Wednesday 15 September 2010

Time Travel


This was a genuine advert in an american paper.

Antlers


So researching into Antlers got me a bit obsessed so i spent an obscene amount of money on my own pair because they are rad and look amazing. So here is a few pictures of them in my house.

They have 10 points and have a very wide girth. This means that this Red Deer must have been pretty old because they only get this big when there older.

Tuesday 14 September 2010

Jupiter

Jupiter is made up of belts of different types of clouds, mainly brown and white.
Two wide stripes—known as the equatorial belts—normally circle the huge planet, products of the fast-moving jet streams that roar through Jupiter's atmosphere.
But in May this year the southern equatorial belt dissaperead leaving what is usually a dark redish brown belt to now a pale white belt. This also makes the Giant Red Spot appear duller.

This doesnt concern most astronamers becuase a similiar event happend in 1990. But the southern equatorial belt didnt completly dissapeared, only became smaller.

The southern equatorial belt is expected to make its return with in 1 to 3 years returning Jupiter back to its 'normal' self

Monday 13 September 2010

Jupiter

http://science.nationalgeographic.com/space/solar-system/jupiter-article/

Just found this nicely laid out and interactive National Geographic Website about Jupiter! Very Good and has all the important information.

Thursday 9 September 2010

Maps

The word MAP comes from the Latin word, "mappa", and means napkin, cloth, or sheet. A cartographer is someone who creates maps.

There are different types of maps;
Topographic (a basic type of map that shows the natural and artificial features of an area. It also shows the borders of towns, states, or countries)
Special purpose (Navigational and Avaition maps are used by Pilots and Ship Captains)
Relief (are 3D maps made out of clay or plastic)
Political (Show the divides between different countries)
Geologic (shows land use, rainfall, population, and other kinds of scientific data)

The first map to represent the known world was created by Anaximander, a Greek philosopher, in the 6th century B.C.


In 1507 Martin Waldseemuller, a German cartographer, was the first to add the Americas to a map he created.

Maps

Ortelius's map of the world, from 1601

1418 Ming Dynasty Map by artist Mo Yi-tong, possibly the oldest map of the world!

Wednesday 8 September 2010

Giant Tortoise


I think these big guys are good because they look so old and wise. And take life nice and easy.
Here are some pictures of Giant Tortoises looking amazing...
A giant tortoise at a mud wallow on Volcan Alcedo in the Galapagos Islands.

Scientists have successfully reintroduced giant tortoises to a Galapagos island where the species once teetered on extinction.
Recently the Galapagos Islands have been removed from the Unesco endangered list! Hooray!


Here is a close up of 'Lonely George' who is the last known Pinta Giant Tortoise, who are native to only one island in the pacific. He is the last of the species and has been labelled the rarest creature in the world.
Poor George.


Here is when i met one of these amazing creatures in Singapore !




Above are some pictures of Galapagos Giant Tortoises

Here is a picture of a Galapagos Giant Tortoise with a new born. Seventy may seem rather old to be reproducing, but the Galapagos tortoise doesn't reach sexual maturity until it is 25.


Mating can occur at any time during the year, and the female tortoise can produce between two and 16 tennis ball-sized eggs, which she buries in a 1ft deep nest.

They then incubate for around 130 days. Unusually, temperature can effect the gender of the hatchlings. A low nest temperature means they are likely to be male, while a hot, stuffy nest is more likely to produce females.

However, it is impossible to determine the sex of a Galapagos tortoise until it is 15 years old.


Growth will occur slowly over the next 40 years, at which point the tortoises reach full size. Their large shells add to their impressive appearance and act as a shield against predators.

This magnificent armour is actually a bone, and a crucial part of the tortoise skeleton. However, it does slow them down, as they have an average speed of only 0.18mph.

No one knows why the Galapagos reptiles are so large, but it's possible that a lack of predators on the South American islands meant they evolved free from danger.



