Hydroelectric dams act as obstacles for wildlife, especially migrating salmon. The Whooshh Fish Transport System, also known as the “salmon cannon,” gives fish a much-needed boost over dams so they can swim upstream to spawn.
Author: M. Özgür Nevres
I am a software developer and a science enthusiast. I was graduated from the Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Computer Engineering. In the past, I worked at the Istanbul Technical University Science Center as a science instructor. I write about the planet Earth and science on this website, ourplnt.com. I am also an animal lover! I take care of stray cats & dogs. This website's all income goes directly to our furry friends. Please consider supporting me on Patreon, so I can help more animals!
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Super Saturn: J1407b
The exoplanet J1407b is simply “Super Saturn”. If you read Isaac Asimov‘s 1986 novel “Foundation and Earth”, you’ll remember how the main characters of the book (Councilman Golan Trevize, historian Janov Pelorat, and Gaian Bliss) were amazed by Saturn’s rings. They were thinking the gas giant with preeminent rings in old stories was just a myth. But after seeing Saturn, they made sure that they found the solar system which contains the Earth, the original home of humanity.
Our beautiful yet fragile Earth from the Geostationary orbit. “A Year Along the Geostationary Orbit” is a 16-minute short film by the German engineer Felix Dierich. He used the Japanese weather satellite Himawari 8 data made publicly available by the Japanese and Australian governments to craft a timelapse while producing this amazing time-lapse of Earth from space.
We can turn Earth into a giant telescope. According to a recent study titled “The ‘Terrascope’: On the Possibility of Using the Earth as an Atmospheric Lens”, published by David Kipping of Columbia University, our planet offers an opportunity for pronounced lensing.
The Planetary Society has announced that the LightSail mission is a success and LightSail 2 just raised its orbit around Earth using sunlight alone on their Twitter account @exploreplanets.
“Tranquility Base here. The eagle has landed.” Neil Armstrong said so as the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle touched down on the lunar surface on Sunday, July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC.
To see exactly where the spacecraft and the celestial bodies (planets and other astronomical objects) really are, right now, you can use NASA’s real-time, 3D solar system model.
Even as late as 1991, we had no hard evidence of planets existing outside our solar system (a centuries-old quest), known as “exoplanets”. Today, over 4000 exoplanets are known to exist. NASA has published an amazing video map showing them in the Milky Way galaxy on the Astronomy Picture of the Day website.
Now we’re living on a warm, hospitable planet. As Carl Sagan has said “That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” We, humans, are the unquestionable rulers of our little oasis in a hostile universe. But all things must pass. Life on Earth, even the planet itself, won’t last forever. What’s more, humans may go extinct before our planet (and probably before the life on it) dies out. Here are some possible (and horrible) ways how planet Earth (or, at least, life on Earth) could die.
According to a new study published in Science, a massive forest restoration at a global scale could help capture atmospheric carbon and mitigate global warming.