A recent discovery published by Nature Communications has revealed a series of ice volcanoes on the surface of Pluto. The images which lead to this discovery were captured by Nasa’s New Horizons in 2015, but it was only recently that scientists were able to identify specific peaks that they now believe are ice volcanoes, known as cryovolcanoes. in reality, these peaks are volcanic vents which erupt a mixture of water ice, methane and ammonia. However, the surface temperature on Pluto, which is located in the Kuiper Belt at the outside of the solar system, is a frosty -232 Degrees Celsius, so any liquid slush erupted by the volcano quickly freezes.
The scientists also marked that the area near the volcano peaks are devoid of craters like the rest of Pluto, indicating that the volcanoes were active as recently as 100 million years ago, and they may become active again.
Conclusions drawn from the finding of these volcanoes is that Pluto’s subsurface ocean may still be present, feeding the mixture which erupted out of these cryovolcanoes. Moreover, these recent eruptions demonstrate that Pluto’s interior is still active and hot.
Kepler-186f is an extrasolar planet that was discovered on July 23, 2015. It was the first rocky planet about the size of Earth found in the habitable zone. The habitable zone is an area around a star where the temperature is good for liquid water. Other planets have been found in the habitable zone, but […]
Perhaps the most challenging obstacle between humans and interstellar travel is the distance it would take to traverse the light-years of distance to even the closest stars. The closest star to Earth, besides the Sun, is known as Proxima Centauri, at about 4.25 light-years. For reference, the fastest a human spacecraft has traveled was a probe at 450,000 miles per hour, and while that does seem very fast, it would take approximately 6,633 years to reach Proxima Centauri. As clearly shown, it will not be possible to reach even the closest stars unless humans can devise a way to travel much faster than they ever have, and this is where the solution of the warp drive comes into the picture.
As many know, there is a universal speed limit, the speed of light, as proposed by Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. Consequently, the concept of the warp drive must hold true to the principles stated by Einstein, while still being able to radically change the way we think about spacetime travel in order to traverse farther distances much quicker. The warp drive achieves this by implementing the idea of warping the spacetime continuum as an effective means of travel. This concept involves a ship theoretically compressing the spacetime in front of it and then expanding the spacetime as it travels behind the ship. In other words, if two points, A and B, were 1 light-year away, the warp drive would compress this distance in spacetime to a more realistic distance of travel, so it would actually take much less time to get from A to B. In other words, travelling faster than the speed of light would theoretically be possible, except you are just warping the distance between two points rather than exceeding the universal limit of speed.
At first, the concept of a warp drive seems like something only possible in a science fiction movie. However, in 1994, theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre actually used Einstein’s theory of general relativity to prove that compressing spacetime in front of a traveling ship and expanding it as it passes by is possible within the laws of the universe. A theoretical “bubble” of flat spacetime would be created warping the spacetime around the ship; however, the only way for this concept to work would be with the use of negative energy, creating an imbalance with particles and antiparticles. This negative energy would require an inconceivable amount of mass which would make a warp drive impossible, but more recent models have found a theoretical way to create a warp drive without the use of negative energy. This would make a warp drive theoretically possible, allowing humans to finally achieve interstellar travel. Of course, these are all just theoretical devices, but one day through the use of warp drives, we might all see ourselves exploring and visiting distant worlds.
The famous used to be planet kicked out by none other than Neil deGrasse Tyson is now considered a dwarf planet, ever since 2006. Pluto was reclassified because it didn’t meet the three criteria the IUA uses to define a full sized planet
Other planets and galaxies in space have been the subject of many science fiction novels and television shows, most notably Star Trek. This week, NASA officially confirmed that 5,000 exoplanets outside of our Solar System exist. This discovery is monumental within the astronomy community, because although it has been speculated that there are millions or even billions of other planets, it is a crucial step in science to move forward through facts rather than assumptions. Of these 5,000 exoplanets, 5% are terrestrial planets like Earth which begs the question of whether or not there is other life in our Universe. While it is currently unknown, in several decades we may actually learn whether there is life on other planets.
Nuclear fusion is the fundamental source of energy generation in our universe. Stars (like our Sun) undergo nuclear fusion in their cores and emit energy in the form of heat and light. This stellar energy stands in the way of a dark, cold, lifeless universe, and provides the necessary ingredients for life on Earth. Sadly, the energy source that is responsible for powering the vast universe, and its hundreds of billions of galaxies, is non-existent on Earth’s power grid.
Nuclear fusion produces energy at magnitudes a thousand times greater than nuclear fusion (in nuclear reactors) and millions of times greater than natural mechanical energy (e.g. wind turbines and hydroelectric dams) or fossil fuel combustion. The fuel necessary for nuclear fusion, Hydrogen, is quite abundant on Earth, and we need not worry about running out of Hydrogen for billions of years. This fuel source compares favorably to the relatively sparse availability of fossil fuels (e.g. coal and natural gas) and fission elements (Uranium). Nuclear fusion also has limited unintended consequences, and does not result in a fatal radioactive risk (as in fission) or environmental catastrophe (as in burning fossil fuels). Nuclear fusion generates immense energy potential (could power the entire world), essentially unlimited reusability and limited downside… so why aren’t humans employing nuclear fusion right now?
