Science tidbits .....

[popeyespappy]

Brindabella?

If that's the old Honeysuckle Creek tracking station then no. It was closed nearly 20 years before I was there. I was at the complex at Tidbinbilla.



As far as coming back we just picked up a pretty big contract in Okinawa and I am probably going to be making several trips there over the next couple of years. If I can manage a couple of weeks off at one time I may do Australia again and try to see New Zealand. I prefer to spend my vacation time in places where I can almost understand the language.

[KichigaiNeko]

Brindabella?

If that's the old Honeysuckle Creek tracking station then no. It was closed nearly 20 years before I was there. I was at the complex at Tidbinbilla.



As far as coming back we just picked up a pretty big contract in Okinawa and I am probably going to be making several trips there over the next couple of years. If I can manage a couple of weeks off at one time I may do Australia again and try to see New Zealand. I prefer to spend my vacation time in places where I can almost understand the language.

Yep Tidbinbilla is in the Brindabella ranges outside of Canberra. Got itself burnt out by fire a few years back. Nice place.

[popeyespappy]

Yep Tidbinbilla is in the Brindabella ranges outside of Canberra. Got itself burnt out by fire a few years back. Nice place.

Yes it is. I got to make the rounds of some of the tracking stations NASA uses that year. Canberra, Madrid, Poker Flats in Alaska and Longyearbyen, Norway. A couple of trips each to Poker Flats and Longyearbyen. The latter being by far the most remote place I've ever been. That's been more than a decade ago and I still haven't used all the sky miles.

[Brian37]

When my mom was in the hospital for pnumonia she had a roomate whose friends had the religious channel on constantly and they prayed every 5 seconds. What annoyed me was the irony of the prayer with the reality of the beep of the nurses hand held medical tracking device every time she walked in to give her medicine(the other lady)

All I could think was how useless that prayer was compaired to the real medicine that was keeping her alive. Of course I wished no ill will to that lady, but damn man, humans are so gullible and desperate to believe that life is magic no matter how much reality smacks them in the face.

The pictures of the telescopes are the reality. My mom having pnumonia unfortunately at the time, is the reality. There is no bearded magic man out to save us or a man with a pitchfork battling over the nuerons in or brains. Whatever good we do as a species or whatever bad happens to us is a result of nature.

It is sad in an age of explosion of technology and discovery that can potentially improve the lives of more people, that we still cling to comic books and myth.

[KichigaiNeko]

It's only "magic" if you can't understand it.

[KichigaiNeko]

http://youtu.be/1tBQ7HbFJm0

The Witches Nebulae.

[KichigaiNeko]

Today's tasty bits of WTF?!?!? I didn't know that! A bit Earth centric for this Sunday of cold weather.

VOLCANIC RIVERSCAPE


This beautiful landscape was captured by Russian photographer Andre Ermolaev, who takes photos while flying over Iceland’s terrain. A river flows through beds of volcanic ash; the photographer took this photo from a height of 150 metres with a Hasselblad H4D-40 from an open window on a light aircraft.

-TEL
Blog

More of Andre Ermolaev's photos here:

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EISRIESENWELT CAVE, AUSTRIA

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Eisriesenwelt is a limestone cave located beneath the Hochkogel Mountain, in Styria, about 70 kilometres from Salzburg. With 42 kilometres of tunnels and chambers, it is the largest ice cave in the world. Only the first kilometre is covered in ice but the rest of the cave is made of limestone. The cave was created by the Salzach River as it wound its way through the mountain.

Ice caves form when ice grows within already-created lava or limestone caves underneath the ground. The difference between these and glacier caves is that glacier caves are formed within ice, and ice caves form within stone formations.

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The cave is called “The World of the Ice Giants” in German and was once thought to be the entrance to hell in Austrian lore. Anton Posselt explored the cave in 1879, and it became a tourist attraction in the 1920’s when paths up the mountain to the cave were built.

-TEL

Ref:
http://atlasobscura.com/place/eisriesenw...l-mountain; http://www.wayfaring.info/2009/09/15/eis...elt-caves/

Photo credit:
http://www.city-guide-salzburg.com/wp-co...el.at_.jpg

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Perpetual Ocean:



This dreamy image is a screen shot of an animation created by NASA which shows how the ocean currents swirling around the planet between June 2005 and December 2007.

The model was created using observational data including sea height measurements made by satellites. In addition, satellite information pertaining to ocean temperature, gravitational pull and wind stress were included. Data from floating instrumentation called “Argo” which measures salinity and temperature was also included.

The eddylike currents that show up throughout the illustration are the result of the Coriolis Effect. The Earth's rotation deflects the motion of water (or air) that would otherwise be traveling in a straight line, and this effect produces circular currents.

These simulations are great to catch the attention of the non-scientific community, or inspire future scientists, but that is not their main function. Rather, these models are used to display numerical data spatially; making the data easier to visualise and comprehend.

For example, Dimitris Menemenlis, a satellite oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; uses the ocean current models to study how currents affect the melting of ice covering the Arctic Ocean, Antarctica and Greenland, as well as how quickly the ocean absorbs increasing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

-Jean
To see the animation go HERE

[jonb]

Nice, loved the animation thanks

[KichigaiNeko]

I would hope that anyone who comes across any science-tidbits that really don't deserve their own thread will dump said tidbits here

Glad you liked them jonb.