fibonaccite
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Latest Posts by fibonaccite
Icebergs are formed when large blocks of ice breaks off from glaciers ice shelf and is floating in open water. Because glaciers are built up from snow falling on the Antarctic continent over millennia, this ice consists of pure fresh water. This floating chunk of freshwater ice then interacts with seawater beneath them it.
As seawater is drawn deep under the ice shelves by the oceanic currents, it becomes supercooled and freezes to the base of the ice shelf. Because this ice is formed from seawater that contains organic matter and minerals it causes variety of colour and texture to the iceberg. As the bergs become fragmented and sculpted by the wind and waves, the different coloured layers can develop striking patterns.
Striped icebergs in a variety of colours, including brown, black, yellow, and blue has been spotted in freezing waters around Antarctica. (Source)
an unprecedented moment in native american history happened this week
Hedyphane
Varying from white to yellowish with occasional reddish or green specimens, it was named after its discovery in Sweden in 1830 from the Greek words for ‘appearing beautiful’. It is a rare critter, only forming in manganese or zinc ore deposits that have been metamorphosed by heat and pressure deep within the crust, or when intruding granites bake the surrounding rock. It is a part of the apatite group (see http://bit.ly/2akYWkg)and includes lead and calcium combined with arsenic and oxygen in its composition, being an analogue of another pretty mineral called mimetite (see http://on.fb.me/1zo1vvI).
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Ancient Egyptian protective amulet in the shape of the Udjat-eye (also known as the Horus-eye), made of glass and polychrome faience. Artist unknown; ca. 945-525 BCE (Third Intermediate Period or Late Period). Now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Photo credit: Walters Art Museum.
fun facts!
leonardo da vinci was a year younger than christopher columbus.
stalin, freud, tito, trotsky and hitler walk into a bar……no really, it’s possible since they all lived in vienna in 1913.
aristotle tutored alexander the great.
abraham lincoln was twelve when napoleon bonaparte died.
an unusually well-traveled person in 5th century BC could have conceivably met confucius, lao tze, the buddha and socrates over the course of a seventy year life.
pharaohs and mammoths existed at the same time.
pocahontas and william shakespeare died in the same country less than a year apart from each other.
coca-cola is only thirty-one years younger than italy.
oxford university is older than the aztec empire.
for all the space ppl out there, nasa is doing a live feed of earth in space on youtube rn! 👀💫🌍
Solar System: Things to Know This Week
Our solar system is huge, let us break it down for you. Here are a few things to know this week:
1. The View from the Far Shore
The rugged shores of Pluto’s highlands come into sharp view in a newly released image from our New Horizons spacecraft. This latest view zooms in on the southeastern portion of Pluto’s great ice plains, where they border dark highlands formerly named Krun Macula.
2. Dawn’s Latest Light
Our Dawn mission has now completed more than 1,000 orbital revolutions since entering into Ceres’ gravitational grip in March 2015. The probe is healthy and performing its ambitious assignments impeccably. See what it has revealed lately HERE.
3. Counting Down
Our OSIRIS-REx mission to the asteroid Bennu is now entering the final preparations for its planned launch in September. In a new interview, the mission’s principal investigator reports on the final pre-flight tests happening at our Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
4. Deep Dive
Three successful engine maneuvers to bring the lowest part of the spacecraft’s orbit down to just 74 miles (119 km) above the surface of Mars, the MAVEN mission’s fifth deep dip campaign has begun. MAVEN is studying the planet’s atmosphere up close.
5. Storm Season
Meanwhile, other robotic Mars orbiters have revealed that a pattern of three large regional dust storms occurs with similar timing most Martian years. The seasonal pattern was detected from dust storms’ effects on atmospheric temperatures, which spacecraft have been monitoring since 1997.
Want to learn more? Read our full list of the 10 things to know this week about the solar system HERE.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
SCIENCE HAS CONFIRMED THAT DOGS LOVE US BACK BECAUSE THEY GET THE SAME RUSH OF OXYTOCIN WHEN THEY LOOK AT US THAT WE GET WHEN WE LOOK AT THEM
Not enough people talk about the fact that Leonardo da Vinci was gay. Like, he’s literally the father of modern technology and one of the smartest human beings to ever live and I never ever learned in school that he was gay.
