Yeah it's been a while, I need to watch it again. Last few years have been great with interstellar, the Martian, arrival, the space between us wait what
Intersteller and The Martian are on.. no pun.. another planet compared to those other movies. Fuck those are both top 6 of my fave movies of all time. Mad max fury road so good too
Even though the ice caps of Earth change in the gif, it's based on liquid water. I think this illustration is based off of an estimated average 100 km (60 mi) depth for Europa's entire ocean.
Haha, that sentence made sense to me in my head but I guess it wouldn't make sense to many other people. Spoiler I'm the STEM/NOVA mentor for a Cub Scout pack. Basically any lessons that are over the Den Leader's head, they ask me to teach instead. By "my kids" I meant the scouts - one of the requirements (for Wolves/2nd graders, iirc) is to explain a rain shadow, so I printed that pic out and put it in my binder.
I can't be the only one who had to google "rain shadow". I guess that'll happen when you live almost 1,000 miles from the nearest mountain range.
Theoretically in every black hole is another universe, that also contains millions of black holes with potentially infinite universes.
Maybe just a massive spaceship. Mysterious isolated object investigated by astronomers March 13, 2017 by Tomasz Nowakowski report This artist’s impression shows the free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/P. Delorme/R. Saito/VVV Consortium. (Phys.org)—An international team of astronomers led by Philippe Delorme of the Grenoble Alpes University in France has recently investigated a mysterious object designated CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9 (CFBDSIR 2149-0403 for short) in order to reveal its true nature. The object is assumed to be a young isolated planetary-mass object or a high-metallicity low-mass brown dwarf. The results of new observations published Mar. 2 in a paper on arXiv.org could help distinguish between these two classes. CFBDSIR 2149-0403 was detected in 2012 by Delorme and his team as a possible member of the AB Doradus moving group. After its discovery, it was classified by the researchers as a unique T-type isolated planetary-mass candidate. However, due to the lack of convincing evidence supporting the hypothesis that CFBDSIR 2149-0403 formed as a planet and was subsequently ejected, the scientific community does not exclude the possibility that it could be a low-mass brown dwarf. In order to to fully characterize CFBDSIR 2149-0403 and to constrain its nature, the team has conducted multi-instrument, multi-wavelength follow-up observations of this object. The list of instruments used by Delorme and his colleagues includes the Very Large Telescope's (VLT) X-Shooter spectrograph and HAWK-I near-infrared imager, WIRCam imager at the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. "The X-Shooter data enabled a detailed study of the physical properties of this object. However, all the data presented in the paper is really necessary for the study, especially the follow-up to obtain the parallax of the object, as well as the Spitzer photometry. Together, they enable us to get the bolometric flux of the object, and hence constraints that are almost independent from atmosphere model assumptions," Delorme told Phys.org. Besides determining the object's parallax, the follow-up observations also allowed the researchers to derive its six-dimensional position and kinematics. These results indicate that CFBDSIR 2149-0403 is most likely not a member of the AB Doradus moving group, as was claimed in earlier studies, thereby removing any strong independent constraint on its age. "We now reject our initial hypothesis that CFBDSIR 2149-0403 would be a member of the AB Doradus moving group. This removes the most robust age constraint we had. Though determining that certainly improved our knowledge of the object it also made it more difficult to study, by adding age as a free parameter," Delorme said. The most important conclusion in the new study is that CFBDSIR 2149-0403 is most probably either a young (less than 500 million years) isolated planetary-mass (between two and 13 Jupiter masses) object of late-T spectral type, or an older (2 to 3 billion years old), metallicity-enhanced brown dwarf, with a mass ranging from two to 40 Jupiter masses. However, the scientists noted that our theoretical understanding of cool, low-gravity and/or metallicity-enhanced atmospheres is not yet robust enough to decisively conclude which hypothesis is true. This is because these physical parameters have very similar effects on the emergent spectra of such atmospheres. "CFBDSIR 2149-0403 is an atypical substellar object that is either a 'free-floating planet' or a rare high-metallicity brown dwarf. Or a combination of both," Delorme concluded. Explore further: A very cool pair of brown dwarfs (w/ video) More information: CFBDSIR 2149-0403: young isolated planetary-mass object or high-metallicity low-mass brown dwarf?? arXiv:1703.00843 [astro-ph.SR] arxiv.org/abs/1703.00843 Abstract We conducted a multi-wavelength, multi-instrument observational characterisation of the candidate free-floating planet CFBDSIR~J214947.2-040308.9, a