create a ‘space hotline’ to avoid conflicts

Humpback whales around the globe are mysteriously rescuing animals from orcas

Scientists are baffled at this seemingly altruistic behavior, which seems to be a concerted global effort to foil killer whale hunts.

Humans might not be the only creatures that care about the welfare of other animals. Scientists are beginning to recognize a pattern in humpback whale behavior around the world, a seemingly intentional effort to rescue animals that are being hunted by killer whales.

Marine ecologist Robert Pitman observed a particularly dramatic example of this behavior back in 2009, while observing a pod of killer whales hunting a Weddell seal trapped on an ice floe off Antarctica. The orcas were able to successfully knock the seal off the ice, and just as they were closing in for the kill, a magnificent humpback whale suddenly rose up out of the water beneath the seal.

This was no mere accident. In order to better protect the seal, the whale placed it safely on its upturned belly to keep it out of the water. As the seal slipped down the whale’s side, the humpback appeared to use its flippers to carefully help the seal back aboard. Finally, when the coast was clear, the seal was able to safely swim off to another, more secure ice floe.

Read more

Read the study: Humpback whales interfering when mammal-eating killer whales attack other species: Mobbing behavior and interspecific altruism?

The internet is going to be 3-D printed in space, because why not

Majestic — a British provider of SEO services — is bringing both their internet graphing and futuristic printing capabilities to the final frontier, basically because they can.

Using a zero gravity-compatible 3-D printer onboard Orbital ATK’s recently launched Cygnus spacecraft, the #MajesticInSpace (MIS) project will produce a three-dimensional “data visualization of the entire internet,” according to SearchEngineLand. It’s expected to look something like the below model. Which is to say, not unlike a melting ice sculpture.

Follow @the-future-now​

Why wildfires are necessary

Did you know that several forest species need fire to survive?

In the conifer-rich forests of western North America, lodgepole pines constantly seek the sun. Their seeds prefer to grow on open, sunny ground, which pits saplings against each other as each tries to get more light by growing straighter and faster than its neighbors. Over time, generations of slender, lofty lodgepoles form an umbrella-like canopy that shades the forest floor below. But as the trees’ pine cones mature to release their twirling seeds, this signals a problem for the lodgepole’s future: very few of these seeds will germinate in the cool, sunless shade created by their towering parents.

These trees have adapted to this problem by growing two types of cones. There are the regular annual cones that release seeds spontaneously:

And another type called serotinous cones, which need an environmental trigger to free their seeds:

Serotinous cones are produced in thousands and are like waterproof time capsules sealed with resinous pitch. Many are able to stay undamaged on the tree for decades. Cones that fall to the ground can be viable for several years as well. But when temperatures get high enough, the cones pop open.

Once it’s gotten started, a coniferous forest fire typically spreads something like this: flames ravage the thick understory provided by species like Douglas Fir, a shade-tolerant tree that’s able to thrive under the canopy of lodgepole pines. The fire uses these smaller trees as a stepladder to reach the higher canopy of old lodgepole pines. That ignites a tremendous crown fire, reaching temperatures of up to 2400 degrees Fahrenheit. At those temperatures, the serotinous cones burst open, releasing millions of seeds which are carried by the hot air to form new forests. After the fire, carbon rich soils and an open, sunlit landscape help lodgepole seeds germinate quickly and sprout in abundance. From the death of the old forest comes the birth of the new.

So however counterintuitive it may seem, wildfires are important for the wider ecosystem as a whole. Without wildfires to rejuvenate trees, key forest species would disappear—and so would the many creatures that depend on them. And if a fire-dependent forest goes too long without burning, that raises the risk of a catastrophic blaze which could destroy a forest completely, not to mention people’s homes and lives. That’s why forest rangers sometimes intentionally start controlled burns—to reduce fuels in order to keep the more dangerous wildfires at bay.  

From the TED-Ed Lesson Why wildfires are necessary - Jim Schulz

Animation by @provinciastudio

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