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Jupiter’s North Pole Unlike Anything Encountered in Solar System

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has sent back the first-ever images of Jupiter’s north pole, taken during the spacecraft’s first flyby of the planet with its instruments switched on. The images show storm systems and weather activity unlike anything previously seen on any of our solar system’s gas-giant planets.

Juno successfully executed the first of 36 orbital flybys on Aug. 27 when the spacecraft came about 2,500 miles (4,200 kilometers) above Jupiter’s swirling clouds. The download of six megabytes of data collected during the six-hour transit, from above Jupiter’s north pole to below its south pole, took one-and-a-half days. While analysis of this first data collection is ongoing, some unique discoveries have already made themselves visible.

“First glimpse of Jupiter’s north pole, and it looks like nothing we have seen or imagined before,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “It’s bluer in color up there than other parts of the planet, and there are a lot of storms. There is no sign of the latitudinal bands or zone and belts that we are used to – this image is hardly recognizable as Jupiter. We’re seeing signs that the clouds have shadows, possibly indicating that the clouds are at a higher altitude than other features.”

One of the most notable findings of these first-ever pictures of Jupiter’s north and south poles is something that the JunoCam imager did not see.

“Saturn has a hexagon at the north pole,” said Bolton. “There is nothing on Jupiter that anywhere near resembles that. The largest planet in our solar system is truly unique. We have 36 more flybys to study just how unique it really is.”

Along with JunoCam snapping pictures during the flyby, all eight of Juno’s science instruments were energized and collecting data. The Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JI-RAM), supplied by the Italian Space Agency, acquired some remarkable images of Jupiter at its north and south polar regions in infrared wavelengths.

“JIRAM is getting under Jupiter’s skin, giving us our first infrared close-ups of the planet,” said Alberto Adriani, JIRAM co-investigator from Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali, Rome. “These first infrared views of Jupiter’s north and south poles are revealing warm and hot spots that have never been seen before. And while we knew that the first ever infrared views of Jupiter’s south pole could reveal the planet’s southern aurora, we were amazed to see it for the first time. No other instruments, both from Earth or space, have been able to see the southern aurora. Now, with JIRAM, we see that it appears to be very bright and well structured. The high level of detail in the images will tell us more about the aurora’s morphology and dynamics.”

Among the more unique data sets collected by Juno during its first scientific sweep by Jupiter was that acquired by the mission’s Radio/Plasma Wave Experiment (Waves), which recorded ghostly- sounding transmissions emanating from above the planet. These radio emissions from Jupiter have been known about since the 1950s but had never been analyzed from such a close vantage point.

“Jupiter is talking to us in a way only gas-giant worlds can,” said Bill Kurth, co-investigator for the Waves instrument from the University of Iowa, Iowa City. “Waves detected the signature emissions of the energetic particles that generate the massive auroras which encircle Jupiter’s north pole. These emissions are the strongest in the solar system. Now we are going to try to figure out where the electrons come from that are generating them.”

The Juno spacecraft launched on Aug. 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida and arrived at Jupiter on July 4, 2016. JPL manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages JPL for NASA.

IMAGE 1….As NASA’s Juno spacecraft closed in on Jupiter for its Aug. 27, 2016 pass, its view grew sharper and fine details in the north polar region became increasingly visible. The JunoCam instrument obtained this view on August 27, about two hours before closest approach, when the spacecraft was 120,000 miles (195,000 kilometers) away from the giant planet (i.e., for Jupiter’s center). Unlike the equatorial region’s familiar structure of belts and zones, the poles are mottled with rotating storms of various sizes, similar to giant versions of terrestrial hurricanes. Jupiter’s poles have not been seen from this perspective since the Pioneer 11 spacecraft flew by the planet in 1974.

IMAGE 2….Storm systems and weather activity unlike anything encountered in the solar system are on view in these color images of Jupiter’s north polar region from NASA’s Juno spacecraft. Two versions of the image have been contrast-enhanced differently to bring out detail near the dark terminator and near the bright limb. The JunoCam instrument took the images to create this color view on August 27, when the spacecraft was about 48,000 miles (78,000 kilometers) above the polar cloud tops. A wavy boundary is visible halfway between the grayish region at left (closer to the pole and the nightside shadow) and the lighter-colored area on the right. The wavy appearance of the boundary represents a Rossby wave – a north-south meandering of a predominantly east-west flow in an atmospheric jet. This may be caused by a difference in temperature between air to the north and south of this boundary, as is often the case with such waves in Earth’s atmosphere. The polar region is filled with a variety of discrete atmospheric features. Some of these are ovals, but the larger and brighter features have a “pinwheel” shape reminiscent of the shape of terrestrial hurricanes. Tracking the motion and evolution of these features across multiple orbits will provide clues about the dynamics of the Jovian atmosphere. This image also provides the first example of cloud shadowing on Jupiter: near the top of the image, a high cloud feature is seen past the normal boundary between day and night, illuminated above the cloud deck below. While subtle color differences are visible in the image, some of these are likely the result of scattered light within the JunoCam optics. Work is ongoing to characterize these effects.

