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!

Astrobiology Solar System

Life on the Moon? New study suggests there was a habitability window 4 billion years ago

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date August 12, 2018
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Rotating Moon — NASA APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) published an amazing video showing a rotating Moon. In fact, no one sees the Moon rotate like this. We see only one side of the moon, because the Moon is tidally locked to Earth. But, thanks to modern digital technology combined with many detailed images returned by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a high-resolution virtual Moon rotation movie has been composed.

The Moon is completely uninhabitable and lifeless today – a dusty, dry rock. It has no atmosphere, there is no liquid water on the surface, and, maybe most important, it has no magnetosphere to protect its surface from solar wind and cosmic radiation. But, according to a new study published in Astrobiology, it may have looked quite different around four billion years ago: its surface was not as dry as it is today, and conditions to support simple life on the Moon existed twice during the early years.

Places

Hồ Thuỷ Tiên, an abandoned water park in Vietnam

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date August 11, 2018
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The dragon of Hồ Thuỷ Tiên abandoned water park (featured image) — Upon entering to the Hồ Thuỷ Tiên water park, visitors were greeted by the guardian of the park: a full-bodied dragon perched on a spaceship-type aquarium. On all sides of the dragon's bowels were aquarium tanks full of living fish and crocodiles. Now, this three-story building is still there but is now covered in rust, peeling paint and graffiti. The body of the dragon body forms a staircase, and today, still, visitors can walk up to a spectacular viewing area and take in the stunning view of the Thuỷ Tiên Lake from inside the mouth of the fire-breathing creature, which is actually a balcony.

Hồ Thuỷ Tiên is an abandoned water park in Vietnam. It was built in 2004 in an edge of the Vietnamese city of Huế, to the tune of approximately $3 million dollars. The idea was to create a family water park with amusement rides, slides, pools, shows, and an aquarium. But when the park opened its gates to the public, it was only partially completed.

After its opening, an excited population of park-goers began flocking to the park. But, somehow, it wasn’t enough. Within just a few years after its opening, the business started to experience financial problems. It closed not too long afterward and everything that had been built on the site had just been left as it was.

Solar System Astronomy

Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will scan the skies for asteroids that threaten Earth

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date August 4, 2018
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Around 66 million years ago, an asteroid (or a comet) with a diameter of at least 10 kilometers (6 miles) impacted a few miles from the present-day town of Chicxulub in Mexico at around 64,000 kilometers per hour (40,000 mph). The impact triggered a chain of events what is known today as the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction event, also known as the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) extinction, and wiped out three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth, including non-avian dinosaurs.

If this Chicxulub impactor happened today, it would wipe out human civilization. Luckily, events like Chicxulub impact are rare. Asteroids with a 1 km (0.62 mi) diameter strike Earth every 500,000 years on average. But that doesn’t mean we are totally safe. Asteroids with a diameter of at least 140 meters (460 ft) are big enough to cause regional devastation to human settlements unprecedented in human history in the case of a land impact or a major tsunami in the case of an ocean impact.

Planet Earth Earth from Space Oceans Space Exploration

NASA Has Published Statistics About the World’s Sandy Beaches

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date August 4, 2018
No Comments on NASA Has Published Statistics About the World’s Sandy Beaches

Sandy beaches of the world — About 31 percent of the world’s coastlines are sandy. Africa has the highest proportion of sandy beaches (66%) and Europe has the lowest (22%).

NASA has published some interesting statistics about the world’s sandy beaches on the Earth Observatory website. According to the images taken by Landsat satellites (see notes 1) (Landsat 5 and Landsat 8, see notes 2 and 3), about 31 percent of the world’s coastlines are sandy. Africa has the highest proportion of sandy beaches (66 percent) and Europe has the lowest (22 percent).

Earth from Space Space Exploration

ISS Over New Zealand (Video)

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date August 4, 2018
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ISS passes over New Zealand. The North Island is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, separated from the slightly larger but much less populous South Island by Cook Strait. The South Island is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand. It is divided along its length by the Southern Alps, the highest peak of which is Aoraki/Mount Cook at 3,724 meters (12,218 ft), making it 9th-highest island, with the high Kaikoura Ranges to the northeast. There are eighteen peaks of more than 3000 meters (9800 ft) in the South Island.

An amazing video of our beautiful Blue Marble from the International Space Station, titled “ISS over New Zealand”, was published by the NASA Crew Earth Observations channel.

