Expanding Crapulence: Neal Adams and the "Expanding Earth Theory"

RHYMEMAIDEN1 explores the "expanding earth theory".

Comets And Meteor Showers

NASA: Comets And Meteor Showers (Perseid Meteor Shower).

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Have you ever wondered what makes these cosmic fireworks? Meteor showers are just colorful debris of a passing comet or occasionally , the debris from a fragmented asteroid. When a comet nears the sun, its icy surface heats up. This causes clouds of gas, dirt and dust to be released, forming a tail of debris that can stretch for millions of miles.

As Earth passes near this dusty tail, some of the small dust particles hit our atmosphere. They burn up and create great celestial fireworks for us to enjoy.

NASA generates meteor shower forecasts to prevent potential hazards to spacecraft that are launching and orbiting Earth. NASA also monitors these showers to check the accuracy of the forecasts.

You can learn about all of NASA's missions at http://www.nasa.gov.

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Rocks and Ice in the Solar System

Our Solar System consists of the Sun, planets, and moons, but it also contains a multitude of smaller chunks of rock and ice. These objects were left over from the time when our Sun and Solar System formed.

So where are all of these small neighbors? Millions of rocky chunks called asteroids orbit in a region between the four rocky inner planets and the four outer gas giant planets. The Dawn mission is currently on its way to investigate Ceres and Vesta, two of the largest asteroids. Beyond Neptune, there is another swarm of objects made mostly of ice and dust. This is the disc-shaped region known as the Kuiper Belt, the origin of many comets. Some comets originate even farther out, from a giant shell of objects near the edge of the Solar System known as the Oort Cloud.

Our Solar System consists of the Sun, planets, and moons, but it also contains a multitude of smaller chunks of rock and ice. These objects were left over from the time when our Sun and Solar System formed.

So where are all of these small neighbors? Millions of rocky chunks called asteroids orbit in a region between the four rocky inner planets and the four outer gas giant planets. The Dawn mission is currently on its way to investigate Ceres and Vesta, two of the largest asteroids. Beyond Neptune, there is another swarm of objects made mostly of ice and dust. This is the disc-shaped region known as the Kuiper Belt, the origin of many comets. Some comets originate even farther out, from a giant shell of objects near the edge of the Solar System known as the Oort Cloud.

http://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/docs/08I...

The Electromagnetic Spectrum

Science@NASA: EMS (Episode 1) - An Introduction To The Electromagnetic Spectrum

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Measuring the electromagnetic spectrum

You actually know more about it than you may think! The electromagnetic (EM) spectrum is just a name that scientists give a bunch of types of radiation when they want to talk about them as a group. Radiation is energy that travels and spreads out as it goes-- visible light that comes from a lamp in your house and radio waves that come from a radio station are two types of electromagnetic radiation. Other examples of EM radiation are microwaves, infrared and ultraviolet light, X-rays and gamma-rays. Hotter, more energetic objects and events create higher energy radiation than cool objects. Only extremely hot objects or particles moving at very high velocities can create high-energy radiation like X-rays and gamma-rays.

The different types of radiation in the EM spectrum, in order from lowest energy to highest:

Radio: Yes, this is the same kind of energy that radio stations emit into the air for your boom box to capture and turn into your favorite Mozart, Madonna, or Justin Timberlake tunes. But radio waves are also emitted by other things ... such as stars and gases in space. You may not be able to dance to what these objects emit, but you can use it to learn what they are made of.

Microwaves: They will cook your popcorn in just a few minutes! Microwaves in space are used by astronomers to learn about the structure of nearby galaxies, and our own Milky Way!

Infrared: Our skin emits infrared light, which is why we can be seen in the dark by someone using night vision goggles. In space, IR light maps the dust between stars.

Visible: Yes, this is the part that our eyes see. Visible radiation is emitted by everything from fireflies to light bulbs to stars ... also by fast-moving particles hitting other particles.

Ultraviolet: We know that the Sun is a source of ultraviolet (or UV) radiation, because it is the UV rays that cause our skin to burn! Stars and other "hot" objects in space emit UV radiation.

X-rays: Your doctor uses them to look at your bones and your dentist to look at your teeth. Hot gases in the Universe also emit X-rays .

Gamma-rays: Radioactive materials (some natural and others made by man in things like nuclear power plants) can emit gamma-rays. Big particle accelerators that scientists use to help them understand what matter is made of can sometimes generate gamma-rays. But the biggest gamma-ray generator of all is the Universe! It makes gamma radiation in all kinds of ways.

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/sci...

Creation "Science" 2: Frozen Mammoths

RHYMEMAIDEN1 pwns Kent Hovind.

