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35 Creative Designs That Turn Ordinary Eggs into Eggs-traordinary Art

Water on Mars!

Did you hear? New findings from our Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provide the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars.

Using an imaging spectrometer on MRO, we found hydrated minerals on slopes where mysterious streaks are seen on Mars. One thing that researchers noticed was that the darkish streaks appear to ebb and flow over time. During warm seasons, they darken and then fade in cooler seasons.

When discovered in 2010, these downhill flows known as recurring slope lineae (RSL) were thought to be related to liquid water. With the recent spectral detection of molecular water, we’re able to say it’s likely a shallow subsurface flow explains the darkening.

Mars is so cold, how could liquid water flow there? Great question! Since this liquid water is briny, the freezing point would be lower than that of pure water. Also, these saline slopes appear on Mars when temperatures are above minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 Celsius).

The dark, narrow streaks flowing downhill in the below image are roughly the length of a football field.

So there’s water, but how much? Currently we think this area has a very small amount of water, probably just enough to wet the top layer of the surface of Mars. The streaks are around four to five meters wide and 200 to 300 meters long.

Could humans drink this water? The salts in the water appear to be perchlorates, so you probably wouldn’t want to drink the water. It would most likely be very salty and would need to be purified before human consumption.

Perchlorate…What is that? A perchlorate is a salt that absorbs water from the air. Learn more about how it’s helping us unlock the mysteries of Mars in this video:

What’s next? We want to look for more locations where brine flows may occur. We have only covered 3% of Mars at resolutions high enough to see these features.

For more information on the Mars announcement, visit our Journey to Mars landing page. There is also a full recap of the press conference HERE, and a short recap below.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Watch: If you miss tonight’s supermoon lunar eclipse you won’t get another glimpse for a long time.

how people in Medicine flirt 

Go big or go home

“look again at that dot. that’s here. that’s home. that’s us. on it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. 

“the earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.  

“our posturings, our imagined self importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. in our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. 

“the earth is the only world known so far to harbour life. there is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. visit, yes. settle, not yet. like it or not, for the moment the earth is where we make our stand. 

“there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. to me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” 

- carl sagan

photos taken from cassini in 2013 when 1.5 billion km from earth; voyageur 1 in 1990 when 6 billion km; mars rover curisoity in 2014 when 160 million km; and the lunar reconnaissance orbiter in 2014, when the moon was 403,473 km away from earth, or near apogee.

5 Extraordinary & Mind Blowing Sea Creatures

This video was produced by the Youtube channel Top5s

The animals featured in this video are the frilled shark, the mantis shrimp, the giant isopod, the mimic octopus, and finally a mysterious long legged squid.

I decided to share this video on this blog because Top5s did a wonderful job of introducing these incredible, odd, and sometimes unsettling animals without using drama or fear to as a way to gain views or anything else. I really appreciate the straight forward method he takes when discussing things like this. He gets the information out and still keeps the viewer interested without fear mongering.

If/when he posts more ocean related videos I’ll be sure to share them, for now if you are interested to see any of his other videos (he covers a variety of subjects. Many of them odd, strange, and/or disturbing: you’ve been warned) here’s a link to his channel Top5s:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX51Dixddr5HuwLVBH9ykeQ

This is one slice of an incredible high resolution, enhanced color image of Pluto, recently released by NASA. You can see the full, larger version here. 

Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI