New Full-hemisphere Views of Earth at Night

New Full-hemisphere Views of Earth at Night: NASA scientists are releasing new global maps of Earth at night, providing the clearest yet composite view of the patterns of human settlement across our planet. This composite image, one of three new full-hemisphere views, provides a view of the Americas at night.

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Illustration of Cassini Spacecraft Diving Through Plume of 'Ocean World' Enceladus

Illustration of Cassini Spacecraft Diving Through Plume of 'Ocean World' Enceladus: This illustration shows NASA's Cassini spacecraft diving through the plume of Saturn's moon Enceladus, in 2015. Two veteran NASA missions are providing new details about icy, ocean-bearing moons of Jupiter and Saturn, further heightening the scientific interest of these and other "ocean worlds" in our solar system and beyond.

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Hubble Sees Starbursts in Virgo

Hubble Sees Starbursts in Virgo: Starburst galaxies contain regions where stars are forming at such a breakneck rate that the galaxy is eating up its gas supply faster than it can be replenished.

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The Arrhythmic Beating of a Black Hole Heart

The Arrhythmic Beating of a Black Hole Heart: At the center of the Centaurus galaxy cluster, there is a large elliptical galaxy called NGC 4696. Deeper still, there is a supermassive black hole buried within the core of this galaxy. New data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes has revealed details about this giant black hole.

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NASA's Fleet of Satellites Keep an Eye on Earth

NASA's Fleet of Satellites Keep an Eye on Earth: NASA's fleet of 18 Earth science missions in space, supported by aircraft, ships and ground observations, measure aspects of the environment that touch the lives of every person around the world. This visualization shows the NASA fleet in 2017.

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James Webb Space Telescope Mirror Seen in Full Bloom

James Webb Space Telescope Mirror Seen in Full Bloom: It's springtime and the deployed primary mirror of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope looks like a spring flower in full bloom. Once launched into space, the Webb telescope’s 18-segmented gold mirror is specially designed to capture infrared light from the first galaxies that formed in the early universe.

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WONDERFUL Crop Circle at Cooks Plantation 23rd August, 2013 England

AMAZING Crop Circle at All Cannings 15th July 2013, England

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UFO - A Verdade sobre Discos Voadores, a farsa revelada

MYSTERY - What is the Speed of Light?

What is the Speed of Light?:

Since ancient times, philosophers and scholars have sought to understand light. In addition to trying to discern its basic properties (i.e. what is it made of - particle or wave, etc.) they have also sought to make finite measurements of how fast it travels. Since the late-17th century, scientists have been doing just that, and with increasing accuracy.



In so doing, they have gained a better understanding of light's mechanics and the important role it plays in physics, astronomy and cosmology. Put simply, light moves at incredible speeds and is the fastest moving thing in the Universe. It's speed is considered a constant and an unbreakable barrier, and is used as a means of measuring distance. But just how fast does it travel?

Speed of Light (c):

Light travels at a constant speed of 1,079,252,848.8 (1.07 billion) km per hour. That works out to 299,792,458 m/s, or about 670,616,629 mph (miles per hour). To put that in perspective, if you could travel at the speed of light, you would be able to circumnavigate the globe approximately seven and a half times in one second. Meanwhile, a person flying at an average speed of about 800 km/h (500 mph), would take over 50 hours to circle the planet just once.







To put that into an astronomical perspective, the average distance from the Earth to the Moon is 384,398.25 km (238,854 miles ). So light crosses that distance in about a second. Meanwhile, the average distance from the Sun to the Earth is ~149,597,886 km (92,955,817 miles), which means that light only takes about 8 minutes to make that journey.



Little wonder then why the speed of light is the metric used to determine astronomical distances. When we say a star like Proxima Centauri is 4.25 light years away, we are saying that it would take - traveling at a constant speed of 1.07 billion km per hour (670,616,629 mph) - about 4 years and 3 months to get there. But just how did we arrive at this highly specific measurement for "light-speed"?

History of Study:

Until the 17th century, scholars were unsure whether light traveled at a finite speed or instantaneously. From the days of the ancient Greeks to medieval Islamic scholars and scientists of the early modern period, the debate went back and forth. It was not until the work of Danish astronomer Øle Rømer (1644-1710) that the first quantitative measurement was made.



In 1676, Rømer observed that the periods of Jupiter's innermost moon Io appeared to be shorter when the Earth was approaching Jupiter than when it was receding from it. From this, he concluded that light travels at a finite speed, and estimated that it takes about 22 minutes to cross the diameter of Earth's orbit.







Christiaan Huygens used this estimate and combined it with an estimate of the diameter of the Earth's orbit to obtain an estimate of 220,000 km/s. Isaac Newton also spoke about Rømer's calculations in his seminal work Opticks (1706). Adjusting for the distance between the Earth and the Sun, he calculated that it would take light seven or eight minutes to travel from one to the other. In both cases, they were off by a relatively small margin.



Later measurements made by French physicists Hippolyte Fizeau (1819 - 1896) and Léon Foucault (1819 - 1868) refined these measurements further - resulting in a value of 315,000 km/s (192,625 mi/s). And by the latter half of the 19th century, scientists became aware of the connection between light and electromagnetism.



This was accomplished by physicists measuring electromagnetic and electrostatic charges, who then found that the numerical value was very close to the speed of light (as measured by Fizeau). Based on his own work, which showed that electromagnetic waves propagate in empty space, German physicist Wilhelm Eduard Weber proposed that light was an electromagnetic wave.



The next great breakthrough came during the early 20th century/ In his 1905 paper, titled "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", Albert Einstein asserted that the speed of light in a vacuum, measured by a non-accelerating observer, is the same in all inertial reference frames and independent of the motion of the source or observer.

Using this and Galileo’s principle of relativity as a basis, Einstein derived the Theory of Special Relativity, in which the speed of light in vacuum (c) was a fundamental constant. Prior to this, the working consensus among scientists held that space was filled with a "luminiferous aether" that was responsible for its propagation - i.e. that light traveling through a moving medium would be dragged along by the medium.



This in turn meant that the measured speed of the light would be a simple sum of its speed through the medium plus the speed of that medium. However, Einstein's theory effectively  made the concept of the stationary aether useless and revolutionized the concepts of space and time.





Not only did it advance the idea that the speed of light is the same in all inertial reference frames, it also introduced the idea that major changes occur when things move close the speed of light. These include the time-space frame of a moving body appearing to slow down and contract in the direction of motion when measured in the frame of the observer (i.e. time dilation, where time slows as the speed of light approaches).



His observations also reconciled Maxwell’s equations for electricity and magnetism with the laws of mechanics, simplified the mathematical calculations by doing away with extraneous explanations used by other scientists, and accorded with the directly observed speed of light.



https://youtu.be/q74suqg5pCk



During the second half of the 20th century, increasingly accurate measurements using laser inferometers and cavity resonance techniques would further refine estimates of the speed of light. By 1972, a group at the US National Bureau of Standards in Boulder, Colorado, used the laser inferometer technique to get the currently-recognized value of 299,792,458 m/s.

Role in Modern Astrophysics:

Einstein's theory that the speed of light in vacuum is independent of the motion of the source and the inertial reference frame of the observer has since been consistently confirmed by many experiments. It also sets an upper limit on the speeds at which all massless particles and waves (which includes light) can travel in a vacuum.



One of the outgrowths of this is that cosmologists now treat space and time as a single, unified structure known as spacetime - in which the speed of light can be used to define values for both (i.e. "lightyears", "light minutes", and "light seconds"). The measurement of the speed of light has also become a major factor when determining the rate at cosmic expansion.



Beginning in the 1920's with observations of Lemaitre and Hubble, scientists and astronomers became aware that the Universe is expanding from a point of origin. Hubble also observed that the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it appears to be moving. In what is now referred to as the Hubble Parameter, the speed at which the Universe is expanding is calculated to 68 km/s per megaparsec.



https://youtu.be/cw7MTOosfeU



This phenomena, which has been theorized to mean that some galaxies could actually be moving faster than the speed of light, may place a limit on what is observable in our Universe. Essentially, galaxies traveling faster than the speed of light would cross a "cosmological event horizon", where they are no longer visible to us.



