More than a hundred years ago an extraordinary mechanism was found by sponge divers at the bottom of the sea near the island of Antikythera. It astonished the whole international community of experts on the ancient world. Was it an astrolabe? Was it an orrery or an astronomical clock? Or something else? For decades, scientific investigation failed to yield much light and relied more on imagination than the facts. However research over the last half century has begun to reveal its secrets. The machine dates from around the end of the 2nd century B.C. and is the most sophisticated mechanism...
The rivers on Mars were wider and deeper than those on Earth, according to a publication in the Science Advances Magazine. Up to this conclusion, scientists reached an analysis of 200 dry river beds on the surface of the neighboring planet. Wide and deep rivers have existed on Mars for a surprisingly long period. This makes their disappearance even more mysterious and inexplicable. “We could not explain why there were lakes and rivers on Mars, and the current discoveries make the question even more incomprehensible” writes Edwin Kite of the University of Chicago. ”It turns out that wide and deep...
Belka and Strelka are dogs sent to space on board of the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik-5, a prototype of the Vostok spacecraft. Belka and Strelka, spend two days there – August 19 and 20, 1960. The animals were prepared for their mission for one year. The purpose of the experiment on sending animals to space is to test the effectiveness of life supporting system in space and to study the impact of cosmic rays on living organisms. Belka and Strelka were the first living creatures to safely return to Earth after an orbital flight (before that, on May 28, 1959...
Living in Space definitely can not be compared to living on Earth. Take, for example, hair washing. How is this actually possible with zero gravity? Karen Nyberg – member of the 36th expedition at the International Space Station will show you step by step in the next 3-minute video. Please follow and like us:
Get ready for one of the greatest scientific news of the century. It seems astronomers will soon be showing the first shot of a black hole. Event Horizon Telescope participants (including a series of telescopes from around the world) have scheduled a number of press conferences around the world on April 10 to make announcement about “a groundbreaking result”. So far, the details are unknown. We can assume, however, that these are the first results of their mission to capture for the first time the event horizon of a black hole. The black hole is a space-time area that has...
US Vice President Mike Pens challenged NASA to send people to the Moon by 2024. Jim Bridenstine, NASA administrator, accepted the challenge and announced that the deadline is sufficient. Pens wants a little more dynamics from NASA’s space projects. During a meeting at Alabama Space Center, he announced, that sending astronauts to the Moon, for up to 5 years, is in the goals of the current presidential administration. “Challenge accepted. Now let’s get to work.” Brindenstine said on Twitter. BIG NEWS: President Trump and @VP Pence have directed @NASA to return astronauts to the Moon in the next 5 years.Challenge...
The concept of “day” is so obvious to us, people, that we often get surprised when we realize that the length of the day on other planets can be quite different than here on Earth. Perhaps even more shocking thing is, that so far we did’t know how long is a day on Saturn. Thanks to data collected from the Cassini mission, we have an answer to this long-standing mystery. Saturn spins around its axis for 10 hours, 33 minutes and 38 seconds. The findings are published in the Astrophysical Journal. Planetary scientists often use magnetic fields to determine the...
NASA’s Mars 2020 rover is expected to launch sometime next year, so you’d be right to assume that NASA is making strides in manufacturing its next-generation rover and its accompanying landing gear in preparation for the big day. In this video, NASA’s Jennifer Trosper gives us an inside look at the progress that’s being made on the Mars 2020 rover. While the rover doesn’t look like much as of right now, Trosper says it’ll be completed sometime in the next several months. Other critical components, such as the cruise stage, the descent stage, the air shell, and the heat shield,...
British and American scientists have proved that billions of years ago the Earth resembled the modern Titan, a satellite of Saturn with an atmosphere and vast seas, high mountains, rivers, dunes, mists. Everything is like Earth’s, but with one difference: the temperature of Saturn’s largest satellite is minus 180 degrees, and rivers and oceans contain hydrocarbons. The results of their research were published in the new issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. According to scientists, 2.4 billion years ago, the Earth’s atmosphere, like Titan’s, contained huge amounts of methane – a gas produced by microorganisms, the...
