Discover Your Earth with Genographic Project!

The Genographic Project is seeking to chart new knowledge about the migratory history of the human species by using sophisticated laboratory and computer Center. The Genographic Project was launched in 2005 to address anthropological questions on a global scale using genetics as a tool. Two months ago my father told me that he had just sent a cheek swab sample to the National Geographic Genographic Project,

The First Successful American Satellite on 31th January in 1958!

Launched less than two months after Vanguard 1A, the first American attempt to compete with Sputnik, blows up on the launchpad, Explorer 1 (officially called Satellite 1958 Alpha) achieves an orbit extending an astonishing 1,560 miles (2,500 kilometers) above the Earth. This leads to the first great scientific discovery of the space age, when instruments designed by Iowa physicist James Van Allen find the radiation belts now named in his honor. The 31-pound (14-kilogram) satellite transmits until May 23, when its batteries die, but it remains aloft for more than 12 years.

From: National Geographic

The First Animal in Orbit on 3rd November in 1957!

Having stunned the world with the first orbital space launch, Sputnik 1, less than a month before, the Soviet Union tries for a second coup by launching a dog named Laika on a one-way journey on a hastily completed follow-up mission, Sputnik 2. The dog survives the launch, but Soviet secrecy masks her ultimate fate for many years. It now appears that even though she had a week's supply of food, Laika died within hours, possibly due to a life-support failure that caused her canister to overheat.

From: National Geographic

First Artificial Satellite 4th October in 1957!

The Soviet Union ushers in a new era the space age with the launch of Sputnik 1. A technological feat, the beach ball size satellite weighs 184 pounds (84 kilograms) and takes 98 minutes to orbit Earth. The launch grabs the world's attention and catches the U.S. off-guard. The first successful American satellite doesn't get off the ground until January 31, 1958.

Free-Floating Planets May Be More Common Than Stars!

Astronomers, including a NASA-funded team member, have discovered a new class of Jupiter-sized planets floating alone in the dark of space, away from the light of a star. The team believes these lone worlds were probably ejected from developing planetary systems.

The discovery is based on a joint Japan-New Zealand survey that scanned the center of the Milky Way galaxy during 2006 and 2007, revealing evidence for up to 10 free-floating planets roughly the mass of Jupiter. The isolated orbs, also known as orphan planets, are difficult to spot, and had gone undetected until now. The newfound planets are located at an average approximate distance of 10,000 to 20,000 light-years from Earth.

"Although free-floating planets have been predicted, they finally have been detected, holding major implications for planetary formation and evolution models," said Mario Perez, exoplanet program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The discovery indicates there are many more free-floating Jupiter-mass planets that can't be seen. The team estimates there are about twice as many of them as stars. In addition, these worlds are thought to be at least as common as planets that orbit stars. This would add up to hundreds of billions of lone planets in our Milky Way galaxy alone.

From: NASA

Hubble Views the Star That Changed the Universe!

Though the universe is filled with billions upon billions of stars, the discovery of a single variable star in 1923 altered the course of modern astronomy. And, at least one famous astronomer of the time lamented that the discovery had shattered his world view.

The star goes by the inauspicious name of Hubble variable number one, or V1, and resides in the outer regions of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, or M31. But in the early 1900s, most astronomers considered the Milky Way a single "island universe" of stars, with nothing observable beyond its boundaries. Andromeda was cataloged as just one of many faint, fuzzy patches of light astronomers called "spiral nebulae."

Were these spiral nebulae part of the Milky Way or were they independent island universes lying outside our galaxy? Astronomers didn't know for sure, until Edwin Hubble found a star in Andromeda that brightened and faded in a predictable pattern, like a lighthouse beacon, and identified it as V1, a Cepheid variable. This special type of star had already been proven to be a reliable distance marker within our galaxy.

From: NASA

Carina Nebula On Solar System!

This Chandra image shows the Carina Nebula, a star-forming region in the Sagittarius-Carina arm of the Milky Way a mere 7,500 light years from Earth. Chandra's sharp X-ray vision has detected over 14,000 stars in this region, revealed a diffuse X-ray glow, and provided strong evidence that massive stars have already self-destructed in this nearby supernova factory.

The lower energy X-rays in this image are red, the medium energy X-rays are green, and the highest energy X-rays are blue. The Chandra survey has a large field of 1.4 square degrees, made of a mosaic of 22 individual Chandra pointings. In total, this image represents 1.2 million seconds -- or nearly two weeks -- of Chandra observing time. A great deal of multi-wavelength data has been used in combination with this new Chandra campaign, including infrared observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope (VLT).

Several pieces of evidence support the idea that supernova production has already begun in this star-forming region. Firstly, there is an observed deficit of bright X-ray sources in Trumpler 15, suggesting that some of the massive stars in this cluster were already destroyed in supernova explosions. Trumpler 15 is located in the northern part of the image, as shown in a labeled version, and is one of ten star clusters in the Carina complex. Several other well known clusters are shown in the labeled image.

From: NASA

Our Solar System!

There are now officially only eight planets in our solar system (in 2006 the International Astronomical Union changed the definition of 'planet' so that Pluto no longer qualifies).
The Solar System consists of the Sun and the other celestial objects gravitationally bound to it: eight planets, their 165 known moons, three dwarf planets (including Pluto) and their four known moons, and billions of small bodies (which includes asteroids, comets, meteoroids).

Our solar neighborhood is an exciting place. The Solar System is full of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, minor planets, and many other exciting objects. Learn about Io, the explosive moon that orbits the planet Jupiter, or explore the gigantic canyons and deserts on Mars.

All eight planets can be seen with a small telescope; or binoculars. And large observatories continue to provide much useful information. But the possibility of getting up close with interplanetary spacecraft has revolutionized planetary science. Very little of this site would have been possible without the space program.

Nevertheless, there's a lot that you can see with very modest equipment or even with just your own eyes. Past generations of people found beauty and a sense of wonder contemplating the night sky. Today's scientific knowledge further enhances and deepens that experience. And you can share in it by simply going out in the evening and looking up.

The Solar System is made up of all the planets that orbit our Sun. In addition to planets, the Solar System also consists of moons, comets, asteroids, minor planets, and dust and gas.

Space Shuttle Discovery Cleared for Final Landing!

Discovery is scheduled to land at Florida's Kennedy Space Center Wednesday at 11:57 a.m. EST (1657 GMT), bringing an end to its 13-day STS-133 mission — and to the workhorse orbiter's days in space. Discovery will end its space flying career with tomorrow's landing. If all goes as planned, the shuttle program as a whole will be retired later this year.
Discovery is NASA's oldest flying space shuttle and the most traveled winged spaceship in the fleet. It has flown more missions, and carried more astronaut crew members, than any of NASA's other shuttles, agency officials have said.
A crew of six veteran astronauts and one rookie robot blasted off from Earth aboard the space shuttle Discovery as it took off on its final mission. Record crowds were on hand at Cape Canaveral, Fla., to witness Discovery's final flight, which lowered the curtain on the space shuttle era.
"Discovery is cleared for entry," shuttle entry flight director Tony Ceccacci told reporters today. "The crew is getting themselves and Discovery ready for landing tomorrow."

NASA To Honor Buzz Aldrin With Exploration Award!

West Point graduate. Fighter pilot. Spacewalker. Apollo 11 astronaut. Man on the moon. Such is the storied career of Buzz Aldrin.

For all his contributions to America's space program, Aldrin will receive NASA's Ambassador of Exploration Award on Saturday, March 25, at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

Apollo 11 Moon program was the greatest combined exploration & technology event in the history of the world!

If we could understand what fundamentally drove Apollo, we might glimpse our future in space. And yet, as we discovered again last July during celebrations of the Moon landing’s 40th anniversary, we still can’t agree on why Apollo moonwalking ended in 1972. For example, Right Stuff author Tom Wolfe believes “the answer is obvious. NASA had neglected to recruit a corps of philosophers,” such as Saturn V developer Wernher von Braun, to explain the real meaning of Apollo to the public. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Heavens and the Earth (1985), Walter McDougall explains that

"the bold lunar goal … encouraged Congress and the nation to believe that Apollo was the space program … Once the space race was over and won, Americans could turn back to their selfish pursuits"

Formerly with CNN, Miles O’Brien dismisses the most obvious manned space challenge — cost.

"If you don’t want to mention the cost of the wars, if you would rather not get into Wall Street or Detroit bailouts, or if you don’t want to tell them the money we spend on the space program is about the same as our annual expenditure on coffee — why not mention India?…Calcutta can afford it — and Cleveland can’t?"