late T-dwarf with possible low-gravity features, in order to constrain its physical properties. We analyzed 9 hours of X-Shooter spectroscopy with signal detectable from 0.8—2.3μm, as well as additional photometry in the mid-infrared using the Spitzer Space Telescope. Combined with a VLT/HAWK-I astrometric parallax, this enabled a full characterisation of the absolute flux from the visible to 5μm, encompassing more than 90% of the expected energy emitted by such a cool late T-type object. Our analysis of the spectrum also provided the radial velocity and therefore the determination of its full 3-D kinematics. While our new spectrum confirms the low gravity and/or high metallicity of CFBDSIR2149, the parallax and kinematics safely rule out membership to any known young moving group, including AB~Doradus. We use the equivalent width of the KI doublet at 1.25μm as a promising tool to discriminate the effects of low-gravity from the effects of high-metallicity on the emission spectra of cool atmospheres. In the case of CFBDSIR2149, the observed KI doublet clearly favours the low-gravity solution. CFBDSIR2149 is therefore a peculiar late-T dwarf that is probably a young, planetary-mass object (2—13Mjup, <500Myr) possibly similar to the exoplanet 51Erib, or perhaps a 2—40Mjup brown dwarf with super-solar metallicity. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-03-mysterious-isolated-astronomers.html#jCp
Interesting article about sex in space and how our bodies are affected by space travel. Spoiler FiveThirtyEight SERIESEarth to Mars REPRODUCTION Space Sex Is Serious Business We’ve done almost no research into this area, but it’s key to living on Mars. by Maggie Koerth-Baker Published Mar. 14, 2017 ILLUSTRATION BY TOM MCCARTEN In January 1991, a couple of crazy kids got married. That these particular “kids” were in their late 30s, were astronauts, and were keeping their marriage a secret from their bosses at NASA only added to the romance. Mark Lee and Jan Davis met during training for a space shuttle mission and kept their relationship quiet long enough to ensure that it would be difficult to replace them on the mission, as NASA normally would have done under its then-unwritten rule that banned married astronauts from flying together. And so, in September 1992, Lee and Davis became the first (and, after the unwritten rule became a written one, possibly last) married couple in space. America had just one question for them. You know. Eh? Eh? Wink-wink. NASA says no humans have had sex in space. There’s nothing other than speculation to suggest otherwise. (Well, speculation and a vague sense that we would want to try it, given half a chance.) But you aren’t a total junior-high pervert for wondering. Sex — or, rather, reproduction — has piqued the curiosity of scientists, too. When they went to space together, Lee and Davis even spent some time artificially inseminating frog eggs for the greater good. (So, somebody got lucky on that trip. Sort of.) If the future of humanity is written in the stars, and if we’re really serious about permanent human settlement on Mars, then we need to know what happens when this basic biological function is taken beyond the confines of the planet on which it evolved. And this is about more than just sex. Experts say that whether and how reproduction works is just one of a number of medical and biological questions related to long-duration space travel to which we need better answers and more, more-diverse data. Right now, anybody who wants to take a human to Mars for a trip that would last a minimum of nearly two years is, in many ways, flying blind. The research on reproduction in space has been slow and underfunded. It’s happened in fits and starts over the course of 50 years. All told, at least five species — from amoebas to rats — have gone through the, er, act of reproduction while in orbit.geckos and part of their gestation in space or donated their space-altered sperm and eggs to science. The data that has come out of this research is not altogether reassuring. Space travel can affect reproduction in a couple of ways. First, most obviously, is the radiation. Space is full of subatomic particles moving very quickly. Those particles can slam into DNA like a bowling ball laying down a sweet split. The damage they leave behind can alter genetic instructions, setting up a path that leads to cancer, genetic mutations that can be passed down to children, and other problems. Life on Earth is protected from more than 99 percent of this radiation by our planet’s atmosphere and magnetic field. The magnetic field provides some protection in orbit as well. But the farther from Earth you go, the less you’re shielded. And “if you look at the list of organs sensitive to radiation damage, the gonads, the ovaries and testes, are always in the top two or three,” said Joseph Tash, a professor at the University of Kansas Medical Center who has studied animal reproduction in space. Any trip to Mars would result in radiation exposures exceeding the current allowed limits for astronauts. Left: Jan Davis and Mark Lee, the first married couple in space, aboard the shuttle Endeavour. Right: The Space Shuttle Endeavour lifts off. GETTY IMAGES; NASA