Wait What

AIR!

Earth’s atmosphere recently crossed 400 ppm CO2 for the first time in millions of years and probably will not go back below that amount during any of our lifetimes. (http://tinyurl.com/bus4xpt). But did you know there’s something else changing in the atmosphere to go along with that CO2 rise?

It’s pictured in this graph. This gas is going down, decreasing in the atmosphere as CO2 goes up. That gas? Oxygen. Oxygen in the atmosphere is decreasing.

Be honest…did you just stop and take a deep breath? It really is kinda creepy to realize that the gas everyone is taught as a kid they need to survive is going down in the atmosphere.

Anyway, why is oxygen going down? The same reason that carbon is going up; burning of fossil fuels.

Keep reading

BRAIN EXPLOSION! Thanks, physicists. Read more: http://bit.ly/1SSG67L

How to Escape a Hair Grab or a Neck Grab ? Look at them, carefully.

tai chi pants on http://www.icnbuys.com/tai-chi-pants give you surprise at the new year.

follow back

Science When the Sun Don’t Shine

About once a year, somewhere on Earth, the sun is blocked by the moon. This phenomenon – called a total solar eclipse – is one of the most beautiful natural events.

Blocking the light of the sun during a total solar eclipse reveals the sun’s relatively faint, feathery atmosphere, called the corona. The corona is one of the most interesting parts of the sun. We usually study it using an instrument called a coronagraph, which uses a solid disk to make an artificial eclipse by blocking the sun’s face.

To successfully block all of the sun’s bright light – which can bend around the sharp edges of a coronagraph disk – coronagraphs must block much more than just the face of the sun.  So total solar eclipses are a rare chance to study the lower part of the corona, close to the surface of the sun.   

We have sent a team of scientists to Indonesia, where they’re preparing for an experiment during the March 8, 2016, eclipse, visible from Southeast Asia.

The scientists are measuring a certain kind of light – called polarized light – scattered by electrons in the lower corona, which will help us understand the temperature and speed of these electrons.

The March 8 eclipse is a preview of the total solar eclipse that will be visible across the US in August 2017.

Remember, you should never look directly at the sun – even if the sun is partly obscured. This also applies during a total eclipse up until the time when the sun is completely and totally blocked. More on safety: http://go.nasa.gov/1L6xpnI

For more eclipse information, check out nasa.gov/eclipse

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Oculus Superum, Red Nebula

Carina Nebula Rosette Nebula Heart Nebula Fairy Pillar Nebula Orion Nebula Eagle Nebula Flame Vista Nebula Crab Nebula 

These slides, presented during the New Horizons’ press conference at the 47th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, show the climate zones of Pluto compared to Earth. Pluto has an axial tilt of 120°, which creates extreme tropic and arctic regions. The two regions overlap, creating a ‘tropical arctic’ region that experiences both direct sunlight and prolonged sunlight and darkness. At the moment, Pluto is in an intermediate state between the extreme tropic and arctic climates.

Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

A shot of just a tiny bit of the Andromeda Galaxy, from the sharpest ever view taken by the Hubble Space Telescope

Full size image

Skull of a woman with monocephalus diprosopus. This is a form of conjoined twinning characterized by a single head and two faces. From the Museum of Anatomy in Montpellier, France.

Want to See the Oldest Surviving Video of a Total Solar Eclipse?

It was done in – wait for it – 1900! The first total solar eclipse to be filmed has recently been restored. The film was done by Nevil Maskelyne, an illusionist turned astronomic videographer for the British Royal Astronomical Society.

This 1900 film is actually Maskelyne’s second attempt at filming a total solar eclipse. His first attempt was in 1898, when he traveled all the way to India to be at the right place to view a predicted total eclipse. Maskelyne got there in time, but sadly, his film was stolen, and the crime remains unsolved and the film unrecovered.