If all the LGBT people are as “DOOMED” as the bible thumpers think we are, hell, at least we’re in good company.
Each fall, millions of North American monarch butterflies migrate to California and Mexico for winter. They make a massive journey (up to 4,830 kilometers/3,000 miles) and use the sun to ensure that they stay on course. On cloudy days they use Earth’s magnetic field as a kind of backup navigational system. (read more here)
MICROSOFT WORD HAS A FUCKING “INSERT CITATION” BUTTON WHY THE FUCK DID NO ONE EVER TELL ME THIS IS SIGNIFICANT INFORMATION FUCK THE SCHOOL SYSTEM THIS IS MICROSOFT WORD 2007 I SHOULD HAVE BEEN MADE AWARE OF THIS IN HIGHSCHOOL WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK I HATE EVERYTHING
Regulus, The Little King of Leo
The brightest star in the constellation Leo is Regulus, and it is also one of the brightest stars in the night sky, with only 21 stars brighter. Regulus is strictly speaking a star system, composed of Regulus A, the source of its brightness and a white dwarf companion that has not yet been observed, and to other stars too dim to be easily visible. Also known as Alpha Leonis for its primary position in the constellation, the name Regulus means ‘little king’ or ’kinglet’ and also occasionally prince. Regulus derives from the Latin word rex, regis, taking the diminutive form.
Regulus A is a large, hot star, about 4 times as wide as our sun but much brighter and with over 1000 times the energy output. Regulus A is also spinning about 1000 times faster on its axis and shooting through space like a bullet! Scientists are unclear what the source of this energy and movement is.
Image of the constellation Leo from Wikimedia commons, in the public domain.
Constellation map by Torsten Bronger, used with permission under Creative Commons 3.0 license.
Computer generated image of Regulus A by Chandra, used with permission.
The difference between an easy model and a complicated one.
Heliocentrism and geocentrism
The primes are often thought of as behaving like a random sequence, but there are patterns in their digits. The first frame shows how many of the first 100 primes end in 1, 3, 7 and 9. They all occur roughly the same number of times, so the four squares are almost exactly the same shade of red. The next frame shows how frequently a prime ending in 1 is followed by a prime ending in 3 - and so on. A structured pattern emerges, with the final frame showing the distribution of final digits in strings of 8 consecutive primes (for the first 2 million primes). [recent news] [visualization from] [code]
Astrophysicists detect ultra-fast winds near supermassive black hole
New research led by astrophysicists at York University has revealed the fastest winds ever seen at ultraviolet wavelengths near a supermassive black hole.
“We’re talking wind speeds of 20 per cent the speed of light, which is more than 200 million kilometres an hour. That’s equivalent to a category 77 hurricane,” says Jesse Rogerson, who led the research as part of his PhD thesis in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at York U. “And we have reason to believe that there are quasar winds that are even faster.”
Astronomers have known about the existence of quasar winds since the late 1960s. At least one in four quasars have them. Quasars are the discs of hot gas that form around supermassive black holes at the centre of massive galaxies - they are bigger than Earth’s orbit around the sun and hotter than the surface of the sun, generating enough light to be seen across the observable universe.
“Black holes can have a mass that is billions of times larger than the sun, mostly because they are messy eaters in a way, capturing any material that ventures too close,” says York University Associate Professor Patrick Hall, who is Rogerson’s supervisor. “But as matter spirals toward a black hole, some of it is blown away by the heat and light of the quasar. These are the winds that we are detecting.”
Rogerson and his team used data from a large survey of the sky known as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to identify new outflows from quasars. After spotting about 300 examples, they selected about 100 for further exploration, collecting data with the Gemini Observatory’s twin telescopes in Hawaii and Chile, in which Canada has a major share.
“We not only confirmed this fastest-ever ultraviolet wind, but also discovered a new wind in the same quasar moving more slowly, at only 140 million kilometres an hour,” says Hall. “We plan to keep watching this quasar to see what happens next.”
Much of this research is aimed at better understanding outflows from quasars and why they happen.
“Quasar winds play an important role in galaxy formation,” says Rogerson. “When galaxies form, these winds fling material outwards and deter the creation of stars. If such winds didn’t exist or were less powerful, we would see far more stars in big galaxies than we actually do.”
The team’s findings were published today in the print edition of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.