Surgeon Al-Zahrawi (936–1013 CE) From Cordoba In The Muslim Kingdom Of Al-Andalus, Was One Of The Most

Why do we not discuss clouds more?

I mean look at that. That’s water.

Flying water.

FLYING

FUCKING

WATER

LIKE WHAT THE FUCK, WHY DO WE EVER STOP TALKING ABOUT THIS

WHAT IS THIS

HOW IS THIS EVEN

AND NOW THE FLYING WATER IS EATING A MOUNTAIN

GOD DAMN, WHAT

You are technically correct…the best kind of correct. Comic by www.facebook.com/pedromics

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

23 science facts we didn't know at the start of 2016

1. Gravitational waves are real. More than 100 years after Einstein first predicted them, researchers finally detected the elusive ripples in space time this year. We’ve now seen three gravitational wave events in total.

2. Sloths almost die every time they poop, and it looks agonising.

3. It’s possible to live for more than a year without a heart in your body.

4. It’s also possible to live a normal life without 90 percent of your brain.

5. There are strange, metallic sounds coming from the Mariana trench, the deepest point on Earth’s surface. Scientists currently think the noise is a new kind of baleen whale call.

6. A revolutionary new type of nuclear fusion machine being trialled in Germany really works, and could be the key to clean, unlimited energy.

7. There’s an Earth-like planet just 4.2 light-years away in the Alpha Centauri star system - and scientists are already planning a mission to visit it.

8. Earth has a second mini-moon orbiting it, known as a ‘quasi-satellite’. It’s called 2016 HO3.

9. There might be a ninth planet in our Solar System (no, Pluto doesn’t count).

10. The first written record demonstrating the laws of friction has been hiding inside Leonardo da Vinci’s “irrelevant scribbles” for the past 500 years.

11. Zika virus can be spread sexually, and it really does cause microcephaly in babies.

12. Crows have big ears, and they’re kinda terrifying.

13. The largest known prime number is 274,207,281– 1, which is a ridiculous 22 million digits in length. It’s 5 million digits longer than the second largest prime.

14. The North Pole is slowly moving towards London, due to the planet’s shifting water content.

15. Earth lost enough sea ice this year to cover the entire land mass of India.

16. Artificial intelligence can beat humans at Go.

17. Tardigrades are so indestructible because they have an in-built toolkit to protect their DNA from damage. These tiny creatures can survive being frozen for decades, can bounce back from total desiccation, and can even handle the harsh radiation of space.

18. There are two liquid states of water.

19. Pear-shaped atomic nuclei exist, and they make time travel seem pretty damn impossible.

20. Dinosaurs had glorious tail feathers, and they were floppy.

21. One third of the planet can no longer see the Milky Way from where they live.

22. There’s a giant, 1.5-billion-cubic-metre (54-billion-cubic-foot) field of precious helium gas in Tanzania.

23. The ‘impossible’ EM Drive is the propulsion system that just won’t quit. NASA says it really does seem to produce thrust - but they still have no idea how. We’ll save that mystery for 2017.

Crosson Architects. Hut on Sleds. Whangapoua. New Zealand. photos: Jackie Meiring

Eugenics was massive in the US, however much we pretend it wasn't

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1927 decided, by a vote of 8 to 1, to uphold a state’s right to forcibly sterilize a person who was deemed unfit to procreate. The case  Buck v. Bell legitimized the eugenics movement – yes, the thing Hitler and the Nazis believed in – and directly led to the sterilizing of 70,000 American citizens against their will.

Two New Missions to Explore the Early Solar System

We’ve got big science news…!

We’ve just added two more science missions to our lineup! The two selected missions have the potential to open new windows on one of the earliest eras in the history of our solar system – a time less than 10 millions years after the birth of our sun.

The missions, known as Lucy and Psyche, were chosen from five finalists and will proceed to mission formulation.

Let’s take a dive into each mission…

Lucy

Lucy, a robotic spacecraft, will visit a target-rich environment of Jupiter’s mysterious Trojan asteroids. Scheduled to launch in October 2021, the spacecraft is slated to arrive at its first destination, a main asteroid belt, in 2025. 

Then, from 2027 to 2033, Lucy will explore six Jupiter Trojan asteroids. These asteroids are trapped by Jupiter’s gravity in two swarms that share the planet’s orbit, one leading and one trailing Jupiter in its 12-year circuit around the sun. The Trojans are thought to be relics of a much earlier era in the history of the solar system, and may have formed far beyond Jupiter’s current orbit.

Studying these Trojan asteroids will give us valuable clues to deciphering the history of the early solar system.

Psyche

The Psyche mission will explore one of the most intriguing targets in the main asteroid belt – a giant metal asteroid, known as 16 Psyche, about three times farther away from the sun than is the Earth. The asteroid measures about 130 miles in diameter and, unlike most other asteroids that are rocky or icy bodies, it is thought to be comprised of mostly metallic iron and nickel, similar to Earth’s core.

Scientists wonder whether psyche could be an exposed core of an early planet that could have been as large as Mars, but which lost its rocky outer layers due to a number of violent collisions billions of years ago.

The mission will help scientists understand how planets and other bodies separated into their layers early in their histories. The Psyche robotic mission is targeted to launch in October of 2023, arriving at the asteroid in 2030, following an Earth gravity assist spacecraft maneuver in 2024 and a Mars flyby in 2025.

Get even more information about these two new science missions HERE. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Me thinks there's something under the Rockies

Temperatures at a depth of 10 km beneath the contiguous United States

Such a cool apartment, I like the mini-window between the bedroom and sitting area.

World’s Oldest Fossils Found in Greenland

Geologists recently found evidence of ancient life in Greenland which they think dates to 3.7 billion years ago. If their findings are confirmed, that would make the fossils the oldest evidence of life yet known. The great age of the fossils makes reconstructing the evolution of life from the chemicals naturally present on the early Earth more difficult. You see, the fossils are too old. It leaves little time for evolution to have occurred, and puts the process of life emerging and evolving close to a time when Earth was being bombarded by destructive asteroids.