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New "Super Earth" Found at Right Distance for Life
A new planet—probably a rocky super-Earth—has been found squarely within its star's habitable zone, making it one of the best candidates yet to support life, its discoverers say. FROM: news.nationalgeographic.com
Tibetan Halo
The particularly colorful halo featured above was snapped at Yamdrok Tso Lake, Tibet. This is a 22-degree halo — the radius of the inner ring to the Sun.
Happy New Year!
A year is a unit of measure used to describe the revolution of a planet around its star-in our case this is usually given as 365 days or occasionally as 365.2429 days and some years (2012 for example) we actually say a year is 366 days. But first, the history: the word year comes from Old English gē(a)r, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch jaar and German Jahr, from an Indo-European root shared by Greek hōra meaning year, season, any part of a year, also any part of a day, hour, and the Latin word hornus meaning of this year. The root probably came from the verbal root *ei- meaning to do or make a complete cycle.
Earthshine
Earthshine is a soft, faint glow on the dark side of the moon caused by the reflection of sunlight from the Earth. Specifically, Earthshine happens when the light from the sun is reflected from the Earth’s surface, to the moon, and then back to our eyes. Because of this double reflection of light, Earthshine is many, many times dimmer than the direct light of the sun on the moon. Earthshine is even more faint because the moon’s “albedo” (a specific kind of reflectivity) is less than Earth’s. Even though this dim light is only a reflection it can still illuminate some features of the moon.
Increased polar bear cannibalism observed due to sea-ice habitat loss, such a pity!
An adult polar bear is seen dragging the body of a cub that it has just killed across the Arctic sea ice. Polar bears normally hunt seals but if these are not available, the big predators will seek out other sources of food - even their own kind. The picture was taken by environmental photojournalist Jenny Ross in Olgastretet, a stretch of water in the Svalbard archipelago.
How Long Does It Take for Earth's Magnetic Field to Reverse?
As end of the world scenarios begin to ramp up with 2012 now in play, I figured it would be timely to post one of the debunk facts about the switching of our magnetic field reversal which some believe to occur in a matter of days. Most of the folks who believe this we’re likely duped by another 2012 site.
Patterns in Nature: Mysterious Earth
Some 5 or 6 or 7 billion years from now, the Sun will become a red giant star and will engulf the orbits of Mercury and Venus and probably the Earth. The Earth then would be inside the Sun, and some of the problems that face us on this particular day will appear, by comparison, modest.
Climate Changes too Quickly for Species to Adapt
The ranges of species will have to change dramatically as a result of climate change between now and 2100 because the climate will change more than 100 times faster than the rate at which species can adapt, according to a newly published study by Indiana Univ. researchers.
Beautiful Ijen (by tropicaLiving - Jessy Eykendorp)
Ijen Crater is a nature reserve Ijen Park is located between Banyuwangi and Bondowoso District, East Java, Indonesia. This crater exactly located at the top of Mount Ijen which is one of a series of volcanoes in East Java such as Bromo, Semeru and Merapi. Another uniqueness of this crater has a level of acidity is very high with almost close to zero and the temperature of the water is 20° Celsius. In addition to elevation 2,799 m (9,183 ft) Posis crater is located in the middle of the largest caldera on the island of Java. The caldera size about 20 miles. The crater size is about 960 meters x 600 meters with a depth of 200 meters. This crater is located at a depth of more than 300 meters below the caldera wall.
The South Pole Observatory and Southern Lights