Over the past 50 years, it has become painfully clear that generating a self-sustaining nuclear fusion reaction is incredibly difficult. A self-sustaining reaction produces more usable energy than is required to initiate and sustain the reaction. Hydrogen bombs release energy through fission and fusion reactions far in excess of its’ inputs; however, that released energy is not “usable” (or harnessed). Scientists are currently attempting to initiate and control a fusion reaction within a system that can run continuously and emit usable levels of energy (no explosions). To date, no self-sustaining, controlled nuclear fusion reaction has been established. The bottlenecks lie primarily in the immense difficulty of the problem and a remarkable lack of public funding for nuclear fusion projects. One day, nuclear fusion reactions will solve Earth’s energy problems and generate the power for every city and person in the world. Until then, we will continue to be reliant on dangerous, harmful or costly energy solutions.
So many of Earth’s features today, from our blue sky to life itself, depend on the atmosphere surrounding the planet, but it has taken billions of years to evolve to where it is today. This post will explore the evolution and progression of Earth’s atmosphere as well as the processes that led to these changes.
After Earth’s birth from dust and rocks orbiting the young sun, its atmosphere was mostly composed of Hydrogen and Helium, as those elements made up a vast amount of the material in space. Earth, however, was not massive enough to retain these light elements and eventually they were able to attain escape velocity and this atmosphere was lost like can be observed with Mercury. This might have been the end of the story, but Earth contained many volcanoes that released gas from the planet’s interior into the atmosphere in a process called outgassing. This process of outgassing created an atmosphere with increased amounts of water vapor, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. As Earth continued to cool down, that water vapor condensed, eventually creating oceans and lakes. Chemical compounds like carbon dioxide were dissolved in the condensing water and therefore removed from the atmosphere, leaving behind for the most part nitrogen.
The other major component of Earth’s atmosphere besides nitrogen is oxygen, a byproduct of photosynthesis. Over billions of years, the lifeforms living on Earth produced enough oxygen to drastically change the atmosphere and provide the oxygen we breath today. These three major phases are considered the essential steps for creating Earth’s atmosphere as we know it today.
For my third blog post, I wanted to research the future of Humanity. In about 5 billion years the Sun will run out of Hydrogen to fuse in the core, causing the sun to increase in size and become a Red Giant. It will get so large that it will swallow up Mercury, Venus, and Possibly Earth. I would like to think that given 5 billion years, humans, or our future evolution will be able to find a way to escape Earth and colonize other planets. The first step could be to colonize Mars.
There have been discussions about starting a colony on Mars, maybe even as early as 2050. This could be a great science experiment to see if we could sustain complex life on a planet other than Earth, but at this point in time, it does not seem to be worth the investment. Things will surely change in the future as new technology makes it easier to travel through space and create habitable environments on other planets. I suspect that when the Sun expands, the survival requirement to escape Earth will be enough motivation to make it happen.
A Short Video of the History of the Moons Surface!
In my previous blog post, I discussed the Giant Impact Hypothesis and how the Moon is thought to have been created. Now I want to talk about how the Moon came to look like it does. Just like every other planetary object, when it was newly created it was unmarked and most likely appeared mostly homogeneous in appearance and color. Then, shortly after its creation, it was first struck by a fairly large object that created the Aitken Basin. After that, it was bombarded by several decently sized asteroids that formed several more basins. This caused a period of mare volcanism where the basins were filled with basalt, which is what gave the Moon its darker splotches of color on its surface. This volcanism lasted for about 2.8 billion years, and only cooled about 1 billion years ago. Throughout this time, the Moon was still being hit with asteroids that left behind all sizes of craters. The Moon still receives the occasional new crater, but we do not see it change much, if at all, from year to year and the standard observer would hardly ever notice anything different about it!
Climate change is a pressing issue in that it has the capability to completely destroy the way humans live life on Earth. One of the main types of emissions is CO2 and it is causing our atmosphere to heat rapidly. Cryptocurrency is a new trend that is focused on decentralizing finance and allowing owners of tokens to send payments anonymously. Bitcoin is at the center of cryptocurrency and is the most valuable while simultaneously being the most recognizable name. But an often overlooked aspect of cryptocurrency is the impact it is having on the climate. Bitcoin mining is a way of earning tokens through verifying transactions, but it requires a tremendous amount of computing power, so much so that there are entire warehouses full of computers mining all day long. This might not have been such an issue if Bitcoin weren’t so big. Currently, “Bitcoin mining consumes 0.5% of all electricity used globally and 7 times Google’s total usage.” This is an absolutely absurd amount of electricity, but there are new cryptocurrencies such as SolarCoin aiming at promoting sustainability and renewable energy usage. SolarCoin in particular gives 1 SolarCoin to a user each time their solar panels generate 1 kwh. So even though cryptocurrencies are problematic for the climate currently, there is potential for them to be beneficial.
