Meme of the Day, Part 1...

Right on, Batman! I have no idea why that song "Happy" from the film Despicable Me 2 beat out U2's "Ordinary Love" (which is in the movie Mandela) at this year's Academy Awards. "Happy" is too repetitive, really boring, goes on for too long and—in case I didn't make myself clear earlier—is too freakin' repetitive. Kelly Clarkson is guilty of this too ("No— I don't care if you don't write a love song about me, nor do I care if I don't know a thing about you")...but "Happy" just makes me want to buy Despicable Me 2 on DVD and then take a leak on it out in my backyard. It's just that annoying.


Image courtesy of Hot 104.7 Maine Fan Page - Facebook.com

More Space Goodness For Y'All...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

Ganymede May Harbor 'Club Sandwich' of Oceans and Ice (Press Release - May 1)

The largest moon in our solar system, a companion to Jupiter named Ganymede, might have ice and oceans stacked up in several layers like a club sandwich, according to new NASA-funded research that models the moon's makeup.

Previously, the moon was thought to harbor a thick ocean sandwiched between just two layers of ice, one on top and one on bottom.

"Ganymede's ocean might be organized like a Dagwood sandwich," said Steve Vance of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., explaining the moon's resemblance to the "Blondie" cartoon character's multi-tiered sandwiches. The study, led by Vance, provides new theoretical evidence for the team's "club sandwich" model, first proposed last year. The research appears in the journal Planetary and Space Science.

The results support the idea that primitive life might have possibly arisen on the icy moon. Scientists say that places where water and rock interact are important for the development of life; for example, it's possible life began on Earth in bubbling vents on our sea floor. Prior to the new study, Ganymede's rocky sea bottom was thought to be coated with ice, not liquid -- a problem for the emergence of life. The "club sandwich" findings suggest otherwise: the first layer on top of the rocky core might be salty water.

"This is good news for Ganymede," said Vance. "Its ocean is huge, with enormous pressures, so it was thought that dense ice had to form at the bottom of the ocean. When we added salts to our models, we came up with liquids dense enough to sink to the sea floor."

NASA scientists first suspected an ocean in Ganymede in the 1970s, based on models of the large moon, which is bigger than Mercury. In the 1990s, NASA's Galileo mission flew by Ganymede, confirming the moon's ocean, and showing it extends to depths of hundreds of miles. The spacecraft also found evidence for salty seas, likely containing the salt magnesium sulfate.

Previous models of Ganymede's oceans assumed that salt didn't change the properties of liquid very much with pressure. Vance and his team showed, through laboratory experiments, how much salt really increases the density of liquids under the extreme conditions inside Ganymede and similar moons. It may seem strange that salt can make the ocean denser, but you can see for yourself how this works by adding plain old table salt to a glass of water. Rather than increasing in volume, the liquid shrinks and becomes denser. This is because the salt ions attract water molecules.

The models get more complicated when the different forms of ice are taken into account. The ice that floats in your drinks is called "Ice I." It's the least dense form of ice and lighter than water. But at high pressures, like those in crushingly deep oceans like Ganymede's, the ice crystal structures become more compact. "It's like finding a better arrangement of shoes in your luggage -- the ice molecules become packed together more tightly," said Vance. The ice can become so dense that it is heavier than water and falls to the bottom of the sea. The densest and heaviest ice thought to persist in Ganymede is called "Ice VI."

By modeling these processes using computers, the team came up with an ocean sandwiched between up to three ice layers, in addition to the rocky seafloor. The lightest ice is on top, and the saltiest liquid is heavy enough to sink to the bottom. What's more, the results demonstrate a possible bizarre phenomenon that causes the oceans to "snow upwards." As the oceans churn and cold plumes snake around, ice in the uppermost ocean layer, called "Ice III," could form in the seawater. When ice forms, salts precipitate out. The heavier salts would thus fall downward, and the lighter ice, or "snow," would float upward. This "snow" melts again before reaching the top of the ocean, possibly leaving slush in the middle of the moon sandwich.

"We don't know how long the Dagwood-sandwich structure would exist," said Christophe Sotin of JPL. "This structure represents a stable state, but various factors could mean the moon doesn't reach this stable state.