IMAGE 3….This image from NASA’s Juno spacecraft provides a never-before-seen perspective on Jupiter’s south pole. The JunoCam instrument acquired the view on August 27, 2016, when the spacecraft was about 58,700 miles (94,500 kilometers) above the polar region. At this point, the spacecraft was about an hour past its closest approach, and fine detail in the south polar region is clearly resolved. Unlike the equatorial region’s familiar structure of belts and zones, the poles are mottled by clockwise and counterclockwise rotating storms of various sizes, similar to giant versions of terrestrial hurricanes. The south pole has never been seen from this viewpoint, although the Cassini spacecraft was able to observe most of the polar region at highly oblique angles as it flew past Jupiter on its way to Saturn in 2000

IMAGE 4….This infrared image gives an unprecedented view of the southern aurora of Jupiter, as captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on August 27, 2016. The planet’s southern aurora can hardly be seen from Earth due to our home planet’s position in respect to Jupiter’s south pole. Juno’s unique polar orbit provides the first opportunity to observe this region of the gas-giant planet in detail. Juno’s Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) camera acquired the view at wavelengths ranging from 3.3 to 3.6 microns – the wavelengths of light emitted by excited hydrogen ions in the polar regions. The view is a mosaic of three images taken just minutes apart from each other, about four hours after the perijove pass while the spacecraft was moving away from Jupiter.

IMAGE 5….This montage of 10 JunoCam images shows Jupiter growing and shrinking in apparent size before and after NASA’s Juno spacecraft made its closest approach on August 27, 2016, at 12:50 UTC. The images are spaced about 10 hours apart, one Jupiter day, so the Great Red Spot is always in roughly the same place. The small black spots visible on the planet in some of the images are shadows of the large Galilean moons. The images in the top row were taken during the inbound leg of the orbit, beginning on August 25 at 13:15 UTC when Juno was 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) away from Jupiter, and continuing to August 27 at 04:45 UTC when the spacecraft was 430,000 miles (700,000 kilometers) away. The images in the bottom row were obtained during the outbound leg of the orbit. They begin on August 28 at 00:45 UTC when Juno was 750,000 miles (920,000 kilometers) away and continue to August 29 at 16:45 UTC when the spacecraft was 1.6 million miles (2.5 million kilometers) away.

IMAGE 6….This image provides a close-up view of Jupiter’s southern hemisphere, as seen by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on August 27, 2016. The JunoCam instrument captured this image with its red spectral filter when the spacecraft was about 23,600 miles (38,000 kilometers) above the cloud tops. The image covers an area from close to the south pole to 20 degrees south of the equator, centered on a longitude at about 140 degrees west. The transition between the banded structures near the equator and the more chaotic polar region (south of about 65 degrees south latitude) can be clearly seen. The smaller version at right of this image shows the same view with a latitude/longitude grid overlaid. This image has been processed to remove shading effects near the terminator – the dividing line between day and night – caused by Juno’s orbit.

How astronauts train underwater in NASA’s neutral buoyancy lab, which includes a full sized mock-up of the ISS.

The Proxima Centauri Exoplanet: ESO Press Conference Set for Tomorrow

Report: A host of common chemicals endanger child brain development

In a new report, dozens of scientists, health practitioners and children’s health advocates are calling for renewed attention to the growing evidence that many common and widely available chemicals endanger neurodevelopment in fetuses and children of all ages.

The chemicals that are of most concern include lead and mercury; organophosphate pesticides used in agriculture and home gardens; phthalates, which are used in pharmaceuticals, plastics and personal care products; flame retardants known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers; and air pollutants produced by the combustion of wood and fossil fuels, said University of Illinois comparative biosciences professor Susan Schantz, one of dozens of individual signatories to the consensus statement.

Polychlorinated biphenyls, once used as coolants and lubricants in transformers and other electrical equipment, also are of concern. PCBs were banned in the U.S. in 1977, but can persist in the environment for decades, she said.

The new report, “Project TENDR: Targeting Environmental NeuroDevelopment Risks,” appears in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. The group also has a website with information about each of the chemicals of concern.

“These chemicals are pervasive, not only in air and water, but in everyday consumer products that we use on our bodies and in our homes,” Schantz said. “Reducing exposures to toxic chemicals can be done, and is urgently needed to protect today’s and tomorrow’s children.”

Schantz is a faculty member in the College of Veterinary Medicine and in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the U. of I.

“The human brain develops over a very long period of time, starting in gestation and continuing during childhood and even into early adulthood,” Schantz said. “But the biggest amount of growth occurs during prenatal development. The neurons are forming and migrating and maturing and differentiating. And if you disrupt this process, you’re likely to have permanent effects.”

Some of the chemicals of concern, such as phthalates and PBDEs, are known to interfere with normal hormone activity. For example, most pregnant women in the U.S. will test positive for exposure to phthalates and PBDEs, both of which disrupt thyroid hormone function.  

“Thyroid hormone is involved in almost every aspect of brain development, from formation of the neurons to cell division, to the proper migration of cells and myelination of the axons after the cells are differentiated,” said Schantz. “It regulates many of the genes involved in nervous system development.”

