Earth is still the only planet we know where water can exist in liquid form on the surface and the water is vital for all known forms of life. Rain brings life: it is a major component of the water cycle (also known as
Where Earth’s water came from?
Earth is a blue marble in the space: the water, gives our planet its blue color: about 71 percent of the Earth’s surface is water-covered. There is roughly 326 million cubic miles (1.332 billion cubic kilometers) water on the Earth’s surface. Almost 97% of that water is salty (ocean water). But where all that water came from?
Emma Morano, The Oldest Living Human
As of May 26, 2016, Emma Morano, a 116-Year-Old woman from Italy is the oldest living human in the world (currently the oldest living man is Yisrael Kristal, who is 113, an Auschwitz Survivor now Living in Israel).
Update: Emma Morano has died on April 15, 2017, at the age of 117 years and 137 days.
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Nile Crocodiles Have Been Found in Florida
Four Nile crocodiles have been found in Florida by scientists from the University of Florida. Between 2002 and 2004, the researchers have studied populations of crocodiles in the state. Previously, using DNA analysis, they found three Nile crocs: one was a foot long hatchling sitting on a porch in Miami. Another was found on the property of a private zoo in Homestead, and a third, also in Homestead, a 10-pound (4.5 kg) female, was captured in a public park.
Finally, more recently, in March 2012, a three-foot-long (1 meter) female was trapped in a canal in Homestead. The researchers tagged this one and released her to
Largest prehistoric mammals
After the extinction of the dinosaurs, approximately 66 million years ago, the rise of mammals begun. There were mammals on earth before that date, but after the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event (a mass extinction of some three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth, including all non-avian dinosaurs), mammals took over the medium- to large-sized ecological niches. Some of these mammals reached enormous sizes, and usually, they were larger than today’s counterparts (with the exception of whales). Here are some of the largest prehistoric mammals ever known.
GoPro footage of a rocket launching into space
On November 6th, 2015, UP Aerospace Inc. launched the 20-foot (6-meters) tall SL-10 rocket (a small sounding rocket) into near-space. The mission was to deploy the Maraia Capsule testing the aerodynamics and stability of the payload on re-entry to the atmosphere. The rocket reached an altitude of 396,000 feet (120,700 meters) and speeds up to Mach 5.5 (3800 mph or 6115 km/h) at engine burnout. The event was recorded with an attached GoPro. The action camera has recorded amazing images of Earth and space.
Planet with Three Suns
On March 17, 1941, John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding Science Fiction, asked Isaac Asimov that: “What, if people see the stars once in a thousand of years?” Campbell has had read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1836 essay “Nature” and Emerson was saying in the first chapter that “If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God!”
Campbell wanted Asimov to read that quote, and asked him the question above, “What
A Scale Model of Solar System Drawn in the Desert and the Result is Stunning
We evolved here on Earth, and for thousands of years, we just thought the Earth is also the universe, or at least the most important and the biggest part of it. Our brains have been adapted to the life on Earth and the basic survival needs. So we can deal with the moderately sized objects which have moderate velocity, we can understand the small numbers like 1, 2, 50, we can conceptualize the small distances like two kilometers or the distance from our “cave” to the nearest river. But when the numbers and distances get bigger, I mean much bigger, like the distance from Earth to the Sun, it becomes incredibly difficult to conceptualize.
Previously I posted an article titled “If The Moon Were Only 1 Pixel – A Tediously Accurate Map Of The Solar System“. Since the human brain cannot deal with the really large numbers, it is an amazing way to understand how big actually our Solar System is.
SpaceX Falcon 9 lands on a barge (and the Science Fiction saw the future again!)
April 8, 2016, was a historical day which marks a new milestone on humanity’s space adventure: after delivering CRS-8 cargo on its way to the International Space Station, SpaceX Falcon 9 Flight 23, the third flight of the full-thrust version landed vertically on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You over the Atlantic ocean, 300 km from the Florida coastline, achieving a long-sought-after milestone for the SpaceX reusability development program.
Here are the videos of that historical moment:
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What if a nuclear bomb hit your city?
On August 6, 1945, during the World War II, an American Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber named “Enola Gay” dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb codenamed “Little Boy” over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The bomb exploded with 15 kilotons of TNT (63 TJ) of energy and caused horrendous destruction to the city. Approximately 66,000 people were killed as a direct result of the blast, and 69,000 were injured to varying degrees. Within four months, the number of the fatalities would reach 90,000–146,000 people due to the acute effects of the atomic bomb.