This is an important clue. Apollo cost about $ 150 B (in 2007 USD). Imagine the Apollo-level manned space programs we could have funded with only a fraction of Obama’s initial $ 800+ B stimulus package. But although the money magically appeared, Americans did not spontaneously demand Moonbases or manned Mars missions. So the availability of money, by itself, does not fundamentally drive big space programs.

Wolfe alludes to powerful. but short-lived forces permeating Apollo: “

"Everybody, including Congress, was caught up in the adrenal rush of it all"

This included the quintessential media figure of the time, Walter Cronkite, who predicted that after Apollo 11, “everything else that has happened in our time is going to be an asterisk.”

And O’Brien concludes that.

"Truth is, we have done nothing to equal (much less top) the accomplishments of Apollo. And even worse, we haven’t tried. We did someting truly great, but then walked away from it"

This emotional component — and its rapid demise in the late 1960s — explains why money is not enough. The people also have to feel good.

This is reminiscent of a Keynesian concept called “animal spirits,” used to explain why investors become either irrationally exhuberant or unnecessarily discouraged by business conditions during a boom or a bust. However, public support for Apollo was not primarily driven by the promise of profits from space, nor in the end, even by beating the Soviets to the Moon.

Instead the unprecedented, widespread affluence from the Kennedy boom momentarily catapulted many average citizens to elevated levels of Maslow’s hierarchy where their expanded worldviews made the Apollo program seem not only intriguing, but almost irresistible — as reflected in 1960s opinion polls.

Indeed, the strong connection between manned planetary exploration and Maslow-related values was emphasized in 1961 by the National Academy of Science’s Space Science Board, chaired by Lloyd Berkner, in their influential report to President Kennedy.

"Man’s exploration of the Moon and planets (is) potentially the greatest inspirational venture of this century and one in which the whole world can share; inherent here are great and fundamental philosophical and spiritual values which find a response in man’s questing spirit and his intellectual self-realization"

But the Maslow effect was short-lived. As early as 1966, growing distress over Vietnam and budget issues began to erode affluence-induced “ebullience,” and this 1960s Apollo “Maslow Window” rapidly closed, as evidenced by Nixon’s cancellation of the last three Apollo Moon missions.

As recently as Memorial Day weekend in Chicago at the International Space Development Conference 2010, distinguished physicist and space scientist Freeman Dyson lamented that “we have been stuck in LEO for 40 years.” In the context of Apollo, this is consistent with the absence — since the 1960s — of a post-World War II-style long boom culminating in widespread, Camelot-style ebullience.

We almost got one started in 2007 when Fortune magazine (7/12/07) celebrated the “greatest economic boom ever.” But it was interrupted by the financial Panic of 2008 and our subsequent great recession. Will 2007′s great boom be revived? And how soon?

Intriguing parallels with Apollo go back at least 200 years to Lewis and Clark, but the last century is particularly revealing. For example, the financial Panic of 1893 and the great 1890s recession may have more parallels with our current circumstances than the Apollo-related decades from 1950-70. The 1890s featured a double-dip recession and unemployment above 10%, as well as a political realignment that led to a stunning 1960s-style economic boom after 1899. The resulting early 20th century Maslow Window featured extraordinary ebullience, including “Panama fever” as the new canal split the continent and transformed America into a global power, “pole mania” as heroic international teams risked death to be the first to the poles, the civilization-altering Wright brothers’ first flights, and perhaps the most ebullient U.S. president ever: Theodore Roosevelt.

Apollo 11 Mission: The First Human Neil Amastron On Moon!

On May 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 launch vehicle and spacecraft had been crawled from the Vehicle Assembly Building and trundled at 0.9 mph to Pad 39-A. A successful countdown test ending on July 3 showed the readiness of machines, systems, and people. The next launch window (established by lighting conditions at the landing site on Mare Tranquillitatis) opened at 9:32 AM EDT on July 16, 1969.

The crew for Apollo 11, all of whom had already flown in space during Gemini, had been intensively training as a team for many months. Commander Neil A. Armstrong, 38, was a civilian who had flown previously on Gemini 8; Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, 38, was a USAF Lt. Colonel who'd flown Gemini 10; Lunar Module Pilot Edwin E. (Buzz) Aldrin, Jr., 39, was a USAF Colonel who'd flown Gemini 12.

The launch went off without a hitch. The first human journey to the surface of the Moon began at Pad A, Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center, Florida with the liftoff of Apollo 11 on a Saturn V booster at 9:32 a.m. EDT (13:32 UT) on a clear sunny Wednesday, 16 July 1969.