Neil deGrasse Tyson- Is it worth it? (Today's with Matt Lauer)

A clip that should be on Youtube :P
Matt asks Neil if it is worth spending $3bn on the Cassini probe. Neil responds by pointing out that the money spent on lip balm exceeds the money spent on the mission.

WISE Surveys The Skies

Calacademy: WISE Surveys the Skies. NASA's WISE mission has just completed its first survey of the entire sky.

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WISE is a NASA-funded Explorer mission that will provide a vast storehouse of knowledge about the solar system, the Milky Way, and the Universe. Among the objects WISE will study are asteroids, the coolest and dimmest stars, and the most luminous galaxies.

WISE is an unmanned satellite carrying an infrared-sensitive telescope that will image the entire sky. Since objects around room temperature emit infrared radiation, the WISE telescope and detectors are kept very cold (below -430° F /15 Kelvins, which is only 15° Centigrade above absolute zero) by a cryostat -- like an ice chest but filled with solid hydrogen instead of ice.

Solar panels will provide WISE with the electricity it needs to operate, and will always point toward the Sun. Orbiting several hundred miles above the dividing line between night and day on Earth, the telescope will look out at right angles to the Sun and will always point away from Earth. As WISE orbits from the North pole to the equator to the South pole and then back up to the North pole, the telescope will sweep out a circle in the sky. As the Earth moves around the Sun, this circle will move around the sky, and after six months WISE will have observed the whole sky.

As WISE sweeps along the circle a small mirror scans in the opposite direction, capturing an image of the sky onto an infrared sensitive digital camera which will take a picture every 11 seconds. Each picture will cover an area of the sky 3 times larger than the full Moon. After 6 months WISE will have taken nearly 1,500,000 pictures covering the entire sky.

Each picture will have one megapixel at each of four different wavelengths that range from 5 to 35 times longer than the longest waves the human eye can see. Data taken by WISE will be downloaded by radio transmission 4 times per day to computers on the ground which will combine the many images taken by WISE into an atlas covering the entire celestial sphere and a list of all the detected objects.

http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/mission....

Venus: Death of a Planet

From the fires of a sun's birth... twin planets emerged. Venus... and Earth. Two roads diverged in our young solar system. Nature draped one world in the greens and blues of life.

While enveloping the other in acid clouds... high heat... and volcanic flows. Why did Venus take such a disastrous turn?

For as long as we have gazed upon the stars, they have offered few signs... that somewhere out there... are worlds as rich and diverse as our own.

Recently, though, astronomers have found ways to see into the bright lights of nearby stars.

They've been discovering planets at a rapid clip... using observatories like NASA's Kepler space telescope... A French observatory known as Corot ... .And an array of ground-based instruments. The count is approaching 500... and rising.

These alien worlds run the gamut... from great gas giants many times the size of our Jupiter... to rocky, charred remnants that burned when their parent star exploded.

Some have wild elliptical orbits... swinging far out into space... then diving into scorching stellar winds. Still others orbit so close to their parent stars that their surfaces are likely bathed in molten rock.

Amid these hostile realms, a few bear tantalizing hints of water or ice... ingredients needed to nurture life as we know it.

The race to find other Earths has raised anew the ancient question... whether, out in the folds of our galaxy, planets like our own are abundant... and life commonplace?

Or whether Earth is a rare Garden of Eden in a barren universe?

With so little direct evidence of these other worlds to go on, we have only the stories of planets within our own solar system to gauge the chances of finding another Earth.




Consider, for example, a world that has long had the look and feel of a life-bearing planet.

Except for the moon, there's no brighter light in our night skies than the planet Venus... known as both the morning and the evening star.

The ancient Romans named it for their goddess of beauty and love. In time, the master painters transformed this classical symbol into an erotic figure.

It was a scientist, Galileo Galilei, who demystified planet Venus... charting its phases as it moved around the sun, drawing it into the ranks of the other planets.

With a similar size and weight, Venus became known as Earth's sister planet. But how Earth-like is it?

The Russian scientist Mikkhail Lomonosov caught a tantalizing hint in 1761. As Venus passed in front of the Sun, he witnessed a hair thin luminescence on its edge.

Venus, he found, has an atmosphere. Later observations revealed a thick layer of clouds. Astronomers imagined they were made of water vapor, like those on Earth. Did they obscure stormy, wet conditions below?

And did anyone, or anything, live there? The answer came aboard an unlikely messenger.... an asteroid that crashed into Earth.

That is... according to the classic sci-fi adventure, The First Spaceship on Venus. A mysterious computer disk is found among the rubble.

With anticipation rising on Earth, an international crew sets off to find out who sent it... and why. Approaching Venus, the astronauts translate the contents of the disk. The news is not good.

In a desperate attempt to prevent an interplanetary war... and save their home planet... the crew embarks on a dangerous mission.

They descend to the planet's dark surface to confront the adversaries.