Also, by the 1990's, redshift measurements of distant galaxies showed that the expansion of the Universe has been accelerating for the past few billion years. This has led to theories like "Dark Energy", where an unseen force is driving the expansion of space itself instead of objects moving through it (thus not placing constraints on the speed of light or violating relativity).



Along with special and general relativity, the modern value of the speed of light in a vacuum has gone on to inform cosmology, quantum physics, and the Standard Model of particle physics. It remains a constant when talking about the upper limit at which massless particles can travel, and remains an unachievable barrier for particles that have mass.



Perhaps, someday, we will find a way to exceed the speed of light. While we have no practical ideas for how this might happen, the smart money seems to be on technologies that will allow us to circumvent the laws of spacetime, either by creating warp bubbles (aka. the Alcubierre Warp Drive), or tunneling through it (aka. wormholes).



https://youtu.be/lF8Ehk7JbkY



Until that time, we will just have to be satisfied with the Universe we can see, and to stick to exploring the part of it that is reachable using conventional methods.



We have written many articles about the speed of light for Universe Today. Here's How Fast is the Speed of Light?, How are Galaxies Moving Away Faster than Light?, How Can Space Travel Faster than the Speed of Light?, and Breaking the Speed of Light.



Here's a cool calculator that lets you convert many different units for the speed of light, and here's a relativity calculator, in case you wanted to travel nearly the speed of light.



Astronomy Cast also has an episode that addresses questions about the speed of light - Questions Show: Relativity, Relativity, and more Relativity.



Sources:

• Wikipedia - Speed of Light
• The Physics of the Universe - Speed of Light and the Principle of Relativity
  
  
• NASA - What is the Speed of Light?
• Galileo and Einstein - The Speed of Light

The post What is the Speed of Light? appeared first on Universe Today.

BINARY STARS - Talk About A Crowded Neighborhood: Closest Binary Stars With Multiple Planets Found

Talk About A Crowded Neighborhood: Closest Binary Stars With Multiple Planets Found:

The more we look, the more we see the great diversity in planetary systems around other stars. And curiously, planet hunters are finding that most star systems are very different from our own.



An example is a recently discovered system that is extremely crowded. It consists of a three giant planets in a binary (two stars) system. One star hosts two planets and the other hosts the third. The system represents the smallest-separation binary in which both stars host planets that has ever been observed.



“The probability of finding a system with all these components was extremely small," said Johanna Teske from the Carnegie Institution for Science, “so these results will serve as an important benchmark for understanding planet formation, especially in binary systems.”







Teske and her team said this busy system might help explain the influence that giant planets like Jupiter have over a solar system’s architecture.



“We are trying to figure out if giant planets like Jupiter often have long and, or eccentric orbits,” Teske explained. “If this is the case, it would be an important clue to figuring out the process by which our Solar System formed, and might help us understand where habitable planets are likely to be found.”



The twin stars are named HD 133131A and HD 133131B. The former hosts two Jupiter-sized worlds and the latter a planet with a mass at least 2.5 times Jupiter’s. All three planets have “eccentric” or highly elliptical orbits. So far no smaller, rocky worlds have been detected but the team said those type of planets could be part of the system, or may have been part of the system in the past.



The two stars themselves are separated by only 360 astronomical units (AU – the distance between the Earth and the Sun, approximately 150,000,000 km or 93,000,000 miles). This is extremely close for twin stars with detected planets orbiting the individual stars. The next-closest known binary star system with planets has stars about 1,000 AU apart.



The two stars are more like fraternal twins rather than identical because they have slight different chemical compositions. The team said this could indicate that one star swallowed some baby planets early in its life, changing its composition slightly. Or another option is that the gravitational forces of the detected giant planets may have had a strong effect on fully-formed small planets, flinging them in towards the star or out into space.



But both stars are “metal poor,” meaning that most of their mass is hydrogen and helium, as opposed to other elements like iron or oxygen. This is another curious thing about this system, as most stars that host giant planets are "metal rich.”



The system was found using the Planet Finder Spectrograph, an instrument developed by Carnegie scientists and mounted on the Magellan Clay Telescopes at Carnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory. This finding represents the first exoplanet detection made based solely on data from the. PFS is able to find large planets with long-duration orbits or orbits that are very elliptical rather than circular.



This video tells more about the PFS:







You can read the team's paper here. It has been accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal.

The post Talk About A Crowded Neighborhood: Closest Binary Stars With Multiple Planets Found appeared first on Universe Today.

JUPITER PLANET - Juno Captures Jupiter’s Enthralling Poles From 2,500 Miles

Juno Captures Jupiter’s Enthralling Poles From 2,500 Miles:

Juno is sending data from Jupiter back to us, courtesy of the Deep Space Network, and the first images are meeting our hyped-up expectations. On August 27, the Juno spacecraft came within about 4,200 km. (2,500 miles) of Jupiter's cloud tops. All of Juno's instruments were active, and along with some high-quality images in visual and infrared, Juno also captured the sound that Jupiter produces.



Juno has captured the first images of Jupiter's north pole. Beyond their interest as pure, unprecedented eye candy, the images of the pole reveal things never before seen. They show storm activity and weather patterns that are seen nowhere else in our solar system. Even on the other gas giants.

"...like nothing we have seen or imagined before."

“First glimpse of Jupiter’s north pole, and it looks like nothing we have seen or imagined before,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “It’s bluer in color up there than other parts of the planet, and there are a lot of storms. There is no sign of the latitudinal bands or zone and belts that we are used to -- this image is hardly recognizable as Jupiter. We’re seeing signs that the clouds have shadows, possibly indicating that the clouds are at a higher altitude than other features.”







The visible light images of Jupiter's north pole are very different from our usual perception of Jupiter. People have been looking at Jupiter for a long time, and the gas giant's storm bands, and the Great Red Spot, are iconic. But the north polar region looks completely different, with whirling, rotating storms similar to hurricanes here on Earth.



The Junocam instrument is responsible for the visible light pictures of Jupiter that we all enjoy. But the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) is showing us a side of Jupiter that the naked eye will never see.







“JIRAM is getting under Jupiter’s skin, giving us our first infrared close-ups of the planet,” said Alberto Adriani, JIRAM co-investigator from Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali, Rome. “These first infrared views of Jupiter’s north and south poles are revealing warm and hot spots that have never been seen before. And while we knew that the first-ever infrared views of Jupiter's south pole could reveal the planet's southern aurora, we were amazed to see it for the first time."

"No other instruments, both from Earth or space, have been able to see the southern aurora."

Even when we're prepared to be amazed by what Juno and other spacecraft show us, we are still amazed. It's impossible to see Jupiter's south pole from Earth, so these are everybody's first glimpses of it.



"No other instruments, both from Earth or space, have been able to see the southern aurora," said Adriani. "Now, with JIRAM, we see that it appears to be very bright and well-structured. The high level of detail in the images will tell us more about the aurora’s morphology and dynamics.”



[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9TtSCkoERw[/embed]



Beyond the juicy images of Jupiter are some sound recordings. It's been known since about the 1950's that Jupiter is a noisy planet. Now Juno's Radio/Plasma Wave Experiment (WAVE) has captured a recording of that sound.



“Jupiter is talking to us in a way only gas-giant worlds can,” said Bill Kurth, co-investigator for the Waves instrument from the University of Iowa, Iowa City. “Waves detected the signature emissions of the energetic particles that generate the massive auroras which encircle Jupiter’s north pole. These emissions are the strongest in the solar system. Now we are going to try to figure out where the electrons come from that are generating them.”



[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slE2i0O0pDY[/embed]



Oddly enough, that's pretty much exactly what I expected Jupiter to sound like. Like something from an early sci-fi film.



There's much more to come from Juno. These images and recordings of Jupiter are just the result of Juno's first orbit. There are over 30 more orbits to come, as Juno examines the gas giant as it orbits beneath it.













The post Juno Captures Jupiter’s Enthralling Poles From 2,500 Miles appeared first on Universe Today.

GREAT IMAGES - How Cold Are Black Holes?

How Cold Are Black Holes?:

Today we’re going to have the most surreal conversation. I’m going to struggle to explain it, and you’re going to struggle to understand it. And only Stephen Hawking is going to really, truly, understand what’s actually going on.

