27 dezembro 2017

Recycling Cassiopeia A


Massive stars in our Milky Way Galaxy live spectacular lives. Collapsing from vast cosmic clouds, their nuclear furnaces ignite and create heavy elements in their cores. After a few million years, the enriched material is blasted back into interstellar space where star formation can begin anew. The expanding debris cloud known as Cassiopeia A is an example of this final phase of the stellar life cycle. Light from the explosion which created this supernova remnant would have been first seen in planet Earth's sky about 350 years ago, although it took that light about 11,000 years to reach us. This false-color Chandra X-ray Observatory image shows the still hot filaments and knots in the Cassiopeia A remnant. High-energy emission from specific elements has been color coded, silicon in red, sulfur in yellow, calcium in green and iron in purple, to help astronomers explore the recycling of our galaxy's star stuff - Still expanding, the blast wave is seen as the blue outer ring. The sharp X-ray image, spans about 30 light-years at the estimated distance of Cassiopeia A. The bright speck near the center is a neutron star, the incredibly dense, collapsed remains of the massive stellar core.

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VISIT –>...



VISIT –> http://ift.tt/2jJ3gRC to learn all about the history of psychology.

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A belief in witches and witchcraft were common in Europe through...



A belief in witches and witchcraft were common in Europe through the early 1700s. Witch bottles–small containers filled with personal items, sealed, and buried–are one way this belief appears in the archaeological record. Where there are witch bottles, there were people who believed in witches. The buried bottle was supposed to absorb a spell, tormenting the witch who cast the spell, and preventing the spell from harming whoever buried the bottle. When witch bottles are found today they are almost always broken or empty. But in Greenwich, England, in 2004, workers found a rare, unopened example, a stoneware bellarmine jar. They heard rattling and splashing inside, so something was definitely inside.

X-rays revealed pins and nails stuck in the jar’s neck (it had been buried upside-down). Then a CT scan showed that the witch’s bottle was about half-filled with liquid – confirming the splashing. Using a long needle, scientists penetrated the cork and removed some of the liquid for analyses. Using modern witchcraft, proton nuclear magnetic resonance and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry, they determined the smelly answer: urine.

When the bottle was emptied to inventory the pins and nails, the contents were only slightly less gross than human pee. Inside were 12 iron nails (one of which was driven through a leather heart), 8 brass pins, brimstone, clumps of hair, 10 manicured fingernail clippings, and a little clot of what looked like bellybutton lint. Further tests showed that the witch bottle was probably filled and buried sometime in the 1600s.

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The first book published in English and definitely written by a woman came out around 1395. Written...

The first book published in English and definitely written by a woman came out around 1395. Written by Julian of Norwich it is an account of her divine visions, as well as her thoughts on love, sin, and hope. Unfortunately very little is known about Julian herself. The name Julian might not even be her birth name!

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Kwanzaa Tholus on Ceres


These images show a subtle feature on dwarf planet Ceres called Kwanzaa Tholus.

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Ursos são culpados pelos avistamentos de Yetis?

Um novo estudo determinou que os avistamentos da criatura lendária teriam relação com três espécies de ursos.

Acreditado para residir nas montanhas remotas e florestas do Tibete, Butão e Nepal, o Yeti há muito tempo permaneceu um grampo espiritual e cultural para as pessoas que vivem nas imediações do Himalaia.

Às vezes referido como o Abominável Homem das Neves, este hominídeo evasivo como um macaco tornou-se uma grande parte da cultura popular ocidental depois que escaladores relataram encontrar trilhas de grandes pegadas na neve durante as expedições ao escalar algumas das montanhas mais perigosas e distantes da Terra.

Mas existe realmente uma espécie não descoberta de macaco gigante vagando pelas selvas do Himalaia?

Charlotte Lindqvist, professora associada da Faculdade de Artes e Ciências da Universidade de Buffalo, recentemente liderou um esforço para estudar uma variedade de supostos artefatos de Yeti, incluindo dentes, amostras de cabelo, amostras fecais e ossos.

Ao reconstruir os genomas mitocondriais completos de cada espécime, sua equipe determinou que eles eram todos de tipos de ursos – o preto asiático, o marrom tibetano e o marrom do Himalaia.

“Nossos achados sugerem fortemente que os fundamentos biológicos da leda Yeti podem ser encontrados em ursos locais”, disse Lindqvist.

A pesquisa da equipe, no entanto, não refuta totalmente a existência da criatura.

“O trabalho científico pode ajudar a explorar mitos como o Yeti”, disse ela. “Mesmo que não haja prova da existência deles, é impossível descartar completamente que eles vivem”.



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