1 month ago | 386 notes | Reblog
discoverynews: Sun’s Twin Discovered — the Perfect SETI Target?There are 10 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy that are the same size as our sun. Therefore it should come as no surprise that astronomers have identified a clone to our sun lying only 200 light-years away.Still, it is fascinating to imagine a yellow dwarf that is exactly the same mass, temperature and chemical composition as our nearest star. In a recent paper reporting on observations of the star — called HP 56948 — astronomer Jorge Melendez of the University of San Paulo, Brazil, calls it “the best solar twin known to date.” keep reading
2 months ago | 938 notes | Reblog
discoverynews: Edible Forest Free For All in Seattle Like the edible candy forest in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” a park in Seattle is designed to be eaten. But unlike the junk food forest of Wonka’s factory which only a few children got to taste, Seattle’s edible ecosystem will be all-natural, healthy, and free to the public. Two acres of inedible grass in Seattle’s Beacon Hill area are being replaced with a forest of apples, plums, walnuts, and other food-bearing trees. Beneath the canopy of fruits and nuts, an understory of berry bushes will grow in partial shade. “All of these plants work together like a forest ecosystem, but they are edible,” one of the park’s designers, Glenn Herlihy, told the Seattle Times. Bee hives will help pollinate the plants and provide tasty honey. Other beneficial insects will be attracted by strategically planted flowers in order to combat pests without using poisons. keep reading Awesome!!!
3 months ago | 1,001 notes | Reblog
Rare Element on Earth Discovered in Ancient Starlight Light from three ancient stars at the edge of the Milky Way indicates that the stars contain tellurium, a brittle, superconducting element that is rare on Earth. The cosmic discovery, which also spotted traces of other heavy elements, supports the theory that these elements were synthesized in the rapidly collapsing cores of rare supernovas (stellar explosions). [Read the full article here] “If you look at the periodic table, tellurium is right in the middle of these elements that are hard for us to measure,” Johnson said in a statement. “If we need to understand how [the r-process] works in the universe, we really have to measure this part of the periodic table. It’s really cool that they got this element in this sea of unknown-ness.”  Frebel and her colleagues are attempting to fill in other spots in the periodic table, too, by looking for signs of other heavy elements in starlight. “There are still quite a few holes,” she said. “Every now and then, we can add an element, and it adds another data point that makes our work easier.”
4 months ago | 4,592 notes | Reblog
smithsonianmag: The Highest Resolution Image of Earth Ever This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012. Photo courtesy of NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring Ed note: Perfect for your desktop background. Click the photo for the 8000x8000 image h/t Gizmodo
5 months ago | 671 notes | Reblog
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