Image Of The Day

Opportunity's Heat Shield

This image from 2005 shows the remains of the heat shield from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, broken into two key pieces, the main piece on the left side and a broken-off flank piece near the middle of the image. The heat shield impact site is identified by the circle of red dust on the right side of the picture. In this view, Opportunity is approximately 66 feet (20 meters) from the heat shield, which protected it while hurtling through the Martian atmosphere.

In the far left of the image, a meteorite called 'Heat Shield Rock' sits nearby, as the sun reflected off the silver-colored underside of the internal thermal blankets of the heat shield. The rover spent 36 sols investigating how the severe heating during entry through the atmosphere affected the heat shield. The most obvious is the fact that the heat shield inverted upon impact.

This is an approximately true-color rendering of the scene acquired around 1:22 p.m. local solar time on Opportunity sol 324 (Dec. 21, 2004) in an image mosaic using panoramic filters at wavelengths of 750, 530, and 430 nanometers. Opportunity has now spent more than 2,680 sols, or Martian days, on the Red Planet.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

   The Largest Photo in the World

Jeffery Martins has created the largest photo in the world. The image is a 360 degree panoramic view of London measuring a full 80 gigapixels, or 80 billion pixels! You can literally zoom into the distance and pick out individual figures.

Martins, the founder of 360 Cities shot the image over three days, taking thousands of photos and stitching them into an intensely detailed whole. Actually, the image is so information rich, it is somewhat hard to navigate. To encourage people to explore the image, 360 Cities will launch treasure hunts for viewers to find and describe items or places in the photo. Keep up on the competition or explore more panoramas at 360Cities.net.

Ocean Foam Out of Control

 

It was as if someone had poured tons of coffee and milk into the ocean, then switched on a giant blender. Suddenly the shoreline north of Sydney were transformed into the Cappuccino Coast. Foam swallowed an entire beach and half the nearby buildings, including the local lifeguards centre, in a freak display of nature at Yamba in New South Wales. One minute a group of teenage surfers were waiting to catch a wave, the next they were swallowed up in a giant bubble bath. The foam was so light that they could puff it out of their hands and watch it float away.

It stretched for 30 miles out into the Pacific in a phenomenon not seen at the beach for more than three decades.

Scientists explain that the foam is created by impurities in the ocean, such as salts, chemicals, dead plants, decomposed fish and excretions from seaweed. All are churned up together by powerful currents which cause the water to form bubbles. These bubbles stick to each other as they are carried below the surface by the current towards the shore. As a wave starts to form on the surface, the motion of the water causes the bubbles to swirl upwards and, massed together, they become foam. The foam “surfs” towards shore until the wave “crashes”, tossing the foam into the air.

Torrential rain storms in South Korea lead to flooding and landslides(7/29/2011)

 

Amazing Facts About Camels

 

 

Camels walk 3 km (1.8 mi) per day looking for food, on average 3 hours, and disperse when food is scarce. They require 10-20 kg (22-44 pounds) of fresh food daily (or 5-10 kg (12-24 pounds) of dry food), depending on the animal's size. If working, the food requirement is of 30-50 kg (70-110 pounds) per day. They spend 8-12 hours per day eating.

Camels eat from small grasses and herbs (Convulvulaceae, Plantaginaceae) to bushes, trees (Acacia) (camels can pick up leaves at heights of up to 3.5 m (12 ft)), and plants growing on salty lands (Chenopodiaceae) and, as a camel's mouth is extremely tough and pain resistant, they can eat easily thorny desert plants, avoided by other animals. Some of their spines so hard they can penetrate through a shoe's sole. Camels literally can survive on plant wastes, like an old twig basket or a mat. Bactrian camels eat wild garlic, saxaul (Haloxylon), and poplar.

Camels can chew gazelle bones (for completing minerals), and even fish waists (especially in Southern Arabia, where fish is abundant). If food has enough moisture, camels can withstand a month without drinking water.

A density of 2-3 kg (4.5-6.5 pounds) of food per hectar means good feeding condition for the camel; 1-1.5 kg (2.2-3.5 pounds) per hectar represent poor feeding conditions.

 

Spectrophobia:Fear Of ghosts

  

                  

It’s true that some people truly believe in ghosts and some don’t so this is certainly up to your interpretation. However, with the help of Hollywood with movies such as the Poltergeist movie series, the perception of ghost, whether you believe in them or not, is highly magnified; not only on the big screen, but to the public. Movies certainly help to let our imaginations go to new heights when it comes to creepy things such as ghosts.
Most people that have spectrophobia (the fear of ghosts) realize that this is an irrational fear and that there’s truly nothing to be afraid of. These people may be afraid to be in old, empty houses, dark places, or quiet woods, especially at night; even though the logical side of them says that nothing will happen.

Cold Welding

Fact: If two pieces of metal touch in space, they become permanently stuck together

This may sound unbelievable, but it is true. Two pieces of metal without any coating on them will form in to one piece in the vacuum of space. This doesn’t happen on earth because the atmosphere puts a layer of oxidized material between the surfaces. This might seem like it would be a big problem on the space station but as most tools used there have come from earth, they are already coated with material. In fact, the only evidence of this seen so far has been in experiments designed to provoke the reaction. This process is called cold welding. For those who still don’t believe it, here is the Wikipedia article on Cold Welding.