[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by static-harmony

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/06/science/07marscnd.html?hp&ex=1165467600&en=f7a408f3b452a00 5&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Evidence is coming out that there is water on Mars.

Also Use this to pu anything scientific here.

so, evidence has already been out there is water on earth people, and news flash, it is being used faster then it can be naturally replenished. dont let NASA's TOTAL RECAL fiasco fool you.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

so, evidence has already been out there is water on earth people, and news flash, it is being used faster then it can be naturally replenished.

that part is very true.

[Hip Priest]

Links to four decent spacey stories this week:

A team of NASA scientists led by a member of the Spitzer Science Center believe they have found a way to predict the color of plants on planets in other solar systems.

or

Using a quartet of space observatories, University of Maryland astronomers may have cracked a 45-year mystery surrounding two ghostly spiral arms in the galaxy M106..

or

Chefs have long used a simple trick to differentiate between a raw and hard-boiled egg. By spinning an egg and watching how it behaves when the spin is disrupted, it's easy to tell whether its interior is solid or liquid. Applying a similar test to the planet Mercury, astronomers have found strong evidence that the planet closest to the sun has a fluid core...


or
For the first time, astronomers have created a rough map of a planet orbiting a distant sun-like star, employing a technique that may one day enable mapping of Earth-like worlds...

[Hip Priest]

When ice ages held Europe in their grip, Africa also felt the pinch - though in a different way.

It has long been suspected that there is a connection between the west African monsoon and climate at higher latitudes - especially over geological timescales, says David Lea at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "But until now, there hasn't been enough supporting evidence." Now Lea, with team leader Syee Weldeab and colleagues, has reconstructed the most detailed history of the monsoon yet, spanning 155,000 years and two ice ages.

The team analysed the amount of barium in plankton shells found in an ocean sediment core drilled beneath the Gulf of Guinea. Barium is found in freshwater run-off from the river Niger, says Lea, and is a gauge of past run-off levels and monsoon intensities. When the northern latitudes were frozen over, monsoon rains were much weaker, only gaining strength again when the temperatures in the north increased, the team found.

They also discovered big swings in monsoon activity over timescales as small as 100 years, linked to rapid climate change caused by changes in ice sheet size (Science, vol 316, p 1303). "Something that happens right up in the poles can have a dramatic effect on the climate in the tropics," says Lea.

[Hip Priest]

Saturn moon could yield new insight into origins of life: http://spaceflightnow.com/cassini/070510tholin.html

[Hip Priest]

Plants are able to recognise their siblings, according to a study appearing today in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters...

[Hip Priest]

http://space.newscientist.com/articl...s-stripes.html

Jupiter's cloud patterns are undergoing dramatic changes, reveal new images by the Hubble Space Telescope. Similar transformations of the giant planet's clouds have been witnessed before, but never in such detail – and they have never been explained.

Hubble has been keeping an eye on Jupiter to provide context for close-up observations made by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which flew by the solar system's largest planet in February on its way to Pluto.

Some changes were already evident in January, when Jupiter became observable again after a period when it was too close to the Sun in the sky for Hubble to image. At that time, cloud bands around its equator that had been whitish for the past 15 years or so were noticeably darker.

Then, between 25 March and 5 June, a white band in the planet's northern hemisphere turned brown, while a gap in the cloud layer produced a serpent-shaped dark streak in the same area. White bands in the southern hemisphere seem to be changing colour now, too, says Amy Simon-Miller of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, US.

"This is the first time that we've been able to watch the sequence with high-resolution spacecraft images," she told New Scientist.

Fresh ice

Similar transformations happened in the 1980s and early 1990s. Although Hubble was in orbit during the second transformation, its initially flawed vision had not been corrected yet by a space shuttle servicing mission.

This time around, the planet has been observed during its transformation not only by Hubble and New Horizons but also at infrared wavelengths by several ground-based telescopes that were also providing context observations for
New Horizons.

The reasons for the changes are not clear. White clouds are thought to be higher up in the planet's atmosphere than darker clouds and made of fresher ammonia ice. But exactly what gives the lower-altitude brownish clouds their distinctive colour is one of the biggest mysteries about Jupiter.

Scientists still do not understand what drives these major shifts in the distribution of these clouds, but the new observations could be the key. "This is the first time that we really have a complete set of data, so we hope that we can use this and figure out what's going on," Miller says.

[Hip Priest]

Hello again, HP.

A small galaxy ablaze with a burst of star formation appears in a Hubble Space Telescope image released on Tuesday. A merger with another galaxy may have triggered the colourful display...

[Hip Priest]

Alien hunters 'should also seek weird life'

By Tom Leonard in New York
Last Updated: 2:31am BST 10/07/2007

The hunt for extra-terrestrial life should encompass what experts call "weird life", according to a committee of scientists in the US.