But that’s fine, I’m sure he appreciates our feeble attempts to wrap our brains around this mind bending concept.

All right? Let’s get to it. Black holes again. But this time, we’re going to figure out their temperature.

The very idea that a black hole could have a temperature strains the imagination. I mean, how can something that absorbs all the matter and energy that falls into it have a temperature? When you feel the warmth of a toasty fireplace, you’re really feeling the infrared photons radiating from the fire and surrounding metal or stone.

And black holes absorb all the energy falling into them. There is absolutely no infrared radiation coming from a black hole. No gamma radiation, no radio waves. Nothing gets out.

As with most galaxies, a supermassive black hole lies at the heart of NGC 5548. Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA. Acknowledgement: Davide de Martin

Now, supermassive black holes can shine with the energy of billions of stars, when they become quasars. When they’re actively feeding on stars and clouds of gas and dust. This material piles up into an accretion disk around the black hole with such density that it acts like the core of a star, undergoing nuclear fusion.

But that’s not the kind of temperature we’re talking about. We’re talking about the temperature of the black hole’s event horizon, when it’s not absorbing any material at all.

The temperature of black holes is connected to this whole concept of Hawking Radiation. The idea that over vast periods of time, black holes will generate virtual particles right at the edge of their event horizons. The most common kind of particles are photons, aka light, aka heat.

Normally these virtual particles are able to recombine and disappear in a puff of annihilation as quickly as they appear. But when a pair of these virtual particles appear right at the event horizon, one half of the pair drops into the black hole, while the other is free to escape into the Universe.

From your perspective as an outside observer, you see these particles escaping from the black hole. You see photons, and therefore, you can measure the temperature of the black hole.

Artist’s concept of the black hole at the center of the Pinwheel Galaxy. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The temperature of the black hole is inversely proportional to the mass of the black hole and the size of the event horizon. Think of it this way. Imagine the curved surface of a black hole’s event horizon. There are many paths that a photon could try to take to get away from the event horizon, and the vast majority of those are paths that take it back down into the black hole’s gravity well.

But for a few rare paths, when the photon is traveling perfectly perpendicular to the event horizon, then the photon has a chance to escape. The larger the event horizon, the less paths there are that a photon could take.

Since energy is being released into the Universe at the black hole’s event horizon, but energy can neither be created or destroyed, the black hole itself provides the mass that supplies the energy to release these photons.

The black hole evaporates.

The most massive black holes in the Universe, the supermassive black holes with millions of times the math of the Sun will have a temperature of 1.4 x 10^-14 Kelvin. That’s low. Almost absolute zero, but not quite.

Artist’s impression of a feeding stellar-mass black hole. Credit: NASA, ESA, Martin Kornmesser (ESA/Hubble)

A solar mass black hole might have a temperature of only .0.00000006 Kelvin. We’re getting warmer.

Since these temperatures are much lower than the background temperature of the Universe – about 2.7 Kelvin, all the existing black holes will have an overall gain of mass. They’re absorbing energy from the Cosmic Background Radiation faster than they’re evaporating, and will for an incomprehensible amount of time into the future.

Until the background temperature of the Universe goes below the temperature of these black holes, they won’t even start evaporating.

A black hole with the mass of the Earth is still too cold.

Only a black hole with about the mass of the Moon is warm enough to be evaporating faster than it’s absorbing energy from the Universe.

As they get less massive, they get even hotter. A black hole with the mass of the asteroid Ceres would be 122 Kelvin. Still freezing, but getting warmer.

A black hole with half the mass of Vesta would blaze at more than 1,200 Kelvin. Now we’re cooking!

Less massive, higher temperatures.

When black holes have lost most of their mass, they release the final material in a tremendous blast of energy, which should be visible to our telescopes.

Artist’s conception of the event horizon of a black hole. Credit: Victor de Schwanberg/Science Photo Library

Some astronomers are actively searching the night sky for blasts from black holes which were formed shortly after the Big Bang, when the Universe was hot and dense enough that black holes could just form.

It took them billions of years of evaporation to get to the point that they’re starting to explode now.

This is just conjecture, though, no explosions have ever been linked to primordial black holes so far.

