What Are The Universe’s Most Powerful Particle Accelerators?

Herbs you can grow indoors.

Made this list for my fellow witchies who like their kitchen to be full of the green stuff :

Basil : like lots of sun and warmth. More difficult to grow in the winter months

Bay : needs plenty of sun and fresh air.

Chives : needs at least 6 hours of sun and plenty of water.

Dill : prefers slightly acidic soil, needs plenty of sunlight, doesn’t need too much water.

Lemongrass : My personal favorite as you don’t plant it in soil. Grow in a couple of inches of water. Easiest to grow.

Mint : needs plenty of water and needs to be placed in an area with indirect light. Harvest frequently.

Oregano : does not deal well with cold and drastic temperature changes could kill it.

Parsley : Doesn’t require too much light or maintenance, but is a slow grower.

Rosemary : needs 6 - 8 hours of strong, direct sunlight. Only water when the top layer of soil feels dry. Needs good ventilation. A bit trickier to grow.

Sage : Needs plenty of sun. 

Thyme : Needs 6 - 8 hours of sunlight a day and maybe even supplemental light.

How does a microgravity garden grow when there’s no up or down? An advanced chamber, about the size of a mini-fridge, is giving us a clearer perspective of plant growth habits. Without gravity and the addition of a wide variety of light and humidity settings, the plants cultivated on the International Space Station provide a world of opportunity to study space-based agricultural cycles.

Learn more about our space garden HERE.

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Yum!

MIDNIGHT SMOOTHIE BOWL 1 tsp blue spirulina 1 cup frozen blueberries 1 frozen banana ½ cup almond milk

TOP WITH: Chia seeds Raw coconut Blueberries Blackberries

(by alex.svd)

What would happen if I go into a black hole? Do you think I would disappear forever or would I still exist inside the black hole?

Solar System: 10 Things to Know This Week

The Living Planet Edition

Whether it’s crops, forests or phytoplankton blooms in the ocean, our scientists are tracking life on Earth. Just as satellites help researchers study the atmosphere, rainfall and other physical characteristics of the planet, the ever-improving view from above allows them to study Earth’s interconnected life.

1. Life on Earth, From Space

While we (NASA) began monitoring life on land in the 1970s with the Landsat satellites, this fall marks 20 years since we’ve continuously observed all the plant life at the surface of both the land and ocean. The above animation captures the entirety of two decades of observations.

2. Watching the World Breathe

With the right tools, we can see Earth breathe. With early weather satellite data in the 1970s and ‘80s, NASA Goddard scientist Compton Tucker was able to see plants’ greening and die-back from space. He developed a way of comparing satellite data in two wavelengths.

When healthy plants are stocked with chlorophyll and ready to photosynthesize to make food (and absorb carbon dioxide), leaves absorb red light but reflect infrared light back into space. By comparing the ratio of red to infrared light, Tucker and his colleagues could quantify vegetation covering the land.

Expanding the study to the rest of the globe, the scientists could track rainy and dry seasons in Africa, see the springtime blooms in North America, and wildfires scorching forests worldwide.

3. Like Breathing? Thank Earth’s Ocean

But land is only part of the story. The ocean is home to 95 percent of Earth’s living space, covering 70 percent of the planet and stretching miles deep. At the base of the ocean’s food web is phytoplankton - tiny plants that also undergo photosynthesis to turn nutrients and carbon dioxide into sugar and oxygen. Phytoplankton not only feed the rest of ocean life, they absorb carbon dioxide - and produce about half the oxygen we breathe.

In the Arctic Ocean, an explosion of phytoplankton indicates change. As seasonal sea ice melts, warming waters and more sunlight will trigger a sudden, massive phytoplankton bloom that feeds birds, sea lions and newly-hatched fish. But with warming atmospheric temperatures, that bloom is now happening several weeks earlier - before the animals are in place to take advantage of it.

4. Keeping an Eye on Crops

The “greenness” measurement that scientists use to measure forests and grasslands can also be used to monitor the health of agricultural fields. By the 1980s, food security analysts were approaching NASA to see how satellite images could help with the Famine Early Warning System to identify regions at risk - a partnership that continues today.

With rainfall estimates, vegetation measurements, as well as the recent addition of soil moisture information, our scientists can help organizations like USAID direct emergency help.

The view from space can also help improve agricultural practices. A winery in California, for example, uses individual pixels of Landsat data to determine when to irrigate and how much water to use.

5. Coming Soon to the International Space Station

A laser-based instrument being developed for the International Space Station will provide a unique 3-D view of Earth’s forests. The instrument, called GEDI, will be the first to systematically probe the depths of the forests from space.

Another ISS instrument in development, ECOSTRESS, will study how effectively plants use water. That knowledge provided on a global scale from space will tell us “which plants are going to live or die in a future world of greater droughts,” said Josh Fisher, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and science lead for ECOSTRESS.

6. Seeing Life, From the Microscopic to Multicellular

Scientists have used our vantage from space to study changes in animal habitats, track disease outbreaks, monitor forests and even help discover a new species. Bacteria, plants, land animals, sea creatures and birds reveal a changing world.

Our Black Marble image provides a unique view of human activity. Looking at trends in our lights at night, scientists can study how cities develop over time, how lighting and activity changes during certain seasons and holidays, and even aid emergency responders during power outages caused by natural disasters.

7. Earth as Analog and Proving Ground

Just as our Mars rovers were tested in Earth’s deserts, the search for life on ocean moons in our solar system is being refined by experiments here. JPL research scientist Morgan Cable looks for life on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. She cites satellite observations of Arctic and Antarctic ice fields that are informing the planning for a future mission to Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter.