An artist's impression of the European Space Agency's Huygens spacecraft entering the atmosphere of Titan in 2004. Scientists believe Saturn's largest moon is a promising source of weird life
The Huygens spacecraft visited Titan in 2004. Scientists believe the moon is a promising source of weird life

Nasa selects planets and moons with hints of water for its exploratory missions.

But according to the scientists, who have written a report for the National Research Council in the US, other chemicals such as ammonia or methane could also support life.

So-called "weird life" or organisms that lack DNA or other molecules found in life on Earth could exist, the scientists say.

For example, while DNA uses phosphorus in its backbone, it might be possible to build a backbone out of arsenic.

Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, has been singled out as a particularly promising source of weird life.

Michael Meyer, the senior scientist responsible for Nasa’s Mars exploration programme, said: "It’s going to help us a lot to make sure we go exploring with our eyes wide open."

"The committee’s investigation makes clear that life is possible in forms different from those on Earth," the scientists conclude in the study, titled The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems.

The report also urged that the hunt for weird life be extended to Earth itself, as some examples may exist on the ocean floor, said the scientists.

"There’s much about Earth life we don’t understand", said John Baross of the University of Washington, who chaired the committee.

[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

so, evidence has already been out there is water on earth people, and news flash, it is being used faster then it can be naturally replenished. dont let NASA's TOTAL RECAL fiasco fool you.

the amount of water on earth is the same as it has ever been. the amount of fresh water as opposed to salt water is something around 5% of all water on earth is fresh.

we pollute it, and we stink it up, but you cannot "use up" water. polluted water evaporates as pure H2O gas, leaving behind all the impurities and pollution. this causes local groundwater to get filthy and not drinkable. it can be reversed. water is constantly recycled.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjpVQbNpGKo

 

[Hip Priest]

...Geysers of liquid water and ammonia are erupting on Pluto's large moon Charon, new observations suggest. The work bolsters the idea that Charon may harbour a liquid ocean beneath its surface – and just possibly, life

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

the amount of water on earth is the same as it has ever been. the amount of fresh water as opposed to salt water is something around 5% of all water on earth is fresh.

we pollute it, and we stink it up, but you cannot "use up" water. polluted water evaporates as pure H2O gas, leaving behind all the impurities and pollution. this causes local groundwater to get filthy and not drinkable. it can be reversed. water is constantly recycled.

once it goes to the ocean its practically gone..... show me desalination process that is environmentally feasable.

 

[floatingslowly]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

once it goes to the ocean its practically gone..... show me desalination process that is environmentally feasable.

the line under "cloud formation" and "evaporation" that says "from ocean" would be where I would start looking for clues.

[jico.]

july 20 1969
the apollo 11 lunar module lands on the moon.

 

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by floatingslowly

the line under "cloud formation" and "evaporation" that says "from ocean" would be where I would start looking for clues.

"The water cycle describes the processes that drive the movement of water throughout the hydrosphere. However, much more water is "in storage" for long periods of time than is actually moving through the cycle. The storehouses for the vast majority of all water on Earth are the oceans. It is estimated that of the 332,500,000 cubic miles (mi3) (1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers (km3)) of the world's water supply, about 321,000,000 mi3 (1,338,000,000 km3) is stored in oceans,or about 95%. It is also estimated that the oceans supply about 90 percent of the evaporated water that goes into the water cycle."

[floatingslowly]

yeah, that's because there is more water in the ocean than the total volume of fresh water at any given time. thank fuck too, I don't have gills (yet).

it doesn't mean that the evaporation cycle has ceased or that we are experiencing net losses of fresh water due to the oceans.

mostly, my comment was about a "desalination process that is environmentally feasable". I found this "funny" (funny strange, not funny haha), since the environment itself is responsible for most of the desalination that occurs on the planet...

but nice cut and paste professor! I feel smerter.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by floatingslowly

it doesn't mean that the evaporation cycle has ceased or that we are experiencing net losses of fresh water due to the oceans.

who said anything about net loss due to the ocean? I was thinking more like, cities the size of Los Angeles using up to 40% of their available drinking water on their lawns......

[floatingslowly]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

who said anything about net loss due to the ocean? I was thinking more like, cities the size of Los Angeles using up to 40% of their available drinking water on their lawns......

I had a response typed out about how a desert environment NEVER has enough water (even more so when you stack a zillion people on top of it), but then overwhelming waves of apathy made me delete it.

the day that LA cracks off of the continental shelf and sinks below the waves is the day that I begin perpetually tittering like a school girl.

TEEHEE!!!

[Hip Priest]

Four massive galaxies are colliding in the largest galactic merger ever seen, new observations reveal: http://space.newscientist.com/articl...iscovered.html