The second source of danger is less well-understood. Microgravity — you know, the whole thing where astronauts float around the International Space Station like a Cirque du Soleil troupe with a penchant for polo shirts — seems to alter biology too. It’s well-known that astronauts lose muscle mass while in space. Your body gets weaker when it doesn’t have to bear its own weight every day. But the effects of microgravity are weirder and more complex than what can be addressed by a modified treadmill. Some of the female mice that traveled to the space station in 2010 and 2011 stopped ovulating, and others lost their corpus luteum, an important structure that forms in the ovary after the release of an egg. The corpus luteum is responsible for producing hormones that maintain a pregnancy until the placenta can grow enough to do that job itself. Without it, you might get pregnant, but the pregnancy would be unlikely to stick. This connects to data from older experiments. Back in 1979, Russian scientists launched a satellite carrying male and female rats and gave them the opportunity to mingle beginning a couple of days into their 18-day trip. The experiment didn’t result in any babies. Two rats had apparently gotten pregnant, but both miscarried. There’s consistent evidence that microgravity affects hormone levels in both males and females, Tash said. It’s possible those rats had estrogen levels so low that most of them weren’t even interested in mating. These effects persist after the animals return to Earth, but things eventually reset after they spend enough time in normal gravity. Mars’s surface doesn’t have normal gravity, however. It’s about 38 percent of the gravity of Earth. And we don’t know if that’s enough to reverse the effects. We also don’t know whether humans experience these same effects. We only have a very small sample of female astronauts to begin with — as of 2015, only 11 percent of people who have gone to space have been female. These women are also typically in their late 30s when they first go to space, and most of them choose to take hormonal birth control to stop menstruating while they’re there. It would be very difficult to statistically separate the impact of microgravity on their hormones and fertility from the impacts of their age and medications. As for men, there’s evidence that both pilots and astronauts who spend time in altered gravity father more female than male babies. But again, these trends give rise to more questions than answers. Left: This photomicrograph shows normal skeletal muscle fibers (top) and atrophied skeletal muscle fibers (bottom). Right: Astronauts in an antigravity chamber. NASA / JOHNSON SPACE CENTER; GETTY IMAGES Microgravity has been implicated in changing sperm production and behavior. It could alter fetal development, particularly the vestibular system, which helps you maintain your balance when you walk. Rats who go into labor shortly after returning from space have almost twice as many contractions as rats who never left Earth. Tash told me that researchers are only on the cusp of beginning to understand why microgravity can alter the body in the ways it apparently does. The basic takeaway, according to him and to Virginia Wotring, professor at Baylor University’s Center for Space Medicine, is that we don’t know much. But what we do know should give us pause. Far from being seen as crucial, though, the research on reproduction in space has often been treated as if it’s somewhat embarrassing. In 2007, for instance, somebody from NASA told Slate that the agency had never conducted official experiments on animal reproduction in space, a claim that appears to be in direct opposition to the published scientific record. And Kelly Humphries, acting news chief of the NASA Ames Research Center, told me the agency decided not to comment on this story and would not allow me to speak to April Ronca, a senior scientist with NASA’s space biosciences research branch and the foremost expert on this topic. NASA is not focused on sex in space at this time, Humphries told me. And that is where your prurient giggling connects to a much larger issue. When you ask why no humans have ever had sex in space, part of the answer is that truly living in the cosmos — as opposed to visiting for the sake of scientific field research — isn’t what NASA is about. Stressing that she was not speaking on behalf of NASA, Wotring said, “It’s never been one of NASA’s missions to colonize. Yet. The way the budgets are constrained, you can’t afford to do research on something you don’t need. There’s all kinds of things we should do before a long-duration kind of mission, but [we] haven’t, because we haven’t needed it,” she said. Left: President Barack Obama addresses Congress during his 2015 State of the Union address, where he said, “I want Americans to … [push] out into the solar system not just to visit, but to stay.” Right: An 1896 drawing of Mars showing “canals” and dark areas. The American astronomer Percival Lowell theorized that a Martian civilization, faced with climate change, had built the canals to transport water from the planet’s ice caps to irrigate crops. GETTY IMAGES; ANN RONAN PICTURES / PRINT COLLECTOR / GETTY IMAGES. Turns