Jupiter


The Great Red Spot
is the most well known characteristic of the planet

Jupiter's atmosphere has a zig-zag pattern of twelve jet streams which make up its signature pastel-toned bands. Earth, by comparison, has only two jet streams.
The Great Red Spot is sandwiched between two of these jets streams, forcing the winds that power those perimeter winds to deflect around the spot.
The Great Red Spot is a persistent
anticyclonic storm (which means it spins the other way to the rest of the gas)
It is situated 22° south of Jupiter's equator, which has lasted for at least 180 years and possibly as long as 345 years or more.
reat Red Spot was first discovered in the 1600’s by astronomer Robert Hooke.

This storm is so big you could fit 3 Earths within it!

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley have discovered that the size of the storm has decreased 15% between 1996 and 2006.





Jupiter

This is a video of Voyager 1 approach to this colossal planet. These pictures were taken in 1979.
I think this video is amazing

Time Travel

Grandfather Paradox

Imagine a man travelled back in time and killed his biological grandfather before the latter met the traveller's grandmother. As a result, one of the traveller's parents (and by extension the traveller himself) would never have been conceived. This would imply that he could not have travelled back in time after all, which means the grandfather would still be alive, and the traveller would have been conceived allowing him to travel back in time and kill his grandfather.


Jupiter


Jupiter has at least 63 moons! (and more are being discovered all the time)
These include the 4 main moons called Lo, Europa, Ganymede and Callista. These are referred to as the Galilean Moons because they were first discovered by Galileo Galilie in 1610

The names of the fours moons come from the lovers of Zeus from Greek mythology.

Here is a picture to show the scale of the moons of Jupiter and other planets.


Lo

Is the inner most of the four largest moons. It has over 400 actvive volcanoes and is the most geologically active object in the solar system. It has mountains that are taller than Mount Everest!

Europa

Europa is only slightly smaller than our moon. It is one of the smoothest objects in the solar system due to the layer of ice on the surface. Below this ice is about 100 kilometers of water which is exciting because this could be a good place to find extraterrestrial life ! Aliens !
Life in this Ocean could be similar to life found in Earths deep ocean were life is abundant even without natural light.

Ganymede

Ganymede is the largest natural satellite in the solar system. Its bigger than Mercury. It is also an ice covered moon. It is also the only natural satellite that has its own magnetic field.

Callisto

Is the last Galileon moon and is also the second largest of the four. Callisto has been considered the most suitable place for a human base for future exploration of the Jupiter system because it is furthest from the intense radiation of Jupiter.

Thursday 2 September 2010

Time Travel

There are 4 main dimensions.
Forward and Backward. Left and Right. Up and down and Time. These are the dimensions of 'Time and Space'. Because we are so used to the main 3 dimensions we find it hard to comprehend that time is also dimension which isn't fixed in a straight line, from start to finish.
The same as if there were a world where there were only the first 2 dimensions, if you placed a 3D object in there world they would be very confused by it.

Not many people realise it but the 'space age' made it possible to cross the fourth dimension there are allready time travellers amoung us. Such as Sergei Krikalev (picture below) who is the world record holder for space flight orbiting earth on the russian space station MIA for 803 days. This space station orbits the earth at 16,000 miles per hour. Having spent so long going so fast means he is also the world record holder for time travell. He has moved forward in time, only by a fraction of a second. But he is still technically a time traveller!

Monday 30 August 2010

Time Travel

Dr. Ronald Mallet is a Physicist who is a professor at the University of Connecticut. He has invented a set of equations that allows him to build a time machine. This machine uses Einstiens Theory of relativity which allows you to manipulate space an time. Mallet proposes to use light to manipulate and twist time. He only proposes to send back sub-atomic particles of information. But if it works it would be possible in the future to send back humans.
But this doesn't mean that we would be able to go back to see the pyramids being built. You could only go back to the point were the time machine was turned on.

Which is exciting because if he builds it and it works! He could receive information as soon as he turns it on from a future self.

Friday 27 August 2010

Giant Tortoise

Life Span
One of the main reasons i love giant tortoises is because they live for the longest.

The oldest Giant Tortoise was believed to be Tu'i Malila who died at the age of 188 and just behind that Harriet who died at the age of 167.