The Apollo spacecraft reached Earth parking orbit after 11 minutes. After one and a half orbits the Saturn thrusters fired and the astronauts began their journey to the Moon. On July 20, 1969, after a four day trip, the Apollo astronauts arrived at the Moon and the spacecraft was inserted into lunar orbit.

After a rest period, Armstrong and Aldrin entered the Lunar Module preparing for descent to the lunar surface. The two spacecraft were undocked at about 100 hours, when the Command and Service Modules separated from the Lunar Module. "You cats take it easy on the lunar surface", Michaels Collins said as he released the LM.

Collins did a visual inspection of the lunar module and said, "I think you've got a fine looking machine there, Eagle, despite the fact that you're upside-down."

"Somebody's upside-down", Neil Armstrong joked back.

Lunar Module Pilot, Buzz Aldrin carefully navigated his way to the Lunar surface. He had to fly longer than planned, in order to avoid a field of boulders, and touched down with less than 40 seconds of fuel remaining at 4:18 p.m. EDT on July 20.

Mission commander, Neil Armstrong spoke those famous words, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Charles Duke, the Capcom (capsule communicator) back in Houston, replied, "Roger, Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again."

It took 6 hours to prepare to exit the Lunar Module. At 10:56 p.m. EDT on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the Moon, marking the occasion with these words, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Unfortunately, a minor break in communications caused the entire world to hear and remember the statement as "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The Apollo lunar surface camera, mounted on one of the LM legs, broadcast this event to the world.

Aldrin joined Armstrong on the surface about nineteen minutes later, calling it "Magnificent desolation". As he left the LM, Aldrin said, "Now I want to back up and partially close the hatch - making sure not to lock it on my way out." "A particularly good thought." laughed Armstrong.

Asked later on why they bothered closing the hatch, Armstrong said it was to avoid having someone ask "Were you born in a barn?"

The History Of Moon Exploration!

The Earth’s Moon has had a profound effect on the entire history and development of human civilization. Many cultures used the cycle of the Moon’s phases to measure time. The Moon has been venerated in various forms throughout history. The Greeks worshiped the Moon goddess Artemis. The Romans called her Diana. The Celts called her Arianrod. The Egyptians considered Isis a goddess of the Moon. Indeed, in virtually every culture, the deity associated with the Moon has always been female, possibly because of associations of the lunar phase cycle with the female menstrual cycle.

Galileo first discovered, through his telescope, that the Moon was a world, with mountains and dark areas that he called “Mare” or “Seas” which we now know are relatively flat areas that are nevertheless drier than the most arid Earthly desert. Nineteenth century astronomers thought that the Moon might be an abode of life, much like the Earth.

Journeys to the Moon have been the subject of literature for centuries. Cyrano de Bergerac wrote of traveling to the Moon, buoyed up by jars of dew. In the 19th Century, Jules Verne wrote of Civil War era astronauts flying to the Moon in a ship fired by a massive cannon. H. G. Wells has his explorers travel to the Moon in a ship built of an impossible gravity shielding material he called Cavorite.

With the advent of motion pictures, voyages to the Moon became the subject of film as well. The very first was the French film, Le Voyage dans la Lune. Others included the German film, Frau im Mond, and the George Pal classic, Destination Moon.

Rocket pioneer Robert Goddard made one of the first serious suggestions for sending rockets to the Moon. He was attacked by the New York Times for this idea in 1920. The Times loftily explained that space travel was impossible, since without atmosphere to push against, a rocket could not move so much as an inch. Professor Goddard, it was clear, lacked "the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." Nearly fifty years later, the Times published a retraction and an apology soon after men actually did travel to the Moon.

After the end of the Second World War, as rocket technology advanced and the Cold War began to rage, the United States and the Soviet Union turned their attentions heavenward. It was only natural that space would become a venue for super power competition and that the Moon would be a destination. Fleets of probes, Soviet Lunas and Zonds and American Rangers, Lunar Orbiters, Surveyors, and Apollos, were sent to the Moon between 1959 and 1976 during the first great age of lunar exploration.

The History of the Moon!

The Moon may seem like a lifeless and unchanging place, but it actually has a fascinating history. The driving factor behind the lunar history is the fact that because the moon is small, it cooled quickly and formed a thick, rigid crust.