Moon Landing Space Exploration

NASA Has Released Apollo 11 Mission Audio

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date August 2, 2018
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Buzz Aldrin on the Moon (cropped) — Moon Landing: Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, lunar module pilot, stands on the surface of the moon near the leg of the lunar module, Eagle, during the Apollo 11 moonwalk. Astronaut Neil Armstrong, mission commander, took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. While Armstrong and Aldrin descended in the lunar module to explore the Sea of Tranquility, astronaut Michael Collins, command module pilot, remained in lunar orbit with the Command and Service Module, Columbia.
This is the actual photograph as exposed on the moon by Armstrong. He held the camera slightly rotated so that the camera frame did not include the top of Aldrin's portable life support system ("backpack").
A communications antenna mounted on top of the backpack is also cut off in this picture. When the image was released to the public, it was rotated clockwise to restore the astronaut to vertical for a more harmonious composition, and a black area was added above his head to recreate the missing black lunar "sky" (Related: Why there are no stars in space photos?). The edited version is the one most commonly reproduced and known to the public, but the original version, above, is the authentic exposure. This image was cataloged by NASA Headquarters of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under Photo ID: AS11-40-5903. Image: Wikipedia

NASA has just published Two Years’ Worth of Apollo 11 Mission Audio (the first crewed moon landing mission) on their website “Explore Apollo“. That’s more than 19,000 hours of audio.

So now anyone can hear the endless hours of conversations between the Apollo 11 astronauts and Houston. Some recordings are really exciting, for example, the audio of the lunar module landing. When the lunar module enters the lunar orbit some interesting, tensed, and nail-biting technical challenges are encountered and are solved.

Physics Space Exploration

The coldest place in the Universe is now on the ISS

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date July 30, 2018
No Comments on The coldest place in the Universe is now on the ISS

As soon as NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) began producing ultra-cold atoms, the International Space Station (ISS) became the coldest place in the known universe. The formation of a Bose-Einstein condensate, the fifth state of matter occurred in NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) at a temperature of 130 nanoKelvin or less than 10 billionths of a degree above Absolute Zero. Absolute zero, or zero Kelvin, is equal to minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 273 Celsius. Previously, the record-cold was achieved in Prof. Wolfgang Ketterle’s laboratory at M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): half-a-billionth of a degree above absolute zero.

Global Warming Climate

History of Global Warming in just 34 Seconds

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date July 29, 2018
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Image: Refinery with smoke and global warming concept on Deposit Photos

Climate Central channel has put the 116 years history of global warming into a just 34-second video. The result is terrifying.

Space Exploration

No, NASA did not spend millions to develop a space pen, while the Soviet cosmonauts were using pencils [Urban legend explained]

Astronaut using space pen — NASA astronaut Rex Walheim, STS-135 mission specialist, is pictured on the flight deck of the space shuttle Atlantis during the mission's fourth day of activities in Earth orbit and second day while being docked with the International Space Station. Image: NASA

Here’s the story: during the 1960s as NASA was sending the first astronauts to space, they realized that pens don’t work in zero gravity (or actually microgravity), so they spent years and many millions of taxpayer dollars to develop a “space pen”, which means a pen that can write in the microgravity. Meanwhile, the Soviet cosmonauts simply used pencils.

As Curious Droid pointed out in the video below, “the moral of the story to many is that NASA was a wasteful government organization that would be giving your hard-earned tax dollars to some greedy contractors charging sky-high prices for seemingly trivial objects whereas the enemy (the Soviet Union) was common sense and practical.”

Moon Landing Space Exploration Technology

Why can’t we Remake the Rocketdyne F-1 Engine, which took humans to the Moon?

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date July 27, 2018
6 Comments on Why can’t we Remake the Rocketdyne F-1 Engine, which took humans to the Moon?

Apollo 11 launch (cropped) — The Apollo 11 Saturn V lifts off at 9:32 a.m. EDT July 16, 1969, from Kennedy's Launch Complex 39A. As of 2018, Saturn V launch vehicle still remains the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful rocket ever built. This is a cropped image. You can see the full image at: NASA The Apollo 11 mission, the first manned lunar mission, launched from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida via the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) developed Saturn V launch vehicle on July 16, 1969 and safely returned to Earth on July 24, 1969. The Saturn V vehicle produced a holocaust of flames as it rose from its pad at Launch complex 39. The 363 foot tall, 6,400,000 pound (2,902,991 kg) rocket hurled the spacecraft into Earth parking orbit and then placed it on the trajectory to the moon for the humanity's first lunar landing. Aboard the space craft were astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, commander; Michael Collins, Command Module pilot; and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., Lunar Module pilot. With the success of Apollo 11, the national objective to land humans on the Moon and return them safely to Earth had been accomplished.

The mighty Saturn V, the rocket that took humans to the moon, remains the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful rocket ever brought to operational status (as of 2018). It was used by NASA between 1967 and 1973. It was powered by five Rocketdyne F-1 engines. With a thrust of 1,746,000 lbf (7,770 kN) in vacuum (1,522,000 lbf / 6,770 kN at sea level), the F-1 remains the most powerful single combustion chamber liquid-propellant rocket engine ever developed.

Today, private companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and space agencies like NASA trying to build powerful rockets in order to reach Moon and Mars. But, we’ve already built a rocket that took us to the moon, why don’t we simply remake it (and the engines)? In the video below, Youtube user Curious Droid answers this question.