But Adwaita was the oldest Giant Tortoise. He was a pet of Robert Clive who was a British Soldier who was credited for securing India in the 18th century.

There was a dispute regarding the age of Adwaita. However, now Adwaita's shell has beencarbon dated, determining his age to be around 255. This makes Adwaita one of the oldest creatures of modern times, beating Harriet by 80 years, and Tu'i Malila by 67 years.

Adwaita means 'one and only'

------------------------

Giant Tortoises can reach a huge sizes, t
hey can weigh as much as 300 kg (660 lbs) and can grow to be 1.3 m (4 ft) long.

The biggest population of Giant Tortoise today is in the Seychelles. Where there is approx. 152,000. Which is good news!

Madagascar, the Seychelles, Mauritius, Réunion, the Galápagos Islands, Sulawesi, Timor, Flores and Java are the islands where Giant Tortoises live / lived.

Giant Tortoise

Although the first giant tortoise was discovered in 1535, the species was not scientifically catalogued until the early 19th century; no one actually managed to bring even a sample of the tortoise back to England because they found it so delicious. Most early accounts describe only the taste of the tortoises.

Jupiter

Jupiters Rings
Jupiter's main ring system is formed by dust kicked up as interplanetary meteoroids smash into the giant planet's four small inner moons Almathea, Thebe, Adrastea and Metis. The ring system begins about 92,000 kilometers (55,000 miles) from Jupiter's center and extends to about 250,000 kilometers (150,000 miles) from the planet. NASA's Voyager 2 detected an uneven dust ring around Jupiter in 1979. One Voyager image seemed to indicate a third, faint outer ring. The Galileo spacecraft found a flattened main ring and an inner, cloud-like ring, called the halo, both composed of small, dark particles, and a third ring known as the Gossamer Ring. The third ring is actually two very thin rings made up of debris from Amalthea and Thebe. Unlike Saturn's rings, there are no signs of ice in Jupiter's rings.

Click for larger view of Jupiter's rings
















The planet contains 71% of the planetary matter in the solar system

Monday 23 August 2010

Jupiter

Most people take Jupiter for granted. Jupiter could be the reason that we are here. The reason why there is life on Earth at all!

Because Jupiter is so big it has a huge gravitational pull. This means that Jupiter acts as our solar systems sort of 'vacuum cleaner'. It pulls all the debris that space throws around including big asteroids. Asteroids that potentially could be disastrous for Earths inhabitants. Because Jupiter has done this for millions of years it has prevented comets and asteroids from ruining our evolution.

So THANK YOU JUPITER

Time Travel

Time travel in reality is a mind boggling idea and seems utterly impossible.

Einstein's theory of relativity allows time travel in extreme circumstances. Some interpretations of quantum mechanics permit particles to travel backwards in time.

The speed of light is 67,000,000 miles an hour- nothing can go faster than the speed of light.

Time flows at different rates depending how fast you are going. So this means that if it were possible to travel very very fast lets say in a space ship. You could spend a year traveling extremely fast and come back to earth where a 100 years have passed on Earth. So you would age far slower than your friends back home.


Friday 20 August 2010

Jupiter

I have always been fascinated by the Giant Red Spot on Jupiter about 5 years a discovered an amazing picture in the National Geographic magazine of the Giant Red Spot and i decided to paint it.

Tuesday 10 August 2010

Time Travel

A 'possible' way to travel back in time is by traveling around a black hole. Black holes drag space and time around with it. So if you could travel towards the region where time is being dragged and travel around it then come back out of the region you could actually return before you came in. madness! But to do this would be extremely hard. You would first need to find a black hole and then also have a vessel of some sort that would be powerful enough to out run the pull of the black hole which is so powerful it could pull in a star.....a long shot, but possible.

Monday 26 July 2010

Antlers



The Irish Elk or Giant Deer was a species of Megaloceros and one of the largest deer that ever lived. Its range extended across Eurasia, from Ireland to east of Lake Baikal, during the Late Pleistocene. The latest known remains of the species have been carbon dated to about 7,700 years ago.


