Category: Planet Earth

The Oldest Surviving Aerial Photo was Taken in 1860

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date January 5, 2018
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Boston, as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It (1860) — "Boston, as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It," the first recorded aerial photograph. Depicts area resembling Old South Meeting House; Milk Street; India Wharf, Central Wharf; and vicinity. It was taken by the early American photographer James Wallace Black (February 10, 1825 – January 5, 1896) on October 13, 1860. Medium: Albumen silver print from glass negative. Dimensions: Image: 18.5 x 16.7 cm (7 5/16 x 6 9/16 in.), irregularly trimmed Mount: 20.3 x 17 cm (8 x 6 11/16 in.), irregularly trimmed. Credit Line: Gilman Collection, Purchase, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gift, 2005. Image source: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

On October 13, 1860, the early American photographer James Wallace Black (February 10, 1825 – January 5, 1896) climbed into a hot air balloon (named Queen of the Air) with his camera, and photographed Boston from a hot-air balloon at 1,200 feet (around 365 meters). On that day, Black took 8 plates of glass negative; 10 1/16 x 7 15/16 in, but only one good print resulted, which the photographer entitled “Boston, as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It”. Today, it remains the oldest surviving aerial photo.

Black was not the first person to take aerial photos: two years ago, French photographer (and also caricaturist, journalist, novelist, and “balloonist”) Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (6 April 1820 – 20 March 1910), known by the pseudonym Nadar, who photographed Victor Hugo on his death-bed in 1885, took photographs of Paris from a hot air balloon too. But the Frenchman’s photos were lost many years ago.

Earth from Space Planet Earth Space Exploration

Equinoxes and Solstices from Space

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date January 3, 2018
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Winter Solstice (December 21, 2010) — Winter Solstice from the space. This NASA image is acquired on December 21, 2010. On the "winter solstice" day (which marks the beginning of the summer in the southern hemisphere - December solstice is a more accurate term) the Sun appears to reach its lowest point in the sky in the northern hemisphere. And it's the longest night for any place other than the Equator. The Earth is positioned in its orbit so that the sun stays below the north pole horizon. After the winter solstice, the days get longer, and the nights shorter in the northern hemisphere (and the opposite is true for the southern hemisphere).

Every year, there are two Equinoxes (around March 20 and September 23) and two Solstices (on about June 21 and December 21). Spring and autumn start with an equinox – daylight, and nighttime are of approximately equal duration all over the Earth during Equinoxes. Winter and summer start with a solstice – daylight time is the longest of the year during the summer solstice, and obviously, the night time is the longest during the winter solstice.

The video below, published by NASA Earth Observatory, is a time-lapse from geosynchronous orbit (see notes 1) that shows the four changes of the seasons, related to the position of sunlight on the planet.

Earth from Space Places Space Exploration

10 Most Beautiful Earth Photos Taken From the International Space Station in 2017

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date January 1, 2018
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Istanbul from International Space Station. December 10, 2017 — In the photo above, taken by Randy "Komrade" Bresnik, the commander of the Expedition 53 (the 53rd expedition to the International Space Station) on December 10, we see Istanbul, the only intercontinental city on Earth and the biggest city of Turkey, the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, the Marmara Sea and Prince Islands (south is up). The Bosphorus is a strait that forms part of the boundary between Europe and Asia. The Princes' Islands are a cluster of 9 car-free islands southeast of Istanbul in the Sea of Marmara.

Here are the top ten most beautiful Earth photos taken by the astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2017. Which one is your favorite? Or if your favorite image was not listed here, please leave a comment below. To see all images taken from the International Space Station and published by NASA, visit Space Station Images.

Astronomy Physics Planet Earth

The hottest place in the Universe exists on Earth

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date December 29, 2017
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The hottest place in the Universe is on Earth and it is much hotter than a supernova — After a supernova, a newly formed neutron core has an initial temperature of about 100 billion kelvin, 6000 times the temperature of the sun’s core. The record temperature, that achieved at the LHC, over 5 trillion K and perhaps as high as 5.5 trillion K is around 5000-5500 times hotter than that! Or about 30-33 million times hotter than that of the sun’s core! During the experiment, the hottest place in the Universe was here on Earth. Image: Artist’s impression of a Type II supernova explosion which involves the destruction of a massive supergiant star. A Type II supernova results from the rapid collapse and violent explosion of a massive star. A star must have at least 8 times, but no more than 40 to 50 times, the mass of the Sun (M☉) to undergo this type of explosion.

The hottest place in the Universe exists here on Earth, like the coldest place in the Universe. Both these extreme temperatures are not natural, they are human-made. The coldest temperature was achieved in the German physicist and professor of physics Wolfgang Ketterle’s laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The hottest temperature, also recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records, was achieved at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

On 13 August 2012 scientists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, Geneva, Switzerland, announced that they had achieved temperatures of over 5 trillion K and perhaps as high as 5.5 trillion K (more than 9.9 trillion °F). The team had been using the ALICE experiment to smash together lead ions at 99% of the speed of light to create a quark-gluon plasma – an exotic state of matter believed to have filled the universe just after the Big Bang.

Astrobiology Evolution Life on Earth Prehistoric

The oldest fossils suggest that life should be common in the Universe

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date December 27, 2017
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Life should be common in the Universe - Otherworldly plant life growing on an alien planet in a distant universe. — Image: "Strange Plant Formations in an Alien Garden" on Deposit Photos

Are we alone in the Universe? Or do any other life forms exist out there? A new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS, see notes 1) suggests that life emerged so early on Earth, so it should be widespread. In other words, the Universe should be filled with life.