The Earth observations help researchers find ways to date the origin of jumbled, chaotic ice. “When we visit Europa, we want to go to very young places, where material from that ocean is being expressed on the surface,” she explained. “Anywhere like that, the chances of finding biomarkers goes up - if they’re there.”

8. Only One Living Planet

Today, we know of only one living planet: our own. The knowledge and tools NASA developed to study life here are among our greatest assets as we begin the search for life beyond Earth.

There are two main questions: With so many places to look, how can we home in on the places most likely to harbor life? What are the unmistakable signs of life - even if it comes in a form we don’t fully understand? In this early phase of the search, “We have to go with the only kind of life we know,” said Tony del Genio, co-lead of a new NASA interdisciplinary initiative to search for life on other worlds.

So, the focus is on liquid water. Even bacteria around deep-sea vents that don’t need sunlight to live need water. That one necessity rules out many planets that are too close or too far from their stars for water to exist, or too far from us to tell. Our Galileo and Cassini missions revealed that some moons of Jupiter and Saturn are not the dead rocks astronomers had assumed, but appear to have some conditions needed for life beneath icy surfaces.

9. Looking for Life Beyond Our Solar System

In the exoplanet (planets outside our solar system that orbit another star) world, it’s possible to calculate the range of distances for any star where orbiting planets could have liquid water. This is called the star’s habitable zone. Astronomers have already located some habitable-zone planets, and research scientist Andrew Rushby of NASA Ames Research Center is researching ways to refine the search. “An alien would spot three planets in our solar system in the habitable zone [Earth, Mars and Venus],” Rushby said, “but we know that 67 percent of those planets are not inhabited.”

He recently developed a model of Earth’s carbon cycle and combined it with other tools to study which planets in habitable zones would be the best targets to look for life, considering probable tectonic activity and water cycles. He found that larger planets are more likely than smaller ones to have surface temperatures conducive to liquid water. Other exoplanet researchers are looking for rocky worlds, and biosignatures, the chemical signs of life.

10. You Can Learn a Lot from a Dot

When humans start collecting direct images of exoplanets, even the closest ones will appear as only a handful of pixels in the detector - something like the famous “blue dot” image of Earth from Saturn. What can we learn about life on these planets from a single dot?

Stephen Kane of the University of California, Riverside, has come up with a way to answer that question by using our EPIC camera on NOAA’s DSCOVR satellite. “I’m taking these glorious pictures and collapsing them down to a single pixel or handful of pixels,” Kane explained. He runs the light through a noise filter that attempts to simulate the interference expected from an exoplanet mission. By observing how the brightness of Earth changes when mostly land is in view compared with mostly water, Kane reverse-engineers Earth’s rotation rate - something that has yet to be measured directly for exoplanets.

The most universal, most profound question about any unknown world is whether it harbors life. The quest to find life beyond Earth is just beginning, but it will be informed by the study of our own living planet.

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

Ooohh, cuteness!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BacKJmUFxUn/

Magical pies ✨ by karinprieffboschek

Love foxes!

I was thinking about the difference between how Spock has been treated all his life ( TOS Spock) by others including his mother and then there’s Jim.

In the following scene, Amanda tries to elicit emotions out of Spock.

The thing is, Spock doesn’t need to be reminded that he has a human part. Every single moment of his childhood he struggles with it. By this age, in this scene above, he has displayed incredible personal courage to handle it. He has dived deep to realize who is he is. Neither human nor Vulcan but choosing to be more Vulcan because he is drawn to those values. 

She then goes on to remind him why he was in anguish.  

Yes, the other boys tormented him. The point is he understands that. He is a  grown man now. He is extremely intelligent and is respected throughout the quadrant. She though shows no respect for him. She tries to revert him back to the helpless and struggling five year old he was. Because that for her is when she can connect with him. Even as a five year old he had stopped opening up to her. Because - while the other boys tormented him, they were still strangers. It was still possible to process non-acceptance from others. But own mother?

The she does this.

So, after the “other boys” had tormented him. what does she think she has done just now? Has been doing? 

Contrast that with following scene.

Notice Jim, having known Spock for a long time, still doesn’t assume anything. He asks. He asks if Spock feels insulted. They both know the previous scene was insulting. This is the critical difference. He shows respect for Spock. Gives Spock an opportunity to express his emotions as Spock wants to - not how he is supposed to. Something Amanda never does. Or Sarek. Spock responds in his own unique way. He doesn’t say “No, Jim, I am fine”. He conveys how he does feel insulted but he is also wise enough to realize how emotions work. That simply acknowleding emtoions is child’s play. To be wiser beyond that, one has to understand that emotions come and go. And that it’s in our control. We can choose to let go of an emotion and no longer feel insulted. This is what Spock has been striving for. This is something he tried to tell Amanda when he says “how can you live on Vulcan and not understand Vulcan”. 

So, Jim, who is NOT Vulcan, nor tries to be, and is a very emotional man, how does he respond to this moment?

Good. Why, good? Because Jim is saying, “I am glad you’re in touch with your values. It’s good because I want you to be exactly who you are.”

Jim doesn’t lecture Spock about his human side nor does he insult Spock by mocking his Vulcan ethics, which are in constrast to all the humans onboard the ship. He accepst Spock and supports Spock for what Spock has chosen to be. And he does what Spock’s parents or family never did. 

“We’ll tackle him together.” He says “WE”. The unspoken message is  - You and me, we are equal, I “see” you. I feel seen by you. (You have put up with my kind of insanity). I respect you. I respect your struggles and admire what you have become and continue to become. With you by my side, I feel stronger. You don’t have to rescue me. I don’t have to rescue you. We can tackle this TOGETHER.”

And this is why Jim and Spock are what they are to each other.