What Happened To Mars?

Comets may hold the secret to the origin of life on Earth

We’ve studied life on Earth extensively, but we still have no idea where it came from. Some scientists think it may have spontaneously arisen on Earth by some unknown process. Others think the ingredients for life were delivered here by comets crashing into Earth in the early days of the solar system. The latter theory just got a huge boost.

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How do we know light is a wave?

Before I answer this question, I’ll need to briefly go over a wave property called superposition. Basically, superposition is the idea that two waves can be in the same position at the same time, and interfere with each other:

When the two waves add to each other and make a larger wave, we call this constructive interference. When the waves cancel each other out, we call this destructive interference. 

Now we’re going to move on to the Double Slit Experiment. Basically, you shine a beam of light at a piece of metal, cardboard, etc with two slits in it, with a surface behind it where you can see the light hit it. 

If light is a wave, what we’d expect to see would be an interference pattern created by the light from the first slit interfering with light from the second slit, which is exactly what we see. It’s a pattern of constructive interference (brighter regions) and destructive interference (darker regions), looking like this:

These images are helpful:

that is how we know light acts as a wave!!

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot as Viewed by Voyager 1 in February, 1979. The Great Red Spot is an anticyclone, three and a half times the size of Earth located in Jupiter’s southern hemisphere. [1920 × 1080]

Milky Way & shooting stars.

This morning, an Atlas V rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying a US Navy communications satellite into space. 

It was another smooth take off for the United Launch Alliance, the company that manufactures the Atlas V. It was a particularly beautiful launch as well; the rocket left a spectacular multi-colored trail in its wake as it ascended into space

Blue Spot. West Coast New Zealand. 

Cassini gets up close & personal with icy Mimas

The first two images show off the giant Herschel crater, a distinguishing feature of this moon. The second gives a better view of the mountain peak within the crater. The shadows cast by the crater and mountain peak give a glimpse into just how massive this crater truly is. The last image is one of the clearest images of Mimas to date.

General Ham: Digital Mode Introduction

This is probably a bit more repetition, but well worth the time!  So digital modes are where data are encoded as bits instead of in waves, and some are created commercially, while others are created by amateurs!  

Digital modes consist of two things: a protocol and a method of modulation.  A protocol is the set of rules that control the encoding, packaging, exchanging and decoding of digital data.  For example, packet radio uses the AX.25 protocol standard.  This standard says how each packet is constructed, how packets are exchanged, what characters are allowed, and so forth.  The protocol standard doesn’t say what kind of transmitter to use or what the signal will sound like on the air.

Digital mode signals are restricted to the CW/data segments of each band and most digital mode operation is close to the top of the CW segment.  Calling frequencies for the popular digital modes are incorporated into band plans and are usually the lowest frequency of operation with operators moving up in frequency as activity increases.

For example on 20m, most PSK31 signals are found near 14.070 MHz.  RTTY and other digital mode signals are found above that.  The modems used for digital signals often do not recognize signals from CW or other digital modes.

Here’s the Digital Signal Band Plan:

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This is what a comet looks like, up close and personal.

PHOTOS FROM AN ALIEN WORLD.

I am so excited I can’t even. Source: ESA’s Flickr feed.

The first Space Launch System hardware from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans just arrived at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. We take a minute to introduce you to the crew of NASA’s barge Pegasus. The crew made an 18-day journey on the barge leaving New Orleans on April 28 and arriving at Marshall on May 15. The barge delivered a structural test version of the core stage engine section of SLS, NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket. Pegasus will deliver four test articles of the rocket’s core stage to Marshall for tests that will simulate the forces experienced during launch. Pegasus will later ferry the flight-ready core stage to NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, for testing and then to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for integration of the SLS flight vehicle in the Vehicle Assembly Building.