Start your weekend off right with some sky-eye candy: These fabulous sunset images are just a few of the great pics posted by our Facebook friends. Thank you so much for your beautiful pics!
Sardinia, Italy. Photo credit: Casa Sardegna Vacanza Ogliastra
NOAA’s new online ocean floor viewer that allows anyone with internet access the ability to explore undersea features.
NOAA Multibeam Bathymetry Surveys. Click to expand. Credit: NOAA
1951 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. This movie depicts wise aliens who tell earthlings they must live peacefully or be destroyed as a danger to other planets.
Astronomer Jill Tarter – who stepped down earlier this week as director of the SETI Institute – said today (May 24, 2012) that she disagrees with those who depict extraterrestrials as angry warriors ready to enslave us, or eat us. In a press release from the SETI Institute, announcing their June 2012 SETIcon, Tarter said:
Read the full articleWhile Sir Stephen Hawking warned that alien life might try to conquer or colonize Earth, I respectfully disagree. If aliens were able to visit Earth that would mean they would have technological capabilities sophisticated enough not to need slaves, food, or other planets. If aliens were to come here it would be simply to explore.
Fires in Gila National Forest are affecting the skies in all of southwestern New Mexico. This photo is from EarthSky Facebook friend Jacqueline McNeese on May 23, 2012. She said these are the true colors she saw in the clouds of smoke. Note the whiter smoke from the source of the fire, in the lower left of this photo.
Our friend Jacqueline McNeese in New Mexico reported on May 23:
Read the full article[The fire] is located about 75 miles northwest of where I live. I could see white smoke around 1:30 p.m., and by around 6 p.m. (when I took this photo), it just took over almost the whole sky. This is looking in the direction of the fire. You can see the smoke coming up in the lower left corner of the photo, where the point of origin is.
A new map of the human brain provides a clearer picture of how different areas of our brain are physically connected and how these connections relate to basic brain function. The University of Georgia researchers and identified 358 landmarks throughout the brain related to memory, vision, language, arousal regulation and many other fundamental bodily operations.
Diffusion tensor imaging showing fibrous connections in the brain. Image courtesy UGA News Service
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, and a beloved science communicator. In this video, he talks about the power and beauty of science as a human activity. The video is part of BigThink’s Humanizing Technology series. Listen to what Tyson has to say.
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Two minutes after the start of the partial eclipse of the Sun. (JAXA/Hinode)
Click here to expand image above
The Hinode satellite, which is in low-Earth orbit, captured these beautiful images of Sunday’s annular or ring eclipse of the sun on Sunday, May 20, 2012.
Read the full articleModern dog breeds have little in common genetically with their ancient ancestors, according to a study published May 21, 2012 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.
An international team of scientists, led by researchers from the University of Durham, analyzed data of the genetic make-up of modern-day dogs, alongside an assessment of the global archaeological record of dog remains.
Breeds such as the Akita, Afghan Hound and Chinese Shar-Pei, which have been classed as 'ancient', are no closer to the first domestic dogs than other breeds due to the effects of lots of cross-breeding, the study found. Photo credit: BD Ungard
Photo credit: SETI
After 35 years of searching the skies for signs of intelligence beyond Earth, astronomer Jill Tarter is stepping down as the director of the Center for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research, the organization’s officials announced today (May 22, 2012).
EarthSky interview: Jill Tarter contemplates SETI’s 50-year search for extraterrestrial life
But Tarter, the inspiration for Jodie Foster’s character Ellie Arroway in the movie “Contact,” will continue to devote herself to the search for E.T. She’s shifting into a full-time fundraising role for the SETI Institute, which was forced to shut down a set of alien-hunting radio telescopes for more than seven months in 2011 due to budget shortfalls.
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This morning's successful launch of SpaceX's Falcon-9 rocket. Image Credit: NASA TV
The Falcon-9 rocket owned by SpaceX – a privately-owned company – launched successfully at 3:44 a.m. EDT (7:44 UTC) today (May 22, 2012). SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft has separated from the rocket successfully, and its solar arrays have deployed. The SpaceX craft is now on its historic mission to deliver a supply capsule to the International Space Station.
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Stéphane Udry is an astronomer at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, and is involved in the search for exoplanets.. He and his team, in 2007, discovered a possibly terrestrial planet in the habitable zone of the red dwarf star Gliese 581, approximately 20 light years away in the constellation Libra. He also led the…read more »
Stéphane Udry: Evidence of billions of rocky, habitable planets in our galaxy
Chris Field is the founding director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, Professor of Biology and Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford University, and Faculty Director of Stanford’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. Field’s research emphasizes impacts of climate change, from the molecular to the global scale. He has, for two decades, led major…read more »
In 2004 David Stuart was appointed as the Linda and David Schele Professor of Mesoamerican Art and Writing. His interests in the traditional cultures of Mesoamerica are wide-ranging, but his primary research focuses is the archaeology and epigraphy of ancient Maya civilization. His early work on the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphs led to a MacArthur…read more »
David Stuart on the Mayan calendar and 2012 doomsday predictions
Kristin O’Brien is an Associate Professor of Biology University of Alaska Institute of Arctic Biology. She is interested in the unique biochemical and physiological characteristics that have evolved in fishes living in the chronically cold environment of Antarctica’s Southern Ocean. One of the most striking characteristics among the Antarctic fishes of the family Channichthyidae, known…read more »
Kristin O’Brien: Antarctic icefishes have translucent bodies and blood
Sukanya Chakarbarti is faculty member in the physics department at Florida Atlantic University. She researches the dynamical evolution of galaxies, with the goal of developing astrophysical probes of fundamental physics. Chakrabarti works on understanding galaxy evolution by performing hydrodynamical and magnetohydrodynamical simulations of galaxies combined with radiative transfer calculations. Dr. Chakrabarti has co-authored over 30…read more »
Sukanya Chakrabarti maps dark matter from ripples of passing satellites