It’s pretty crazy to think that an object that absorbs all energy that falls into it can also emit energy. Well, that’s the Universe for you. Thanks for helping us figure it out Dr. Hawking.

The post How Cold Are Black Holes? appeared first on Universe Today.

Quebec Canada Aurora and Manicouagan Crater

Aurora and Manicouagan Crater: An astronaut aboard the International Space Station adjusted the camera for night imaging and captured the green veils and curtains of an aurora that spanned thousands of kilometers over Quebec, Canada.

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NASA IMAGE A Black Hole Story Told by a Cosmic Blob and Bubble

A Black Hole Story Told by a Cosmic Blob and Bubble: Two cosmic structures show evidence for a remarkable change in behavior of a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy.

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Perseid Meteor Shower 2016 from West Virginia

Perseid Meteor Shower 2016 from West Virginia: In this 30 second exposure, a meteor streaks across the sky during the annual Perseid meteor shower Friday, Aug. 12, 2016 in Spruce Knob, West Virginia.

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NASA IMAGE Supernova Ejected from the Pages of History

Supernova Ejected from the Pages of History: A new look at the debris from an exploded star in our galaxy has astronomers re-examining when the supernova actually happened.

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NASA IMAGE Speeding Towards Jupiter's Pole

Speeding Towards Jupiter's Pole: Jupiter's north polar region is coming into view as NASA's Juno spacecraft approaches the giant planet. This view of Jupiter was taken on August 27, when Juno was 437,000 miles (703,000 kilometers) away. The Juno mission successfully executed its first of 36 orbital flybys of Jupiter.

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NASA IMAGE An Age-defying Star

An Age-defying Star: An age-defying star designated as IRAS 19312+1950 exhibits features characteristic of a very young star and a very old star. The object stands out as extremely bright inside a large, chemically rich cloud of material, as shown in this image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

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Good Morning From the International Space Station

Good Morning From the International Space Station: Expedition 48 Commander Jeff Williams of NASA shared this sunrise panorama taken from his vantage point aboard the International Space Station, writing, "Morning over the Atlantic…this one will hang on my wall."

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NASA IMAGE Ceres' Mountain Ahuna Mons: Side View

Ceres' Mountain Ahuna Mons: Side View: Ceres' lonely mountain, Ahuna Mons, is seen in this simulated perspective view. The elevation has been exaggerated by a factor of two. The view was made using enhanced-color images from NASA's Dawn mission.

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Jupiter Down Under

Jupiter Down Under: This image from NASA's Juno spacecraft provides a never-before-seen perspective on Jupiter's south pole.

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WATER: The Great Mystery

MYSTERY - The Ancient Sumerian Cuneiform Tablets True Meaning Revealed

THE SECRET OF THE UNIVERSE

TOP SECRET Ancient Technology you didn't Know

Classified Anti Gravity Craft

CROP CIRCLES MYSTERY - New & Original- 3 Crop Circles 7/22-7/23/16, Disease, Conflict, Intruder

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UFO SIGHTINGS 2016 | Strange lights are recorded on Sky Lahore Pakistan

Outro oceano debaixo da terra na cidade de Juína MT

Outro oceano debaixo da terra na cidade de Juína MT

Pesquisadores descobriram um pequeno diamante que aponta para a existência de um grande depósito de água sob o manto da Terra. Seu volume poderia preencher três vezes os oceanos que conhecemos.


O principal autor do estudo, Graham Pearson, membro da Universidade de Alberta, no Canadá, disse que “Uma das razões da Terra ser um planeta dinâmico é a presença de água em seu interior. As mudanças da água dependem da forma como o mundo funciona”.

Depois de discutir a teoria há décadas, os cientistas relatam que finalmente encontraram um grande oceano no manto da Terra, três vezes maior do que os oceanos que conhecemos.

Esta descoberta surpreendente sugere que a água da superfície vem do interior do planeta como parte de um ciclo integrado da água, desbancando a teoria dominante de que a água foi trazida para a Terra por cometas gelados que passaram por aqui há milhões anos.

Cada vez mais os cientistas estão aprendendo sobre a composição de nosso planeta, compreendendo os acontecimentos relacionados às mudanças climáticas. O clima e o mar estão intimamente relacionados com a atividade tectônica que tem estado continuamente vibrando sob nossos pés.