out, we know very little about the impacts of long-duration spaceflight in general. The open questions include whether some medications would lose efficacy in less time than it would take to get to Mars and back, and whether spaceflight-weakened astronauts would be able to regain their muscle mass in Martian gravity they way they do on Earth. “They have a massive team of people to assist with rehabilitation back to Earth’s gravity. And even then it can take days, weeks, or even months to recover,” said Dr. Kris Lehnhardt, professor of medicine at George Washington University and faculty associate with the school’s Space Policy Institute. Those rehabilitation teams won’t exist on Mars. So what happens then? “We can’t have everybody laying on the floor of the spacecraft because they pass out whenever they try to stand,” Lehnhardt said. Part of the problem is that almost all the available data on astronaut health and recovery comes from astronauts who have experienced only very short stays in space. During the space shuttle era, most people were only ever off the planet for about two weeks at a time. Since then, missions have lengthened significantly. Six-month stays on the ISS are now more normal, and astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko completed a yearlong mission in March. What we think we know, based on mostly short-trip data, might or might not turn out to be accurate when applied to longer journeys. In testimony to Congress in June, Kelly said that the physical impacts of his 340-day trip were surprisingly different from those he experienced after a 159-day mission. His muscles stiffened more quickly. His legs swelled. He developed a rash all over his body from touching everyday objects. He even had flu-like symptoms. LATEST IN THIS SERIESNo One Has Gotten Lucky In Space NASA has acknowledged the gaps in what we know about the impacts of long-duration spaceflight. In 2014, for instance, it commissioned a team studded with health experts and retired astronauts to write a National Academies report advising the agency on how best to ethically approach long-duration spaceflight situations where the very nature of the mission would mean that astronauts must violate current NASA workplace safety standards. But other groups interested in traveling to Mars have displayed less concern about these challenges. In the Q&A session after his Sept. 27 presentation unveiling his plan to put humans on Mars, Elon Musk was asked about human safety in flight or on the planet. His response downplayed the risks of radiation as minor, and he didn’t mention the effects of microgravity at all. When I asked Tash about Musk’s perspective, which seemed to imply that the problems had been solved already, Tash just started laughing. “Well, Elon Musk is a good salesman,” he said. “Unfortunately, a lot of people think, ‘There’s a pill for that.’ And there may not be. Based on our data and the data of people doing the fundamental research, we can tell you that no, we don’t know the answers yet.” Japanese freshwater fish, shown at left, are one of the few species that have joined the 200-mile-high club and are the first species to conceive and give birth in space. At right is the nucleus of one of the daughter cells created when a cell undergoes mitosis and splits in two. KIYOSHI NARUSE; EZEQUIEL MIRON / WELLCOME IMAGE It’s not that SpaceX discounts the health impacts of long-duration space flight, said Phil Larson, who at the time he was interviewed was SpaceX’s spokesperson. (He has since left the company.) Instead, he told me, Musk’s comments have to be understood in the context of what, specifically, the inventor and his company want to do and what they want to leave to others. SpaceX’s business is building the machines to get to Mars. “If you can solve the transport problem — meaning dramatically lowering the cost per pound to the surface of Mars — then solving the other challenges, like health, becomes much easier,” he told me. The cheaper and more realistic the transportation becomes, the more incentive other people will have to answer questions about things like making babies. Finding those answers will take cash, starting with increased investment in astronaut health. The 2014 National Academies report advised NASA to put more resources into caring for, and monitoring, the health of retired astronauts. “Believe it or not, there’s no provision for lifetime health care for astronauts,” said Jeffrey Kahn, director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and chair of the committee that wrote the report. Without that commitment, there’s not a strong incentive for retired astronauts to be continuously monitored and cared for as they age — which means potentially crucial data about the effects of space travel on the human body is likely going unnoticed. That’s the first small step we can take. Eventually, maybe we’ll know enough to allow somebody — or, really, two somebodies — to take the giant leap of space sex and reproduction. CORRECTION (March 14, 10:10 a.m.): A previous version of this article misstated Phil Larson’s job title. He was a spokesperson at SpaceX when he was interviewed, but he left the company before the article was published.
Enceladus' south pole is warm under the frost March 14, 2017 As it swooped past the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus on 14 July 2005, Cassini acquired high-resolution views of this puzzling ice world. From afar, Enceladus exhibits a bizarre mixture of softened craters and complex, fractured …more Over the past decade, the international Cassini mission has revealed intense activity at the southern pole of Saturn's icy moon, Enceladus, with warm fractures venting water-rich jets that hint at an underground sea. A new study, based on microwave observations of this region, shows that the moon is warmer than expected just a few metres below its icy surface. This suggests that heat is produced over a broad area in this polar region and transported under the crust, and that Enceladus' reservoir of liquid water might be lurking only a few kilometres beneath. In 2005, observations by the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini mission revealed plumes of water vapour and ice spraying into space from the south pole of Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon of Saturn. These jets originate from the so-called 'tiger stripes' – four warm fractures in the moon's icy surface. The salty composition of these jets points to an underground sea of liquid water that might interact with Enceladus' rocky core, similar to the sub-surface ocean that is thought to exist on Jupiter's moon, Europa. Many of Cassini's flybys of Enceladus have been dedicated to understanding the structure of the interior of this fascinating body and its potentially habitable water reservoir. Now, a study based on data collected during a close flyby in 2011 indicates that the moon's hidden sea might be closer to the surface than previously thought. "During this flyby, we obtained the first and, unfortunately, only high-resolution observations of Enceladus' south pole at microwave wavelengths," says Alice Le Gall from Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales (LATMOS), and Université Versailles Saint-Quentin (UVSQ), France. Alice is an associate member of the Cassini RADAR instrument team and the lead scientist of the new study, published today in Nature Astronomy. "These observations provide a unique insight into what is going on beneath the surface. They show that the first few metres below the surface of the area that we investigated, although at a glacial 50-60 K, are much warmer than we had expected: likely up to 20 K warmer in some places," she adds "This cannot be explained only as a result of the Sun's illumination and, to a lesser extent, Saturn's heating so there must be an additional source of heat." The detected heat appears to be lying under a much colder layer of frost, as no similar anomaly was found in infrared observations of the same region – these probe the temperature of the surface but are not sensitive to what is underneath. The South Pole region on Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon of Saturn, imaged by the Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) on the international Cassini mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute; Acknowledgement: A. Lucas The observations used by Alice and her collaborators cover a narrow, arc-shaped swathe of the southern polar region, about 500 km long and 25 km wide, and located just 30 km to 50 km north of the tiger-stripe fractures. Because of operational constraints of the 2011 flyby, it was not possible to obtain microwave observations of the active fractures themselves. This had the benefit of allowing the scientists to observe that the thermally anomalous terrains of Enceladus extend well beyond the tiger stripes. "The thermal anomaly we see at microwave wavelengths is especially pronounced over three fractures that are not unlike the tiger stripes, except that they don't seem to be the source of jets at the moment," Alice says. These seemingly dormant fractures lying above the warm, underground sea point to a dynamic character of Enceladus' geology: the moon may have experienced several episodes of activity at different locations during its past history. Even if the observations cover only a small patch of the southern polar terrains, it is likely that the entire region is warm underneath and Enceladus' ocean could be a mere 2 km under the icy surface. The finding agrees well with the results of a recent study, led by Ondrej Cadek and published in 2016, which estimated the thickness of the crust on Enceladus. With an average depth of 18–22 km, the ice shell appears to reduce to less than 5 km at the south pole. Alice and her collaborators think that the underground heating source is linked to the tidal cycle of the moon along its eccentric orbit around Saturn. This induces stress compressions and deformations on the crust, leading to the formation of faults and fractures while at the same time heating up the sub-surface layers. In this scenario, the thinner icy crust in the south pole region is subject to a larger tidal deformation that, in turn, releases more heat and contributes to maintaining the underground water in liquid form. "This discovery opens new perspectives to investigate the emergence of habitable conditions on the icy moons of the gas giant planets," says Nicolas Altobelli, ESA's Project Scientist for Cassini–Huygens. "If Enceladus' underground sea is really as close to the surface as this study indicates, then a future mission to this moon carrying an ice-penetrating radar sounding instrument might be able to detect it."
NASA selects investigations for first mission to encounter the sun March 16, 2017 X-rays stream off the sun in this image showing observations from by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, overlaid on a picture taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Credit: NASA NASA has begun development of a mission to visit and study the sun closer than ever before. The unprecedented project, named Solar Probe Plus, is slated to launch no later than 2018. The small car-sized spacecraft will plunge directly into the sun's atmosphere approximately four million miles from our star's surface. It will explore a region no other spacecraft ever has encountered. NASA has selected five science investigations that will unlock the sun's biggest mysteries. "The experiments selected for Solar Probe Plus are specifically designed to solve two key questions of solar physics - why is the sun's outer atmosphere so much hotter than the sun's visible surface and what propels the solar wind that affects Earth and our solar system? " said Dick Fisher, director of NASA's Heliophysics Division in Washington. "We've been struggling with these questions for decades and this mission should finally provide those answers." As the spacecraft approaches the sun, its revolutionary carbon-composite heat shield must withstand temperatures exceeding 2550 degrees Fahrenheit and blasts of intense radiation. The spacecraft will have an up close and personal view of the sun enabling scientists to better understand, characterize and forecast the radiation environment for future space explorers. NASA invited researchers in 2009 to submit science proposals. Thirteen were reviewed by a panel of NASA and outside scientists. The total dollar amount for the five selected investigations is approximately $180 million for preliminary analysis, design, development and tests. The selected proposals are: Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons Investigation: principal investigator, Justin C. Kasper, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. This investigation will specifically count the most abundant particles in the solar wind - electrons, protons and helium ions - and measure their properties. The investigation also is designed to catch some of the particles for direct analysis. Wide-field Imager: principal investigator, Russell Howard, Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. This telescope will make 3-D images of the sun's corona, or atmosphere. The experiment will also provide 3-D images of the solar wind and shocks as they approach and pass the spacecraft. This investigation complements instruments on the spacecraft providing direct measurements by imaging the plasma the other instruments sample. Fields Experiment: principal investigator, Stuart Bale, University of California Space Sciences Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif. This investigation will make direct measurements of electric and magnetic fields, radio emissions, and shock waves that course through the sun's atmospheric plasma. The experiment also serves as a giant dust detector, registering voltage signatures when specks of space dust hit the spacecraft's antenna. Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun: principal investigator, David McComas of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. This investigation consists of two instruments that will monitor electrons, protons and ions that are accelerated to high energies in the sun's atmosphere. Heliospheric Origins with Solar Probe Plus: principal investigator, Marco Velli of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Velli is the mission's observatory scientist, responsible for serving as a senior scientist on the science working group. He will provide an independent assessment of scientific performance and act as a community advocate for the mission. "This project allows humanity's ingenuity to go where no spacecraft has ever gone before," said Lika Guhathakurta, Solar Probe Plus program scientist at NASA Headquarters, in Washington. "For the very first time, we'll be able to touch, taste and smell our sun." The Solar Probe Plus mission is part of NASA's Living with a Star Program. The program is designed to understand aspects of the sun and Earth's space environment that affect life and society. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-mission-encounter-sun.html#jCp
This is what a hurricane looks like on Saturn (taken by Cassini). The eye of the storm is 1,250 miles across.