Sotin and Vance are both members of the Icy Worlds team at JPL, part of the multi-institutional NASA Astrobiology Institute based at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

The results can be applied to exoplanets too, planets that circle stars beyond our sun. Some super-Earths, rocky planets more massive than Earth, have been proposed as "water worlds" covered in oceans. Could they have life? Vance and his team think laboratory experiments and more detailed modeling of exotic oceans might help find answers.

Ganymede is one of five moons in our solar system thought to support vast oceans beneath icy crusts. The other moons are Jupiter's Europa and Callisto and Saturn's Titan and Enceladus. The European Space Agency is developing a space mission, called JUpiter ICy moons Explorer or JUICE, to visit Europa, Callisto and Ganymede in the 2030s. NASA and JPL are contributing to three instruments on the mission, which is scheduled to launch in 2022 (see http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-069).

Other authors of the study are Mathieu Bouffard of Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France, and Mathieu Choukroun, also of JPL and the Icy World team of the NASA Astrobiology Institute. JPL is managed by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena for NASA.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory


NASA / JPL - Caltech

It's Finally Here!

Don't forget to catch the two-hour premiere of 24: Live Another Day on FOX tonight! For those of y'all on the West Coast, it starts at 8 PM, Pacific Time. All I can say is, I'm gonna get goosebumps when the logo above once again appears on the TV screen at the start of the first episode... Carry on.

Curiosity Takes Another Selfie on Mars...

Last week, NASA released new photos of Curiosity that was obtained using the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the rover's robotic arm. The self-portrait was taken while the six-wheeled spacecraft remains stationed at "the Kimberley"...a scientific waypoint where Curiosity is drilling for rock samples and gathering data prior to resuming her voyage to Mount Sharp. The rover should reach her 3-mile-high primary destination before the end of this year.


NASA / JPL - Caltech / MSSS

A Distant View of Uranus...

NASA / JPL - Caltech / Space Science Institute

Cassini Spies the Ice-Giant Planet Uranus (Press Release)

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured its first-ever image of the pale blue ice-giant planet Uranus in the distance beyond Saturn's rings.

The robotic spacecraft briefly turned its gaze away from the ringed beauty of Saturn on April 11, 2014, to observe the distant planet, which is the seventh planet from the sun.

The planets Uranus and Neptune are sometimes referred to as "ice giants" to distinguish them from their larger siblings, Jupiter and Saturn, the classic "gas giants." The moniker derives from the fact that a comparatively large part of the planets' composition consists of water, ammonia and methane, which are typically frozen as ices in the cold depths of the outer solar system. Jupiter and Saturn are made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, with smaller percentages of these ices.

When this view was obtained, Uranus was nearly on the opposite side of the sun as seen from Saturn, at a distance of approximately 28.6 astronomical units from Cassini and Saturn. An astronomical unit is the average distance from Earth to the sun, equal to 93 million miles (150 million kilometers). At their closest - once during each Saturn orbit of nearly 30 years - the two planets approach to within about 10 astronomical units of each other.

In addition to its aesthetic appeal, Cassini's view of Uranus also serves a practical purpose. Scientists working on several of Cassini's science investigations expect that they will be able to use images and spectra from these observations to help calibrate their own instruments.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The Stanley Cup Playoffs: It's Ducks VS. Kings!

Bring on the Freeway Series! With the Los Angeles Kings prevailing over the San Jose Sharks, 5-1, in Game 7 at NoCal tonight, L.A. finally set in stone the very first playoff match between two SoCal sports teams (the Kings versus the Anaheim Ducks). I'm not watching Major League Baseball, so I don't know just how well the Dodgers and Anaheim Angels (no, I won't call them the L.A. Angels of Anaheim) are doing right now, so I can't gauge if there's a chance (it's much too early to discuss this, anyway) that there will be a Freeway Series between them during the Fall Classic this October. As for hockey, Game 1 between the Kings and Ducks in Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs will take place this Saturday (at the Honda Center, the Ducks' home arena, in Orange County). Doesn't matter who wins this weekend; either way, it's a great time to be a SoCal sports fan. And I don't think I even need to make a Donald Sterling or Mike D'Antoni reference here... Clippers and Lakers fans can rejoice as well.