Assim, os pesquisadores acreditam que a água na superfície da Terra poderia ter vindo do interior do planeta, tendo sido “impulsionada” para a superfície por meio da atividade geológica.


Nas profundezas desse oceano, corre um rio sem que a água doce se misture com a salgada.
Estudo Diz: Água subterrânea cobriria toda a superfície do planeta
Depois de inúmeros estudos e cálculos complexos para testar suas teorias, os pesquisadores acreditam ter encontrado um reservatório gigante de água numa zona de transição entre as camadas superior e inferior do manto, uma região que se encontra em algum lugar entre 400 e 660 km abaixo da superfície da terra.

Como sabemos, a água ocupa a maior parte da área de superfície do nosso planeta, que é paradoxalmente chamado de Terra. Embora seja verdade que, em comparação com o diâmetro terrestre a profundidade dos oceanos represente apenas uma fina camada semelhante à casca de uma cebola, descobrimos agora que a presença deste precioso líquido não está limitada à superfície visível.

Na realidade, a cerca de centenas de quilômetros de profundidade no subsolo há também enormes volumes de água, com uma importância fundamental para a compreensão da dinâmica geológica do planeta. Quase um oceano no centro da Terra.

A descoberta do oceano subterrâneo

A importante descoberta foi realizada por pesquisadores canadenses, que se basearam em um diamante encontrado numa rocha, em 2008, em uma área conhecida como Juína, no estado do Mato Grosso, Brasil.


A descoberta ocorreu por acidente, pois a equipe que estava, na realidade, à procura de outro mineral, ter comprado o diamante de alguns garimpeiros que o tinham encontrado através de uma coleta de cascalho realizada em um rio raso. Ao analisar a pedra detalhadamente um estudante descobriu, um ano depois, que o diamante, de apenas três milímetros de diâmetro e de pouco valor comercial, continha em sua composição um mineral chamado ringwoodite, que até agora só tinha sido encontrado em rochas de meteoritos e que contém significativa quantidade de água. No entanto, a confirmação final da presença deste mineral levou muitos anos, pois foi necessária a realização de vários testes e análises científicas.

De onde vem este mineral?

A análise detalhada da amostra encontrada revelou que, neste caso, o mineral não provinha de meteoritos, mas do manto da Terra, a uma profundidade de cerca de 410 e 660 km, em uma área que é conhecida como “zona de transição”.

Anteriormente, discutia-se muito sobre a possibilidade da existência de grandes quantidades de água muitos quilômetros abaixo do subsolo, mas nunca tinha sido antes demonstrada nenhuma prova real de tal teoria, que tem implicações muito importantes para a forma como entendemos os fenômenos geológicos planetários, pois acredita-se que este é o mineral mais abundante na zona do manto. Desta forma, como a amostra encontrada possui até 1,5 por cento de seu peso em água, pode-se afirmar que existem volumes de água realmente extraordinários, como um grande oceano.

Esta descoberta é, sem dúvida, uma das mais importantes realizadas no campo da geologia nos últimos anos, e forçará os peritos a modificarem, até certo ponto, a abordagem que se tem utilizado até agora para analisar fenômenos como vulcanismo, placas tectônicas e muitos outros processos de importância na compreensão da dinâmica da Terra – cujo nome, depois dessa descoberta, se tornou ainda mais paradoxal.


A peculiaridade desta descoberta é que esta água não existe em qualquer um dos três estados que conhecemos: líquido, sólido ou gasoso. A água foi encontrada em estruturas moleculares de formações rochosas no interior da Terra.

Uma concentração tão importante de água trás uma mudança significativa nas teorias relacionadas com a origem da água na superfície da Terra.


Esta descoberta é a prova de que nas partes mais profundas do nosso planeta, a água pode ser armazenada. Fato este que poderá colocar fim em uma polêmica de 25 anos, sobre se o centro da terra é seco ou úmido em algumas áreas.

A capacidade de armazenar água em seu interior não é exclusiva da Terra. Outros planetas, como Marte, podem conter grandes quantidades de água, algo que nos faz pensar se o planeta vermelho poderia abrigar vida.