Not exactly space related, but is Elon Musk related, which I think qualifies. Cool article http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/elon-musk-billion-dollar-crusade-to-stop-ai-space-x
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/30/scientists-peru-successfully-grow-potato-mars-simulator/ This is awesome, I'm glad we didn't trust the Irish with this experiment. Spoiler Hope in human life on Mars rises as scientists in Peru successfully grow a potato in Mars simulator In a lab in the Peruvian capital of Lima, a simulator mimicking the harsh conditions found on Mars now contains a hint of life: a nascent potato plant. After experimenting in the Andean nation's dry, desert soil, scientists have successfully grown a potato in frigid, high carbon-dioxide surroundings. A potato plant grows inside a Mars simulator in Lima, Peru CREDIT: AP Though still in early stages, investigators at the International Potato Center believe the initial results are a promising indicator that potatoes might one day be harvested under conditions as hostile as those on Mars. The findings could benefit not only future Mars exploration, but also arid regions already feeling the impact of climate change. "It's not only about bringing potatoes to Mars, but also finding a potato that can resist non-cultivable areas on Earth," said Julio Valdivia, an astrobiologist with Peru's University of Engineering and Technology who is working with NASA on the project. Peruvian scientist David Ramirez points to a potato plant in a simulator akin to a Mars' conditions, in Lima, Peru CREDIT: AP The experiment began in 2016 - a year after the Hollywood film "The Martian" showed a stranded astronaut surviving by figuring out how to grow potatoes on the red planet. Peruvian scientists built a simulator akin to a Mars-in-a-box: Frosty below-zero temperatures, high carbon monoxide concentrations, the air pressure found at 6,000 meters (19,700 feet) altitude and a system of lights imitating the Martian day and night. Though thousands of miles away from colleagues at Nasa's Ames Research Center in California providing designs and advice, Peru was in many ways an apt location to experiment with growing potatoes on Mars. The birthplace of the domesticated potato lies high in the Andes near Lake Titicaca, where it was first grown about 7,000 years ago. More than 4,000 varieties are grown in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, where potatoes have sprouted even in cold, barren lands. CREDIT: ANDREW CROWLEY The Peruvian scientists didn't have to go far to find high-salinity soil similar to that found on Mars, though with some of the organic material Mars lacks: Pampas de la Joya along the country's southern coast receives less than a millimeter of rain a year, making its terrain somewhat comparable to the Red Planet's parched ground. International Potato Center researchers transported 700 kilos (1,540 pounds) of the soil to Lima, planted 65 varieties and waited. In the end, just four sprouted from the soil. In a second stage, scientists planted one of the most robust varieties in the even more extreme conditions of the simulator, with the soil - Mars has no organic soil - replaced by crushed rock and a nutrient solution. Live-streaming cameras caught every tiny movement as a bud sprouted and grew several leaves while sensors provided around-the-clock monitoring of simulator conditions. The winning potato: A variety called "Unique." "It's a 'super potato' that resists very high carbon dioxide conditions and temperatures that get to freezing," Valdivia said. A potato plant grows inside a Mars simulator in Lima, Peru CREDIT: AP NASA itself also has been doing experiments on extraterrestrial agriculture, both for use on spacecraft and perhaps on Mars. Ray Wheeler, the lead for advanced life support research activities at Nasa's Kennedy Space Center, said plant survival in the open on Mars would be impossible given the planet's low-pressure, cold temperature and lack of oxygen, but showing plants could survive in a greenhouse-type environment with reduced pressure and high carbon-dioxide levels could potentially reduce operating costs. Most research on growing plants in space has focused on optimizing environments to get high outputs of oxygen and food. "But understanding the lower limits of survival is also important, especially if you consider pre-deploying some sort of plant growth systems before humans arrive," he said. In the next stage of the experiment, scientists will build three more simulators to grow potato plants under extreme conditions with the hope of gaining a broader range of results. They will also need to increase the carbon dioxide concentrations to more closely imitate the Martian atmosphere.