It was a month ago that Russia put the Bion-M craft filled with 45 mice, 15 newts, snails, gerbils as well as some plants and microflora in orbit at about 575 kilometres above Earth. The capsule has now returned to Earth.

The research was conducted to get insights into how bodies adapt to weightlessness “so that our organisms survive extended flights“. The primary focus was to learn how microgravity affects organisms’ skeletal and nervous systems as well as muscles and hearts. The capsule stored the animals inside five containers that automatically opened in orbit and closed when it was time to return, and it was equipped with some measuring devices and other equipments.

Not all the animals have survived the experiment, apparently due to “the stresses of Space“. The majority of the mice did not survive, but that was expected by the scientists. But equipment failure leading to the death of all the gerbils was not expected.

The Russian media is praising the research as a success and as a mission which has not yet been conducted by any other country. Russia previously sent mice to space back in 2007 for a duration of 12 days.

The mission is part of Russia’s goal of sending manned flights to Mars. Their plan is to start setting up a base on the Moon by 2030 for flights to the Red Planet.

What do you think of this mission? Was it necessary to send so many animals into a very deadly situation or were there better ways to go about it?

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[Image Source]

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In 2009, winter ended at Saturn’s North Pole and began to let sunlight in to brighten up the place. It was then that scientists discovered that there was a massive hurricane in the region. Three years later, in November 2012, NASA’s unmanned Cassini spacecraft moved into position to capture images and video of the storm.

What you see above is a false color image of the hurricane, with the color red corresponding to low clouds and green to high ones. It has cloud speeds of up to 330 miles per hour and its eye is 1,250 miles wide, which is about 20 times the size of an average hurricane on our planet. But they do not know for how many years it’s been active.

Scientists are wondering how such a hurricane exists on Saturn with just small amounts of water vapor. Their study will certainly shed more light on how storms are formed here on Earth.

So, that’s a hurricane the size of Australia. You think that’s big? You clearly haven’t heard about Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, which is a storm two to three times the size of Earth.

What did you think of the videos above? Pretty fascinating stuff, wouldn’t you say?

[Source]

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Astronomers love to look for liquid water on other planets. The reason for that is not the need to find a place to drop by to quench our thirst in between future space travel, but water is one of the essential ingredients of life on our planet. So, if an exoplanet is in the habitable zone (far enough from the host star to be cool enough for liquid water to exist, and not too far that there is only ice), life could exist on it.

Kepler has found two such planets in the new Kepler-62 exosolar system. These planets were not seen directly, but the astronomers came to the conclusion that they existed after noticing the dimming of their host star at regular intervals.

The astronomers are saying that these planets are most probably solid rather than molten and are at a correct distance from the host star to support liquid water.

Among these new planets Kepler 62-e (1.61 Earth radii) is in the “empirical habitable zone”, which means that it should be cooler than Venus. But Kepler 62-f, which is just a bit larger than Earth at 1.41 Earth radii, is inside both the calculated and empirical habitable zones. 62-f is at that distance from the Kepler 62 star, meaning that it could have splashing water at the surface.

But whether or not there is life out there is the question. That most probably won’t be answered any time soon. Do you find the thought about life on other planets exciting?

Source: ArsTechnica

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This one’s not a fake!

Remember those good old school days? Remember the crafts we used to do, including the strategic designing of paper airplanes. The wings had to be just right, and we would try so many different styles to beat our friends. Well, there’s still a little kid in all of us that’s for sure, some more than others, and that’s why the giant paper airplane flew over the Arizona desert this week.   The thing weighs in at 800 pounds, is 45 feet long, and has a wingspan of 24 feet.  It was launched by the Pima Air & Space Museum. The design of the airplane was inspired by 12-year-old Tucson resident Arturo Valdenegro, who won the paper airplane distance contest held at the museum earlier this year. That’s why it was named Arturo’s Desert Eagle. As he was the winner, Valdenegro got a chance to meet the aviation experts who worked for making the big airplane a reality.

The airplane was hoisted into the air by a helicopter and it flew from an altitude of 2,703 feet. It reached a speed of 98 miles per hour before returning to Earth. Check out the video to see the first flight.

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Solar storms, as you know, head towards Earth once in a while to remind us about the Sun’s incredible power. The fast-moving clouds of charged particles reached our planet this week and we are extremely lucky to be on Earth and not on Mars. Studies show that the Earth’s magnetosphere makes sure that the planet is not too affected by solar storms.

It was in 2008 that researchers got a chance to study the effects of the solar storm on two planets (Mars and Earth) at the same time and under the same solar-wind conditions. It was found that the Red Planet lost oxygen atoms in its atmosphere 10 times faster than Earth. This difference is thought to be dependent on the strength of each planet’s magnetic field. As you might know, Mars has a magnetic field that is only one-tenth as strong as Earth’s.

As scientists have long believed that the presence of a magnetic deflector shield is a good defense against charged particles from the Sun, the new results didn’t come as a surprise for the researchers.

But some discoveries made in the past few years related to the Earth’s magnetosphere have also suggested that the field is less-effective against solar storms. Studies have suggested that our planet’s magnetosphere might be transferring more energy from the solar wind to the upper part of the atmosphere when compared to smaller planets with weaker magnetospheres.

But when Mars and Earth lined up on the same side of the sun in 2008, Yong Wei, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, and his team were able to collect data on the loss of oxygen atoms from the atmospheres of both the planets. The oxygen loss at Mars was found to be 10 times higher than at Earth.

More solar storms are expected this week and the researchers are looking forward to take advantage of a present alignment between the Sun, Earth, Mars, and Venus. Venus is important in the study as the planet has a thicker atmosphere and no magnetic field.

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Are you amazed after hearing about the travel distance of an elevator in the Burj Khalifa? Then get ready for this new concept from Tokyo-based construction company Obayashi Corp. The Japanese company has come out with their space elevator concept which involves constructing a space cable, which extends a quarter of the way to the moon from the Earth’s surface.

If you are thinking that this is a crazy new idea, the concept of a space elevator has been around for decades. Inspired by the Eiffel Tower, Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who introduced a concept of a free-standing tower reaching into space way back in 1895. In recent years, the topic has been discussed in many conferences and even NASA is interested in it.

Expected to become a reality in 2050, the Japanese space elevator design features a 96,000 kilometer (59,652 mile) cable made of carbon nanotubes extending into space from a station on the ground. There will be a counterweight at the end of the cable to hold the entire thing in place.

The vehicle carrying the passengers (30 at a time) and cargo will be travelling along the cable with speeds of around 200 km/h. Their destination will be a station with residential facilities and a research center 36,000 kilometers from the surface of the Earth. At the above said speed, the elevator journey might take about a week (no, you won’t be standing all the way). As you can see in the above figure, electricity for the terminal station will be generated via solar panels.

But the company isn’t talking about how much all this might cost (trillions?), or where its location will be (most likely somewhere around the equator as centripetal forces are required for keeping the cable stretched), or about the risks involved (bad weather, or an issue with the counterweight which could result in the cable becoming a waist belt for our planet).

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