Grimes — So Heavy I Fell Through The Earth

2019 April 28

All of Mercury Image Credit: NASA/JHU Applied Physics Lab/Carnegie Inst. Washington

Explanation: Only six years ago, the entire surface of planet Mercury was finally mapped. Detailed observations of the innermost planet’s surprising crust began when the robotic have been ongoing since the robotic MESSENGER spacecraft first passed Mercury in 2008 and continued until its controlled crash landing in 2015. Previously, much of the Mercury’s surface was unknown as it is too far for Earth-bound telescopes to see clearly, while the Mariner 10 flybys in the 1970s observed only about half. The featured video is a compilation of thousands of images of Mercury rendered in exaggerated colors to better contrast different surface features. Visible on the rotating world are rays emanating from a northern impact that stretch across much of the planet, while about half-way through the video the light colored Caloris Basin rotates into view, a northern ancient impact feature that filled with lava. Recent analysis of MESSENGER data indicates that Mercury has a solid inner core.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190428.html

How much is known about Neptune's atmosphere, more precisely about "raining diamonds"?

The atmosphere of Neptune is, in many ways, similar to that of Uranus. However, its dynamics are presented in a complex configuration of strong winds that sweep the planet, besides the formation of cyclonic storms and clouds, with clearly visible visual characteristics. 

The upper atmosphere of Neptune is made up of 79% hydrogen, about 18% helium and most of the remaining methane, the presence of which imparts the blue-indigo color of the planet by absorbing the incident red radiation.

The diamond rain on Neptune and Uranus was predicted long ago, because of the pressure inside the planet that could be formed by carbon and hydrogen. But now it was virtually confirmed by an experiment conducted by an international team of scientists, this “diamond rain” was recreated under laboratory conditions for the first time, giving us the first glimpse into what things could be like inside ice giants.

At about 10,000 km below the surface of these planets, hydrocarbon compression is thought to create diamonds. To recreate these conditions, the international team submitted a polystyrene plastic sample to two shock waves using an intense optical laser in the Matter in Extreme Conditions (MEC) instrument, which were then paired with X-ray pulses from Linac Coherent Light Source SLAC (LCLS).

Polystyrene is made from a mixture of hydrogen and carbon, key components of the general chemical composition of the ice giants. In the experiment, the team was able to see that almost all of the carbon atoms in polystyrene were embedded in small diamond structures up to a few nanometers wide.

However, in Uranus and Neptune, scientists predict that diamonds would become much larger, perhaps millions of carats by weight.

2°image: (This false color photograph of Neptune was made from Voyager 2 images taken through three filters: blue, green, and a filter that passes light at a wavelength that is absorbed by methane gas. Thus, regions that appear white or bright red are those that reflect sunlight before it passes through a large quantity of methane). 1°image, 3°image & 4°image.

Here are two links if you want to read about it: Click here and here.

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50 Falcon 9 launches

source : Space X

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station captured this photograph of part of Lake Van in Turkey, the largest soda or alkaline lake on Earth. [ 4928 x 3280 ]

Starburst Galaxy M94 from Hubble