Water found on alien worlds

The Hubble space telescope has recently detected water in the atmospheres of five distant planets. The planets are all massive Jupiter-sized bodies that orbit close to their host stars. But their extremely high temperature means that the chances of life, or at least life as we know it, is low.

However this research does open a whole number of doors into our investigation of different atmospheres of various exoplanets beyond our solar system, and ones that could potentially . The compositions of the atmosphere can be determined by the wavelengths of light that the host star transmits and the wavelengths that are partially absorbed. This study also revealed a layer of haze or dust around the planets.

The Science of Curling

Team GB are in action at the Sochi Olympics against China at the moment, but how does curling actually work?

Players push 18kg granite 'stones' some 30m across the ice towards the target. The ice is 'pebbled' by spraying the ice with water to form bumps as it freezes. The stone has a handle on so players can tweak the stones angle, meaning that it spins as it travels towards the target. The path of the stone curves to the right with a clockwise spin and left for an anticlockwise spin. But how do you win at curling? 

Whilst it may look odd, sweeping ahead of the stone is essential. The action reduces the friction by increasing the temperature and softening the ice, allowing the stone to travel longer. Hopefully to knock out the opponent's stone.

China actually won against Team GB 7-6, which, thanks to Denmark puts us into the play-offs tomorrow  - COME ON TEAM GB! :)

How far into space have radiowaves travelled?

We've been broadcasting our existence into deep space via 'radio leakage' for more than 100 years, Travelling at the speed of light: 3 x10^8 that encompasses a sphere that spans more than 200 light years across and dozens of planetary systems the signals in theory have reached extreme deep space, but any artificial intelligence would need antennae to receive the signal hundreds of kilometres across to pick up the signals.

How will we have changed 1,000 years from now?

With technology and knowledge of how the human genome works ever increasing, we could actually speed up the past of evolution with radical results.

We could become superhuman

Disease Resistant: Genes which offer protection from many big killers such as  Malaria and HIV will probably become more dominant, and the cures and treatment will become more effective.

Super- intelligent: If we could work out the genetic basis of intelligence we could start screening fertilised eggs in order to make brainier babies.

Ginger: Natural selection actually dictates that Natural selection dictates that all the survivors would be ginger.

Better- Looking: It's fairly normal to get with a partner that is good looking, so the child then has 'good looking' genes so over time these genes become more prominent, kind of like selective breeding, where the genes become more dominant throughout the generations.

Man and Machine Merge

A life in silicon? : If some scientists are right, it could be possible to transfer human intelligence to machines by using a variety of scanners to produce far more detailed images of the brain than ever before!

Obsolescence of humans: Once artificial intelligence has been created, who knows what could happen to humans? Machine intelligence could mean that humans become obsolete.

The Far Side of the Moon

The far side of the Moon as photographed by the
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)

Due to an effect called Libration, we, on Earth can never see more than 59% of the Moon's surface, leaving the so-called "far side" never visible to humans on Earth. This was first photographed by the unmanned Soviet Luna 3 probe in 1959. It was first directly observed with human eyes by the Apollo 8 crew in 1968.

The far side of the moon is only covered by  1% of  maria (darker surfaces on the moon) compared to 31.2% on the near side of the moon. Until the late 1950's very little was known about the far side of the Moon, because of Libration. Our lack of knowledge about the far side of Moon caused so much speculation, one example of a feature that can be seen through libration is the Mare Orientale. This is a prominent impact basin which spans almost 1,000km. Until 1906 this wasn't even named as a feature on the Moon. In 1906 Julius Franz in Der Mond named this as a feature. In the 1960's the true nature of the basin was first discovered and photographed in detail by the Lunar Orbiter 4 in 1967.

As these landscapes were mostly discovered by Soviet space probes and Soviet scientists selected names for them, although this caused some controversy so the International Astronomical Union (IAU) now name lunar features. 

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Could a planet exist without a Sun?

Yes planets can definitely be "free floating" without a star. These type of planets may have been ejected from their first, original star system. Scientists often refer to this as "rouge planets" or "normad" planets. Another way they can form is by the condensation of material in much the same way as stars themselves. These are normally called "sub-brown dwarfs".  The closest rogue planet to be discovered yet is 'S Ori 52' a member of the Orion star system and is around 80 light years away. Some recent studies have suggested that there might be more free floating planets in the Milky Way than stars!


An example of a rogue planet

Chris Hadfield's Journey to Space...

The YouTube sensation Chris Hadfield first reached the headlines in December 2012 when he blasted off into space on board the Soyuz rocket to the ISS (International Space Station), his mission was to last nearly 6 months orbiting Earth at 17,500 miles per hour seeing a sunrise or sunset every 92 minutes. What's even more astonishing is that it only took 8 minutes and 42 seconds to reach the ISS.

Overall Chris Hadfield has spent 166 days in space, and has completed two space walks. He was even the first Canadian to ever walk in space.  Chris Hadfield was first inspired to be an astronaut when he was raised on a corn farm in Ontario, he watched the Apollo moon landing in 1969. At the time Canada didn't have a space agency so Chris went on to gain his glider pilot licence under the Royal Canadian Air Cadets. he joined the Canadian Armed Forces and he earned an engineering degree at the Royal Military College. As part of an exchange programme with the US Navy he also obtained a degree in  aviation systems at the University of Tennessee Space Institute.

In 1992 Chris Hadfield was one of the first astronauts ever to be excepted onto the Canadian Space programme. In November 1995 he took his first space flight to the Russian Space Station, Mir, where he flew as a 'Mission Specialist'. In April 2001 he flew again on the STS-100 and visited the ISS, here he helped to install the Canadarm2. He took his third and final space flight in December 2012 where he joined Expedition 34. In March 2013 he then took over command of the space station as part of Expedition 35. As part of the mission he was in charge of five astronauts and dozens of experiments on board the space station, on many different things including the impact of low gravity on human biology. During the mission he gained popularity by chronicling life aboard the space station. He also took many pictures of Earth and posted them through Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr to many people worldwide. His mission ended in May 2013 when he safely returned to Earth. Shortly after returning he announced his retirement, ending a 35-year career as a military pilot and astronaut


Chris Hadfield has since written a biography titled: 'An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth' about his 4,000 hours he has clocked up in space and a whole lot more.

 

Meet the Piglet Squid

The Piglet Squid (BBC Focus Magazine)

This is the Piglet Squid (Heliocranchia pfefferi) which always has a smile on his face! The tentacles seem to form a mass of curly 'hair'. The squid is roughly the size of a small avocado and is common in deep water in virtually all oceans. It lives at depths of around 100m or 320ft.

 

The piglet squid is a slow swimmer but ammonium ions in its body fluid help to keep it buoyant. A large light-producing organ (photophore) is located beneath each of its large eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Andromeda Galaxy

This  is the Andromeda Galaxy, which I was lucky enough

 to take as part of the GCSE Astronomy that I do every

Wednesday evening at school

This is the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) which lies around 2.5 million light years away from Earth and it our closest spiral galaxy. Observations taken in 2006 by the Spitzer Space Telescope suggests that the Andromeda Galaxy contains around 1 trillion stars. The Andromeda Galaxy is estimated to be 7.1×10¹¹  solar masses. This means that the mass of the Andromeda Galaxy is 7.1×10¹¹ times heavier than the Sun. The mass of the Sun being approximately two nonillion kilograms. The value of this constant was found by Henry Cavendish in 1798 at the University of Cambridge. He did this with a torsion balance which is designed to measure very weak forces. The invention of the torsion balance is usually credited to Charles - Augustin de Coulomb who invented it in 1777.