Schantz and her colleagues at Illinois are studying infants and their mothers to determine whether prenatal exposure to phthalates and other endocrine disruptors leads to changes in the brain or behavior. This research, along with parallel studies in older children and animals, is a primary focus of the Children’s Environmental Health Research Center at Illinois, which Schantz directs.

Phthalates also interfere with steroid hormone activity. Studies link exposure to certain phthalates with attention deficits, lower IQ and conduct disorders in children.

“Phthalates are everywhere; they’re in all kinds of different products. We’re exposed to them every day,” Schantz said.

The report criticizes current regulatory lapses that allow chemicals to be introduced into people’s lives with little or no review of their effects on fetal and child health.

“For most chemicals, we have no idea what they’re doing to children’s neurodevelopment,” Schantz said. “They just haven’t been studied.

“And if it looks like something is a risk, we feel policymakers should be willing to make a decision that this or that chemical could be a bad actor and we need to stop its production or limit its use,” she said. “We shouldn’t have to wait 10 or 15 years – allowing countless children to be exposed to it in the meantime – until we’re positive it’s a bad actor.”

NASA Suspends Next Mission to Mars

ASA will not launch its InSight spacecraft to Mars in March as originally planned, because of a leak in a French-built seismometer that is the spacecraft’s primary scientific instrument.

Technicians at CNES, the French space agency, have worked for months to repair a leak in a vacuum seal on the seismometer. OnDecember 22, NASA announced that it would suspend the launch. The delay means that InSight will not go off in 2016, but will have to wait 26 months until the Earth-Mars orbital geometry is once again favourable for launching a mission to the red planet.

InSight’s goal is to probe the structure of the Martian interior by listening to how marsquakes ring through the planet. The mission was designed to determine the size, composition and state of the planet’s core, mantle and crust, which no previous Mars mission has done.

Read more ~ Scientific American

Image: Flaws in the seismometers (at left, in the container on the ground) for NASA’s next Mars lander, InSight, will delay the mission’s launch by at least two years.    Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Here’s Why Spider Silk Is One of the Most Incredible Materials on Earth

Spider silk is five times as strong as the same weight of steel, amazingly light, and a great chemical detector. http://futurism.com/videos/heres-spider-silk-one-incredible-materials-earth/

These are the Most Incredible Photos Shot by NASA’s Cassini Probe

The Cassini space probe has captured its fair share of eye-popping photos since launching in 1997 and arriving in Saturn’s orbit in 2004. Here’s a collection of some of Cassini’s most remarkable photographs. Many of them were compiled by Reddit user I_Say_I_Say, and others were featured here before or obtained from NASA’s website: You can find a massive collection of Cassini’s photos in the mission gallery on NASA’s website.Thanks Petapixel

1.A massive storm stretching across the surface of the planet. 2.Saturn’s gradation and rings. 3.Three of Saturn’s moons (Titan, Mimas, and Rhea) captured in a single photo. 4.Saturn casting a shadow on its rings. 5.Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. 6.Saturn, its rings, and its moon Dione. 7. Earth seen as a pale blue dot under Saturn’s rings. 8.Saturn’s moon Rhea hovering in front of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. 9.Saturn casting its shadow on its rings. 10.Saturn and its moon Titan

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If Our Universe Is So Old and Vast, Then Where Are All the Aliens?

Read more at: http://futurism.com/images/  http://futurism.com/images/if-our-universe-is-so-old-and-vast-then-where-are-all-the-aliens/

Why music might be killing sharks

For too long, sharks have been portrayed and perceived as the menacing, lurking creatures in the deep. Contrary to popular belief, we are much more of a threat to them than they are to us.

Researchers have found that the ominous music that often accompanies even documentary footage of them has inspired excessive fear about sharks.

In an experiment at UC San Diego, participants watched footage of sharks. Some scenes featured uplifting music, and others had a more daunting score. 

The effect was what you might expect. Viewers saw sharks as intimidating creatures when they they also heard ominous music. 

But with uplifting music (or none at all), viewers had a more positive impression of sharks.  

This is problematic because rarely do we see shark footage without the ominous music, and the negative portrayals of sharks may be hindering conservation efforts.

“We know from prior research that conservation progress for sharks is sluggish compared to marine mammals and that this slow response may be due in part to the societal marginalization of sharks,” says study co-author Elizabeth Keenan.

After all, in the words of Senegalese conservationist Baba Diou, “we will conserve only what we love.”

And while they’re still not exactly a furry, cuddly rabbit, consider this: you’re more likely to be struck by lightening than fall prey to a fatal shark attack.

REAL LIFE LIGHTSABER ALERT!

The guy that made the real life version of Mjolnir has crafted another real version of a fictional weapon: a functioning lightsaber. Allen Pan made the fabled Jedi weapon out of an igniter, butane, methanol and acetone which creates a focused pillar of flame. It even makes real sounds! Now, of course this isn’t a conventional lightsaber and you shouldn’t try this at home but it’s awesome that somebody finally accomplished something close! GIVE THIS MAN A GRANT.