Despite the level of understanding and knowledge the world has about so many things, everyone is still getting excited about new discoveries and this one is no exception. A rare meteorite, which was found in Siberia, contains a crystal, or at least what appears to be a crystal. The mineral itself is quite rare as well and is also a mystery. While crystal is the term used to describe it, no one’s sure what it actually is but here’s what they know so far:
A fair few years ago now, scientists discovered a small piece of a mineral that was created shortly after the solar system, some four and half billion years ago. The mineral was brought to Earth by the Khatyrka meteorite, which landed in Eastern Siberia. Obviously, a 4 billion-year-old mineral would be incredibly interesting to almost anyone, but not so much in this case. It was still quite intriguing but not for its sheer age, as many would expect, but for its atomic structure instead.
The structure that this mineral possesses is one that has never before been found in nature, although it has been created in laboratory environments. It was referred to as a quasicrystal because from the exterior it resembles a crystal, but on the inside, it’s a whole other kettle of fish.
The image above shows convection currents causing a vertical plume to rise above the volcano.
There are about 300 volcanoes in the surrounding areas according to NASA, roughly 29 of them active. The reason why there are so many is because the peninsula lies on top of a tectonic ridge where the Pacific plate is being pushed underneath the North American plate.
And the experiment could help end hunger here on Earth.
If we want to colonize Mars, we’re going to need to figure out a way to feed ourselves there, and continuously sending food to the Red Planet isn’t a sustainable plan.
But now, a team of researchers thinks it’s figured out a way to produce enough food on Mars to feed a million people — and they say their plan to make Martian colonists self-sufficient would take just a hundred years to implement.
As a student astronomer scanning the skies with homemade instruments a quarter of a century ago, Didier Queloz spent months doubting the data that led him to an inescapable conclusion: he’d just discovered the first planet outside Earth’s solar system.
The Swiss scientist had spent much of his PhD research refining techniques to detect so-called exoplanets, which until one fateful night in October 1995 had previously only existed in the realm of science fiction.
Queloz and his colleague Michel Mayor, who on Tuesday were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for their pioneering work, had already overcome a number of obstacles in their galaxy-wide search.
Shown is Io and Europa over Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and then Titan as it passes over Saturn and it’s edge-on rings. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinmgill/44583965185/?fbclid…quZjFTDy_s
It takes something truly extraordinary, like maybe the death of the Sun, to kill the near-indestructible invertebrate known as the tardigrade. Crash-landings on the Moon, a lack of oxygen and conditions in the darkest corners of the ocean don’t appear pose a threat to this critter’s livelihood. Scientists studying these so-called water bears have uncovered a neat trick they employ to endure inhospitable conditions, using a unique protein to generate protective clouds around their DNA.
Tardigrades measure no more than a millimeter long, but possess an indomitability that would make even nature’s largest and hardiest creatures jealous. Key to their survival is an ability to enter a suspended and extremely dehydrated state of being called anhydrobiosis, in which their metabolism is put on hold until the surrounding conditions are more favorable to a regular life.
This capability has seen tardigrades endure temperatures as high as 150º C (302º F) and as low as −272º C (−457.6º F). It has seen them studied in the vacuum of space and exist amongst intense pressures at the bottom of the ocean. When an Israeli spacecraft carrying tardigrades crash-landed on the Moon in August, it inspired some dramatic headlines around the possibility of the near-indestructible creatures colonizing Earth’s only natural satellite.