Cousins

Dec 20, 2017 Earth and Saturn are similar in some ways. Earth exhibits a periodic oscillation in its atmosphere called, the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO). The QBO involves winds at high altitude above the equator. Stratospheric winds circle the planet, changing direction about every 14 months. This means that the QBO…

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Spiders From Mars

  Dec 19, 2017 Martian formations are similar to those found elsewhere in the Solar System, including Earth. Lichtenberg figures are discussed many times in previous Picture of the Day articles. They are forking shapes that lightning bolts make when they strike Earth or some man-made object. Their unique configuration…

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Bacterial Batteries?

Dec 18, 2017 More electric biology. A previous Picture of the Day described the way that some single-celled organisms make use of charge exchange in order to drive their flagella. Rather than the conversion of ATP, they move protons along special cellular structures, converting that flow of electric charge into…

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Holy Moly!

  Dec 14, 2017 Why do coronal holes accelerate the solar wind? Recently, the Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded a coronal hole as it moved across the Sun’s photosphere, causing a storm of charged particles to blast toward Earth. Heliophysicists believe that coronal holes are regions of “open magnetic fields”. The…

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Love the Light

  Dec 11, 2017 Dark theories challenged again. “It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien Previous Picture of the…

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Not Enough Time

Dec 8, 2017 How long it takes things to form in space is a complete mystery. Black holes continue to elude detection by the most powerful telescopes and radiation sensors, but the consensus community insists that they exist, because they say that they can be inferred by their effect on…

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