Although large numbers of skeletons have been found in Irish bogs, its common name, Irish Elk, is misleading as the animal was not exclusively Irish, and neither was it closely related to either of the living species currently called elk; for this reason, the name "Giant Deer" is preferred in more recent publications. Megaloceros giganteus first appeared about 400,000 years ago.

The Irish Elk stood about 2.1 metres (6.9 ft) tall at the shoulders, and it had the largest antlers of any known cervid (a maximum of 3.65 m (12.0 ft) from tip to tip and weighing up to 40 kilograms (88 lb)). In body size, the Irish Elk matched the extant moose subspecies of Alaska (Alces alces gigas) as the largest known deer. A significant collection of M. giganteus skeletons can be found at the Natural History Museum in Dublin.


Maps


One of the earliest known maps of the world in the Babylonian map of the world.
The Babylonian Map of the World is a clay tablet map of the world, with Babylon at its center. The map is from ca. 600 BC and was discovered at Sippar, southern Iraq, a city that was 60 miles (97 km) north of Babylon on the east bank of the Euphrates River.

Antlers


Different kinds of antlers

Moose

Reindeer/Caribou

Elk

Fallow Deer

Red Deer

White-Tailed Deer



Maps

Maps have allways fascinated me. I like to know where i am and also where other people are too. I think its important to know your own home, country and planet and maps are a brilliant invention to help humans to learn and navigate around the globe.

I also find it an amazing feet how early explorers drew the first maps. I find it hard to imagine the skill in drawing a shoreline on a boat sailing along the coastline.


This is the Nova totius Terrarum Orbis geographica ac hydrographica tabula, a map of the world created by Hendrik Hondius in 1630, and published the following year in the atlas Atlantis Maioris Appendix.

Among its claims to notability is the fact that it was the first dated map published in an atlas, and therefore the first widely available map, to show any part of Australia, the only previous map to do so being Hessel Gerritsz' 1627 Caert van't Landt van d'Eendracht ("Chart of the Land of Eendracht"), which was not widely distributed.

Monday 19 July 2010

Time Travel

More the possibility of Time Travel. Time travel has been an impossible dream of mankind for a long long time. Lots of books, tv, films and music have been made about this obsession of time.

Here are some famous time traveling devices that have appeared in films.

The altered Delorean that appeared in the Back to the Future Trilogy.
12 Monkeys
The Time Machine (1960 film)
Brilliant 80's classic Bill and Ted's excellent adventure in which a normal telephone box is the time machine


The famous Tardis which appears in Doctor Who is a time machine/spaceship.

Sunday 18 July 2010

Antlers


Cardboard deer head

Jupiter

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass slightly less than one-thousandth of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant.

Here are some amazing pictures of our solar systems giant...







Antlers

Antlers are good because they are marvelous appendages and have many interesting characteristics

Every year antlers are shed and new bigger and stonger antlers are grown

An antler has neither muscles nor joints for movement

When antlers are growing they are covered in a soft texture called growing velvet

The growing velvet has a complex internal vein and artery structure with the dense marrow of the developing bone, a network of nerves that extends all the way to the tips of the tines, and covering of skin with true hair and oil glands.

Antlers are the fastest growing appendages in the animal kingdom. In large-antlered dear (Elk, Moose and Caribou) the velvet antler can grow as rapidly as 2 centimeters per day.

Early antlers caused by a surge of testosterone are called pedicles

Some of the testosterone used to grow the velvet antlers is converted to estrogen, which causes the death of the velvet and the mineralization of the antler to hard bone. After the deer rubs off the dried and sometimes bloody velvet, its antlers are revealed to be bones growing out of its head.

Anterlogenic tissue is what antlers grow from. If a piece of embryonic antler stem-cell material was embedded in another part of the deers body a small antler would grow. It has also been tried on mice too and was successful. Therefore it is enterally possible that this could work for humans

Deer are the only warm blooded animal that can regenerate a complete oragan.



Friday 16 July 2010

Jupiter

Jupiter is SO big that all the other planets in our solar system could fit inside of Jupiter.

Jupiter is the fastest rotating planet. For one full rotation ( one day ) it only takes 9 hours 55 mins. Considering its size that is very very fast!