Over the course of a decade, technology has rapidly progressed, especially when it comes to robotics. Robots have helped us better investigate and understand space, have made innovation in education more readily available, and some robots have even developed the ability to physically evolve.
To celebrate the 20th birthday of the International Space Station (ISS), the European Space Agency (ESA) published the longest continuous time-lapse video from the orbiting laboratory. In just under 15 minutes, this 4K HD video below takes us from Tunisia across Beijing and through Australia in two trips around the world. You can follow the ISS’s location using the map at the top right-hand side of the screen alongside annotations on the photos themselves.
Videos that contain images of the Earth taken aboard the International Space Station are usually time-lapse (see notes 1), but this amazing HD video below, titled “Orbit” shows a complete orbit around Earth from the ISS in real-time. A breathtaking 92-minute and 39-second show of the beauty and majesty of our planet from 250 miles (400 km) above.
We, humans, changing the Earth – mostly (almost always) in a bad way. Just over the last 25 years, we have destroyed 10% of the Earth’s wilderness. Now, a new world map created by the University of Cincinnati geography professor Tomasz Stepinski shows how the Earth’s surface has dramatically changed between 1992 and 2015.
On January 31, 2014, about 80 minutes after sunset on its 529th Martian day (or sol), NASA’s Curiosity Rover has turned its camera back home and took this amazing photo of Earth and Moon from a distance of around 99 million miles (160 million kilometers). In the image which has the serial number PIA17936, Earth can be seen as the brightest point of light in the night sky, a little left of the center of the photo, and our Moon appears just below Earth.
This wonderful 4K ultra-HD time-lapse video below shows the launch of the Progress MS-10 spacecraft (identified by NASA as Progress 71 or 71P) as seen by the International Space Station (ISS). The resupply mission departed from Baikonur Cosmodrome on November 16, 2018, to deliver fuel and other supplies to the ISS.
This size comparison of the Sun and the planets in our solar system is going around frequently, but it’s still amazing to see it. Created by the San Francisco-based artist Roberto Ziche, the image features the Sun in the background with the planets, Moon, and the four dwarf planets lined up in the foreground in the relative scale of size to one another.
When you look up at the night sky in a place without light pollution, the view is magnificent: thousands of stars and the Milky Way galaxy offer a unique visual feast. But have you ever wondered how many stars you are looking at at that moment? How many stars can you see in the sky with the naked eye?
The endless depths of the sky intrigue almost all humans alike. Space is like an abstract dream coming to life when it unfolds into a number of unseen horizons. The enormous nebulas, staggering hypernovae and the smattering of countless planets and stars make it a canvas of muse.
We are but a speck of dust in a desert full of possibilities when compared to the vastness of space. There are many realities prospering in the skies above us, it is only natural that we are still unaware of the majority of phenomena taking place on and around the stars.
Just like the count of stars, there are unlimited obscure and consternating facts dwelling in the depths of space. Most of them are surprising and are reminders for us that we are just an addition to the universe. Let us take a swim into the sky with these 10 amazing facts which are bound to fascinate you.
We, humans, are destroying the Earth’s wilderness at an alarming pace. Scientists say we have destroyed 10% of Earth’s wildlife habitat in just 25 years. Since 1993, 3.3 million km2 of global wilderness areas, particularly in the Amazon basin (almost 30%) and central Africa (14%) were lost. This is almost twice the size of Alaska!