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NASA Approves New Horizons Extended KBO Mission, Keeps Dawn at Ceres

NASA Approves New Horizons Extended KBO Mission, Keeps Dawn at Ceres:

In an ‘Independence Day’ gift to a slew of US planetary research scientists, NASA has granted approval to nine ongoing missions to continue for another two years this holiday weekend.



The biggest news is that NASA green lighted a mission extension for the New Horizons probe to fly deeper into the Kuiper Belt and decided to keep the Dawn probe at Ceres forever, rather than dispatching it to a record breaking third main belt asteroid.



And the exciting extension news comes just as the agency’s Juno probe is about to ignite a July 4 fireworks display on July 4 to achieve orbit at Jupiter - detailed here.



“Mission approved!” the researchers gleefully reported on the probes Facebook and Twitter social media pages.



“Our extended mission into the #KuiperBelt has been approved. Thanks to everyone for following along & hopefully the best is yet to come.









The New Horizons spacecraft will now continue on course in the Kuiper Belt towards an small object known as 2014 MU69, to carry out the most distant close encounter with a celestial object in human history.



“Here's to continued success!”



The spacecraft will rendezvous with the ancient rock on New Year’s Day 2019.



Researchers say that 2014 MU69 is considered as one of the early building blocks of the solar system and as such will be invaluable to scientists studying the origin of our solar system how it evolved.



It was almost exactly one year ago on July 14, 2015 that New Horizons conducted Earth’s first ever up close flyby and science reconnaissance of Pluto - the most distant planet in our solar system and the last of the nine planets to be explored.















The immense volume of data gathered continues to stream back to Earth every day.



“The New Horizons mission to Pluto exceeded our expectations and even today the data from the spacecraft continue to surprise,” said NASA’s Director of Planetary Science Jim Green at NASA HQ in Washington, D.C.



“We’re excited to continue onward into the dark depths of the outer solar system to a science target that wasn’t even discovered when the spacecraft launched.”













While waiting for news on whether NASA would approve an extended mission, the New Horizons engineering and science team already ignited the main engine four times to carry out four course changes in October and November 2015, in order to preserve the option of the flyby past 2014 MU69 on Jan 1, 2019.



Green noted that mission extensions into fiscal years 2017 and 2018 are not final until Congress actually passes sufficient appropriation to fund NASA’s Planetary Science Division.



“Final decisions on mission extensions are contingent on the outcome of the annual budget process.”





Tough choices were made even tougher because the Obama Administration has cut funding for the Planetary Sciences Division - some of which was restored by a bipartisan majority in Congress for what many consider NASA ‘crown jewels.’



NASA’s Dawn asteroid orbiter just completed its primary mission at dwarf planet Ceres on June 30, just in time for the global celebration known as Asteroid Day.



“The mission exceeded all expectations originally set for its exploration of protoplanet Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres,” said NASA officials.



The Dawn science team had recently submitted a proposal to break out of orbit around the middle of this month in order to this conduct a flyby of the main belt asteroid Adeona.



Green declined to approve the Dawn proposal, citing additional valuable science to be gathered at Ceres.



The long-term monitoring of Ceres, particularly as it gets closer to perihelion – the part of its orbit with the shortest distance to the sun -- has the potential to provide more significant science discoveries than a flyby of Adeona,” he said.



Dawn is Earth’s first probe in human history to explore any dwarf planet, the first to explore Ceres up close and the first to orbit two celestial bodies.



The asteroid Vesta was Dawn’s first orbital target where it conducted extensive observations of the bizarre world for over a year in 2011 and 2012.



The mission is expected to last until at least later into 2016, and possibly longer, depending upon fuel reserves.



Dawn will remain at its current altitude at LAMO for the rest of its mission, and indefinitely afterward, even when no further communications are possible.



Green based his decision on the mission extensions on the biannual peer review scientific assessment by the Senior Review Panel.



The other mission extension - contingent on available resources - are: the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN), the Opportunity and Curiosity Mars rovers, the Mars Odyssey orbiter, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), and NASA’s support for the European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission.



Stay tuned here for Ken's continuing Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news.



Ken Kremer











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