A Controllable Flash Model of the Scale of the Universe

Now this is just mind-blowing. Some has created a flash scale model of the universe and other things foudn in it so you can really just get a vague idea of how big and small everything really is.


http://static.flabber.net/files/scale-of-the-universe-2.swf

It take a minute to load but it is completely worth you're time, if you don't check this out you're really missing out on something amazing.

CREATURES OF THE MARIANA TRENCH

 I found some pictures of creatures that were found in the Mariana Trench. It's amazing to see what's in these great depths of waters knowing that we hardly have any information on the oceans of our world.

The Mariana Trench is 11,033 meters (36,201 feet), (6033.5) fathoms deep. The Pressure at the deepest part of the Mariana Trench is over 8 tons per square inch. The Mariana Trench is 2, 542 km (1,580 miles) long and 69 km (43 miles) wide.




















This article and images were taken from: http://visboo.com/creatures-of-the-mariana-trench.html 

After 30 Years, They Reach The 20 Million Yeard Old Antarctic Lake

'Lost World' Reached: 20 Million Year Old Antarctic Lake 'Drilled'

Published: 06 February, 2012, 16:09
Edited: 06 February, 2012, 19:13

Image from lostlab.ru

After 30 years spent drilling through a four-kilometer-thick ice crust, researchers have finally broken through to a unique subglacial lake. Scientists are set to reveal its 20-million-year-old secrets, and imitate a quest to discover ET life.

The Vostok project breathes an air of mystery and operates at the frontiers of human knowledge. The lake is one of the major discoveries in modern geography; drilling operations at such depths are unprecedented; never before has a geological project required such subtle technologies.

The main inspiration for the project – the Russian scientist who posited the lake’s existence – died just six months before the moment of contact with the lake’s surface. Now, the whole world is looking to Lake Vostok for crucial data which might help to predict climate change.

“Yesterday [on Sunday] our scientists at the Vostok polar station in the Antarctic completed drilling at depths of 3,768 meters and reached the surface of the subglacial lake,” RIA Novosti reported, quoting an unnamed Russian scientist.

Meanwhile, Itar-Tass news agency says the scientists still have a few meters to go.

Lake Vostok is a unique closed ecosystem hidden under some four kilometers of ice. Its water has been isolated from the atmosphere – and therefore from any contact with the outside world – since before man existed. The key question for scientists is, could the lake harbour life?

 Image from earth.columbia.edu

If some primitive bacteria or even more complex life-forms are found to have survived the isolation, it could offer an earth-shattering insight into our planet’s past.

But if the lake proves to be a closed system devoid of any life, it would offer scientists the chance to test their theories on how to search for extra-terrestrial life on future space trips. Conditions in the lake are often described as “alien," as they resemble lakes on Jupiter's moon Europa.

When drilling work began around Vostok Station in the Antarctic in the 1970s, scientists had no idea a mysterious lake lay under the massive ice sheet. It was only in 1996 that Russian specialists, supported by their British counterparts, discovered with sonar and satellite imaging what later proved to be one of the world’s largest freshwater reservoirs. In size, Lake Vostok matches Lake Ontario.

Panoramic photo of Vostok Station showing the layout of the camp. Credit: Todd Sowers LDEO, Columbia University, Palisades, New York (Image from physorg.com)

However in 1998, drilling had to be halted just 130 meters from the lake’s surface after the alarm was raised over concerns that the ancient and unblemished waters risked being polluted if special precautions were not taken.

The relevant technology was developed in 2003 in St. Petersburg. Work resumed in 2005 after tests.
After the 24-hour-a-day drilling work is over, scientists are to take samples of lake water which penetrates through the crack. Specialists at the Russian Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute predict they will find “the only giant super-clean water system on the planet.” The pristine water will be “twice cleaner than double-distilled water,” they believe.

The Vostok Antarctic research station is no Bali resort. Its temperatures average around –66 degrees Centigrade. Earth’s the lowest ever temperature was recorded there on July 21, 1983, when it hit –89.2 C.


RT.COM. (2012). Search For Life| Newfound Alien Planet is Best Candidate Yet to Support Life Retrieved February 6, 2012 from http://rt.com/news/antarctic-million-secrets-lake-583

This article is not mine nor do I claim credit of any sort. All rights and ect. go to RT.COM

Newfound Alien Planet is Best Candidate Yet to Support Life, Scientists Say

by Denise Chow, SPACE.com Staff Writer

Date: 02 February 2012 Time: 10:01 AM ET

An artist's conception of the alien planet GJ 667Cc, which is located in the habitable zone of its parent star. CREDIT: Carnegie Institution for Science View full size image

A potentially habitable alien planet — one that scientists say is the best candidate yet to harbor water, and possibly even life, on its surface — has been found around a nearby star.

The planet is located in the habitable zone of its host star, which is a narrow circumstellar region where temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist on the planet's surface.

"It's the Holy Grail of exoplanet research to find a planet around a star orbiting at the right distance so it's not too close where it would lose all its water and boil away, and not too far where it would all freeze," Steven Vogt, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told SPACE.com. "It's right smack in the habitable zone — there's no question or discussion about it. It's not on the edge, it's right in there."

Vogt is one of the authors of the new study, which was led by Guillem Anglada-Escudé and Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution for Science, a private, nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C.

"This planet is the new best candidate to support liquid water and, perhaps, life as we know it," Anglada-Escudé said in a statement.

 

An alien super-Earth

The researchers estimate that the planet, called GJ 667Cc, is at least 4.5 times as massive as Earth, which makes it a so-called super-Earth. It takes roughly 28 days to make one orbital lap around its parent star, which is located a mere 22 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Scorpius (the Scorpion).

"This is basically our next-door neighbor," Vogt said. "It's very nearby. There are only about 100 stars closer to us than this one."

Interestingly enough, the host star, GJ 667C, is a member of a triple-star system. GJ 667C is an M-class dwarf star that is about a third of the mass of the sun, and while it is faint, it can be seen by ground-based telescopes, Vogt said. [Gallery: The Strangest Alien Planets]

"The planet is around one star in a triple-star system," Vogt explained. "The other stars are pretty far away, but they would look pretty nice in the sky."

The discovery of a planet around GJ 667C came as a surprise to the astronomers, because the entire star system has a different chemical makeup than our sun. The system has much lower abundances of heavy elements (elements heavier than hydrogen and helium), such as iron, carbon and silicon.

"It's pretty deficient in metals," Vogt said. "These are the materials out of which planets form — the grains of stuff that coalesce to eventually make up planets — so we shouldn't have really expected this star to be a likely case for harboring planets."

The fortuitous discovery could mean that potentially habitable alien worlds  could exist in a greater variety of environments than was previously thought possible, the researchers said.
"Statistics tell us we shouldn't have found something this quickly this soon unless there's a lot of them out there," Vogt said. "This tells us there must be an awful lot of these planets out there. It was almost too easy to find, and it happened too quickly."

The detailed findings of the study will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

This graphic shows the orbits of the alien planet GJ 667Cc, which takes about 28 days to orbit its parent star. The orbits of other potential planets in the system are also shown.
CREDIT: Carnegie Institution for Science

View full size image

To view the rest of the article visit: http://www.space.com/14444-alien-planet-super-earth-habitable-zone.html

All rights go to Space.com and The Author of the Article Denise Chow Space.com Staff Writer. 2012

SPACE.COM. (2012). Search For Life| Newfound Alien Planet is Best Candidate Yet to Support Life Retrieved February 2, 2012 from http://www.space.com/14444-alien-planet-super-earth-habitable-zone.html