Category: Science

How much water IS there on Earth?

This is really cool…the image here shows how much water there is on Earth, if you were to gather it all up in a ball and compare it to the size of the whole planet.  It really puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?

(via io9)

Now, take this a step further, and think about the water on this planet compared to others in our solar system.  Our little blue marble in space seems to be the gem, the most water-rich planet orbiting this star.  Well, it turns out that’s not exactly true, if you count moons at least.  Check out the picture below, showing the water on Earth, compared to the estimated water on the moon Europa!  In terms of volume, Europa is estimated to have two to three times the volume of water that Earth does.  Incredible!

(via io9)

Bad news for dinosaur fans

If you watched Jurassic Park and thought, “wow, wouldn’t it be cool if we actually COULD recreate dinosaurs like that” (and let’s be honest, who DIDN’T think that), then I have bad news for you.  Nature reports that researchers have found the bonds between nucleotides in DNA break down over time.  Pretty quickly, too…the half-life of DNA is about 521 years (after 521 years, half of the bonds have been broken; another 521 years and half the remaining bonds have been broken, and so on).

The bright spot here is that scientists reached this conclusion by analyzing a very specific set of bones…so there’s perhaps a chance that bones preserved in some different environment may yield usable DNA.  It’s not looking too likely though.

If you hope to have a pet dinosaur someday, it looks like your best bet may be to follow the works of Jack Horner, who wants to engineer modern-day dinosaurs (aka ‘birds’) to gradually undo millions of years of evolution:

1500 ping pong balls + liquid nitrogen

If you want to get kids interested in science, just show them this awesome physics demo.  Liquid nitrogen is placed in an enclosed container, buried under 1500 ping pong balls, and allowed to heat up.  Care to guess what happens?  Yeah, it’s pretty cool.

 

More money spent bailing out banks than on science

In the UK, professor Brian Cox claims that the UK has spent more money saving banks in a year, than it has spent on science for the past two thousand years (“since Jesus”).  It’s a bizarre claim, but when you look at the size of the bank bailouts, it certainly seems plausible. (source:BBC)

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.

Up ↑