H.A.L.O. Jump...

Today marks one year since I did a 30,000-foot tandem skydive above Whiteville, Tennesee—courtesy of the awesome folks at HALOJumper.com. This was no doubt one of the coolest experiences of my life... Can't wait to supplement this by winning the lottery one day and affording the money to pay for a trip (which costs more than $200,000) aboard Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, hah. Anyways, play the video below to see my HALO jump!

Meme of the Day, Part 2...

To illustrate the reason as to why I don't care much to have a corporate job (though this applies to just about any profession), this funny drawing nicely depicts what most folks go through in an office setting everyday. This pretty much shows why a lot of people that I know personally decided to try starting their own businesses (some succeeded, some didn't) after getting laid off (or worse) from their previous place of employment (usually at a corporation). As for which birds on this flow chart apply to me? Err...no comment. Oh, and I got this meme through one of my cousins—who posted this on Facebook. Good show... That is all.


Image courtesy of Mandatory Fan Page - Facebook.com

Meme of the Day...

Either way, I'd probably emerge from the front door with a shotgun in hand. Just kidding... I don't own a shotgun.

Kepler Does It Again!

NASA Ames / SETI Institute / JPL - Caltech

NASA's Kepler Discovers First Earth-Size Planet In The 'Habitable Zone' of Another Star (Press Release)

Using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the "habitable zone" -- the range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that planets the size of Earth exist in the habitable zone of stars other than our sun.

While planets have previously been found in the habitable zone, they are all at least 40 percent larger in size than Earth and understanding their makeup is challenging. Kepler-186f is more reminiscent of Earth.

"The discovery of Kepler-186f is a significant step toward finding worlds like our planet Earth," said Paul Hertz, NASA's Astrophysics Division director at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "Future NASA missions, like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the James Webb Space Telescope, will discover the nearest rocky exoplanets and determine their composition and atmospheric conditions, continuing humankind's quest to find truly Earth-like worlds."

Although the size of Kepler-186f is known, its mass and composition are not. Previous research, however, suggests that a planet the size of Kepler-186f is likely to be rocky.

"We know of just one planet where life exists -- Earth. When we search for life outside our solar system we focus on finding planets with characteristics that mimic that of Earth," said Elisa Quintana, research scientist at the SETI Institute at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and lead author of the paper published today in the journal Science. "Finding a habitable zone planet comparable to Earth in size is a major step forward."

Kepler-186f resides in the Kepler-186 system, about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The system is also home to four companion planets, which orbit a star half the size and mass of our sun. The star is classified as an M dwarf, or red dwarf, a class of stars that makes up 70 percent of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

"M dwarfs are the most numerous stars," said Quintana. "The first signs of other life in the galaxy may well come from planets orbiting an M dwarf."

Kepler-186f orbits its star once every 130-days and receives one-third the energy from its star that Earth gets from the sun, placing it nearer the outer edge of the habitable zone. On the surface of Kepler-186f, the brightness of its star at high noon is only as bright as our sun appears to us about an hour before sunset.

"Being in the habitable zone does not mean we know this planet is habitable. The temperature on the planet is strongly dependent on what kind of atmosphere the planet has," said Thomas Barclay, research scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute at Ames, and co-author of the paper. "Kepler-186f can be thought of as an Earth-cousin rather than an Earth-twin. It has many properties that resemble Earth."

The four companion planets, Kepler-186b, Kepler-186c, Kepler-186d, and Kepler-186e, whiz around their sun every four, seven, 13, and 22 days, respectively, making them too hot for life as we know it. These four inner planets all measure less than 1.5 times the size of Earth. The next steps in the search for distant life include looking for true Earth-twins -- Earth-size planets orbiting within the habitable zone of a sun-like star -- and measuring the their chemical compositions. The Kepler Space Telescope, which simultaneously and continuously measured the brightness of more than 150,000 stars, is NASA's first mission capable of detecting Earth-size planets around stars like our sun.

Ames is responsible for Kepler's ground system development, mission operations, and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and was funded by the agency's Science Mission Directorate.

The SETI Institute is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to scientific research, education and public outreach. The mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe.

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA Ames / SETI Institute / JPL - Caltech