How come humans have gone to the Moon, but not to Mars? Jorge Vago (ESA) explains the factors that are currently preventing us from safely sending astronauts to the Red Planet, including funding and the dangers of such an expedition.
With fifty states (48 contiguous) and a special district, the U.S. is an extremely diverse country in both geography and climate. In this gallery you’ll see the beautiful natural landscapes of this diverse country. One photograph for every state.
Zhangye Danxia Landform is concentrated predominantly in Linze and Sunan counties in Gansu Province. It is both the largest and the most typical of China’s arid area danxia landforms. Zhangye Danxia Landform is surrounded by colorful hills, which seem to rise and fall like waves: with rock strata of different colors mixed in graceful disarray, it is an imposing and magnificent sight. The Zhangye’s palace danxia formations and its colorful hills cover about 300 square kilometers.
Earth delights us with not only with beautiful landscapes but also with fascinating atmospheric phenomena. Thunderstorms, tornadoes and other are dangerous, but also very beautiful.
Pluto’s newly discovered moons now have names. Known previously as P4 and P5, the International Astronomical Union has now given the fourth and fifth discovered moons of Pluto the namesKerberos and Styx. The small moons were discovered in 2011 and 2012 by the Hubble Space Telescope in preparation for the close passing of the New Horizons spacecraft by Pluto in 2015. Keberos is named for the many headed dog in Greek mythology that guards the entrance to the underworld, while Styx is named for the goddess who overlooks the mythological river that runs between the Earth and the underworld.
Global warming exists! But how do we know that? It may seem like a simple process of just looking at the temperature from year to year, but it is SO MUCH MORE than that! Our understanding of the global climate comes from a compendium of data including measured and tracked temperature, humidity, wind speed, and barometric pressure, spanning over 100 years of observation!! To study this massive amount of information and be able to surmise that the increasingly extreme and bizarre weather patterns are a result of human influence… it’s truly an incredible accomplishment. So everyone who says during a blizzard “so much for global warming”… shut up. You’re wrong.