The Moon solidified about 4.1 to 4.6 billion years ago. Though there is little iron in the lunar composition, what there was sunk to the core and solidified. The lower density material floated to the top and formed the crust.

The next stage in the moon's history involved extensive cratering. Cratering in the highlands shows that impacts were at a peak during the moon's first 0.5 billion years. At this time, there was a great deal of debris floating around in the solar system that was left over from planet formation.

Giant crater basins were formed by the largest impacts, some of the craters being hundreds of kilometers in diameter. The Imbrium basin was formed by an impact from a body the size of the state of Delaware. The impact threw ejecta 1400 km away from the site. This site is about 4 billion years old.

The third stage in lunar history is lava floods. By this time, the anorthosite crust had been cracked many times from impacts. The subsurface material had been heated, probably by radioactive decay in the rocks. Lava then flowed up through the cracks and flooded the basins with successive lava flows. Flooding ceased about 3.2 billion years ago.

The History of Earth!

In the very beginning of earth's history, this planet was a giant, red hot, roiling, boiling sea of molten rock - a magma ocean. The heat had been generated by the repeated high speed collisions of much smaller bodies of space rocks that continually clumped together as they collided to form this planet. As the collisions tapered off the earth began to cool, forming a thin crust on its surface. As the cooling continued, water vapor began to escape and condense in the earth's early atmosphere. Clouds formed and storms raged, raining more and more water down on the primitive earth, cooling the surface further until it was flooded with water, forming the seas.

It is theorized that the true age of the earth is about 4.6 billion years old, formed at about the same time as the rest of our solar system. The oldest rocks geologists have been able to find are 3.9 billion years old. Using radiometric dating methods to determine the age of rocks means scientists have to rely on when the rock was initially formed (as in - when its internal minerals first cooled). In the infancy of our home planet the entire earth was molten (melted) rock - a magma ocean.

Since we can only measure as far back in time as we had solid rock on this planet, we are limited in how we can measure the real age of the earth. Due to the forces of plate tectonics, our planet is also a very dynamic one; new mountains forming, old ones wearing down, volcanoes melting and reshaping new crust. The continual changing and reshaping of the earth's surface that involves the melting down and reconstructing of old rock has pretty much eliminated most of the original rocks that came with earth when it was newly formed. So the age is a theoretical age.

The History of Earth Day!

In the Beginning...
In 1963, former Senator Gaylord Nelson began to worry about our planet. (A senator is a person that the people of the United States have chosen to help make the laws.) Senator Nelson knew that our world was getting dirty and that many of our plants and animals were dying.

He wondered why more people weren't trying to solve these problems. He talked to other lawmakers and to the President. They decided that the President would go around the country and tell people about these concerns. He did, but still not enough people were working on the problem.

The Idea
Then, in 1969, Senator Nelson had another idea. He decided to have a special day to teach everyone about the things that needed changing in our environment. He wrote letters to all of the colleges and put a special article in Scholastic Magazine to tell them about the special day he had planned. (Most of the schools got this magazine and he knew that kids would help him.)

The Holiday
On April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day was held. People all over the country made promises to help the environment. Everyone got involved and since then, Earth Day has spread all over the planet. People all over the world know that there are problems we need to work on and this is our special day to look at the planet and see what needs changing. Isn't it great?

One person had an idea and kept working until everyone began working together to solve it. See what happens when people care about our world?

What Is Earth Day?

Answer: Earth Day is the day designated for fostering appreciation of the earth's environment and awareness of the issues that threaten it. Actually, Earth Day is one of two days, depending on when you choose to observe it. Some people celebrate Earth Day on the first day of Spring, which is the vernal equinox that occurs on or around March 21st. In 1970, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed a bill designating April 22 as a national day to celebrate the earth. Since that time, Earth Day has been officially observed in April. At present, Earth Day is observed in 175 countries, and coordinated by the nonprofit Earth Day Network. The passage of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act are considered to be products associated with the 1970 Earth Day.

Earth Day and Chemistry
Earth Day and chemistry go hand-in-hand, since so many of the issues that threaten the environment have a chemical basis. Chemistry topics you can investigate for Earth Day include:

1. Green Chemistry
2. Chemicals Used to Remediate Oil Spills
3. Water Chemistry and Water Purification Methods
4. Sources of Anthropogenic Carbon
5. How Biofuels Are Made
6. Environmentally Friendly Lab Demonstrations