Science tidbits .....

[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