The story goes back to the year 1982 when UCLA Scholar and Pioneer in Study of the Evolution of Life, J. William Schopf collected 3.465-billion-year-old fossils from the Apex Chert in Western Australia, and interpreted them as early life. When he described the fossils in the journal Science in 1993, critics argued that they were not early lifeforms – they were just odd minerals that only looked like biological specimens.

Geology Places

An Island Forming in Tonga [Amazing Time-lapse]

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date December 14, 2017
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In December 2014, an underwater volcano has made a new island with a 120-meter (400-foot) summit in the South Pacific, between two older islands (Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha’apai) in the kingdom of Tonga. NASA satellites captured the amazing process.

On December 19, 2014, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, a volcano located about 30 kilometers (19 miles) south-southeast of Fonuafo’ou (also known as Falcon Island) in the kingdom of Tonga began erupting. The nearby tourists filmed the huge explosion.

The eruption continued into 2015. On January 11, 2015, a tall ash cloud rose 9 kilometers (30,000 feet) into the sky, causing a number of other flights between New Zealand and Tonga to be canceled. By January 16, when the plume cleared and the ash settled, a new island had been formed by the explosion. The new island is also called Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai.

Prehistoric Climate Evolution Life on Earth

Dinosaur-killer asteroid hit the “worst possible place” 66 million years ago, say Scientists

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date November 24, 2017
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The Chicxulub impactor was an asteroid or comet at least 10 kilometers (6 miles) in diameter. Around 66 million years ago, it 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 has created a crater (Chicxulub crater) more than 180 km (110 miles) in diameter, making it the third largest known impact crater on Earth. Image credit: Joe Tucciarone/Science Photo Library

According to the scientists who drilled into the Chicxulub crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico, the dinosaur-killer asteroid hit the “worst possible place” (for the dinosaurs, of course). They summarized their findings so far in a BBC Two documentary titled “The Day The Dinosaurs Died”. The documentary was presented by professors Alice Roberts and Ben Garrod.

Astrobiology Astronomy Life on Earth Solar System Space Exploration

How to tell if a planet harbors life?

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date November 22, 2017
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Earth from the Geostationary Orbit — Earth image taken by Japanese weather satellite Himawari 8, which takes a photo of Earth every 10 minutes. Himawari 8 is the 8th of the Himawari geostationary weather satellites operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency. Himawari 8 entered operational service on 7 July 2015 and is the successor to MTSAT-2 (Himawari 7) which was launched in 2006.

Are we alone in the universe? Or are there any other “living planets” other than Earth? How to tell if a planet harbors life? Until 1992, we even don’t know if there are any other planets around the other stars or not. In 1992, two Swiss astrophysicists, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz the first “exoplanet” (a planet orbiting another star than the Sun).

Then, discoveries continued. Especially after the launch of the Kepler space telescope on March 7, 2009, which is a space observatory launched by NASA to discover Earth-size planets orbiting other stars, we quickly learned that our Solar System is not a rare phenomenon at all. As of November 2017, scientists have confirmed more than 3,500 exoplanets in more than 2,700 star systems. Now, the question is: are any of these planets (or the planets waiting to be discovered in the future) harbor life? If so, how we can find out?

Currently, we have only one example: the Earth itself. Studying Earth and trying to figure out how we’d conclude the Earth harbors life from a distance (from space) can show us how to find out if a planet harbors life or not. Since 1997, NASA satellites have continuously observed all plant life at the surface of the land and ocean.

Earth from Space Life on Earth Space Exploration

Earth, Our Living Planet From Space

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date November 18, 2017
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Red Sea from Space — On his most recent trip to the International Space Station (Expedition 48), recently-retired NASA astronaut Jeff Williams has recorded a great HD video of Earth using an Ultra High Definition video camera. In this amazingly beautiful image, we can see the Red Sea, Nile River, Suez Canal, and the southern Mediterranean.

Earth, our living planet from space: life makes Earth unique among the thousands of other planets we’ve discovered so far – there may be extraterrestrial life, or maybe not (see notes 1), but it is the only “living planet” that we know of. Since 1997 (see notes 2), NASA satellites have continuously observed all plant life at the surface of the land and ocean. This view of life from space is furthering knowledge of our home planet, and how it’s changing.

In the Northern Hemisphere, ecosystems wake in the spring, taking in carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen as they sprout leaves – and a fleet of Earth-observing satellites track the spread of vegetation. Meanwhile, in the oceans, microscopic plants drift through sunlit surface waters blooming into billions of carbon dioxide-absorbing, oxygen-producing organisms – and satellites map the swirls of their color.

Physics Astronomy Planet Earth

The coldest place in the Universe exists on Earth

Post author By M. Özgür Nevres
Post date November 14, 2017
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In 1995, Wolfgang Ketterle and his colleagues have cooled a sodium gas to the lowest temperature ever recorded: only half-a-billionth of a degree above absolute zero, which is -273.15°C (-459.67°F), and actually unreachable. They managed to achieve this at Ketterle's lab, MIT, Cambridge. This accomplishment still holds the record according to Guinness World Records for lowest temperature. They bested the previous record by a factor of six, and is the first time that a gas was cooled below 1 nanokelvin (one-billionth of a degree). In doing so, Ketterle and his team discovered a new form of matter, the *Bose-Einstein condensate*, where the particles march in lockstep instead of flitting around independently. The discovery of Bose-Einstein condensates was recognized with the 2001 Nobel Prize in physics, which Ketterle shared with his Boulder colleagues Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman.

It may sound strange, but the coldest place in the Universe is not anywhere in the vast, cold outer space – it exists here on Earth. Well, it is not actually a natural place you can come across. It is in a laboratory in M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).