Fuck Yeah Awesome Nature Stuff

ofroyalblood:

bioluminescent

sylviasnonsequiturs:

“Sea of Stars

Photograph by Doug Perrine, Alamy

Pinpricks of light on the shore seem to mirror stars above in an undated picture taken on Vaadhoo Island in the Maldives.

The biological light, or bioluminescence, in the waves is the product of marine microbes called phytoplankton—and now scientists think they know how some of these life-forms create their brilliant blue glow.

Various species of phytoplankton are known to bioluminesce, and their lights can be seen in oceans all around the world, said marine biologist and bioluminescence expert Woodland Hastings of Harvard University. (Also see“Glowing Sea Beasts: Photos Shed Light on Bioluminescence.”)

“I’ve been across the Atlantic and Pacific, and I’ve never seen a spot that wasn’t bioluminescent or a night that [bioluminescence] couldn’t be seen,” Hastings said.

The most common type of marine bioluminescence is generated by phytoplankton known as dinoflagellates. A recent study co-authored by Hastings has for the first time identified a special channel in the dinoflagellate cell membrane that responds to electrical signals—offering a potential mechanism for how the algae create their unique illumination.

—Ker Than”

Source: National Geographic

(Source: fullofquarks)

ofroyalblood:

ufo jellyfish

sparklebiscuit:

They’ve started calling  this little guy the Bloody Belly Comb Jelly. (Sounds like the perfect children’s book.)

Photo is a linkback to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium.

thenewenlightenmentage:

Neutrino No-Show Deepens Cosmic Ray Mystery

The failure of ghostly subatomic messengers called neutrinos to show up at an Antarctic telescope has knocked down a major astrophysical theory involving some of the most dramatic explosions in the universe.

“I would have preferred to have seen neutrinos,” says the IceCube telescope’s principal investigator Francis Halzen at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Null results are usually not very interesting, but in this case, it is.”

Neutrinos are emitted by a range of cosmic processes. Most stream through matter without being deflected or changed, making them ideal long-distance messengers from distant galaxies.

The IceCube telescope monitors a cubic kilometre of ice beneath the South Pole for neutrinos of various types, including the cosmic variety. Vertical strings of detectors frozen into the ice watch for flashes of blue light emitted when neutrinos strike. The energy of the neutrino determines its source.

Collapsing star

One source of neutrinos was thought to be explosions known as gamma ray bursts (GRBs) - via mysterious entities called ultra high energy cosmic rays.

UHECRS, very high energy protons and charged nuclei, occasionally arrive on Earth , where they are detected by cosmic ray detectors such as the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina. UHECRs are known to come from outside our galaxy, but because they get deflected by magnetic fields en route, it’s impossible to retrace their path and determine their source.

GRBs, thought to occur when massive stars collapse to form black holes, could spew out such particles. If they do, the UHECRs should interact with the photons also streaming out of the explosion to form neutrinos with energies in the hundreds of tera-electronvolts. These should then arrive on Earth along with the photons.

With this chain of events in mind, IceCube has been looking for neutrinos occurring at the same time as GRBs. From May 2009 to May 2010, gamma-ray satellite observatories saw 190 GRBs. Theory predicts that IceCube should have seen a handful of neutrinos at the same time, from the same region of the sky. But today IceCube reports that it saw absolutely nothing – a serious blow to a cascade of processes astrophysicists thought they understood.

Supermassive black holes

Most importantly, the result removes a leading explanation for UHECRs. “That GRBs are the source of the cosmic rays is basically ruled out,” says Halzen. “We have put half the theorists out of business.”

Theorist Dan Hooper of Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, agrees: “Given that GRBs were a leading candidate for the origin of these, this is an important result,” he says.

Attention will now shift to active galactic nuclei (AGN), which are powered by supermassive black holes. AGNs could also produce UHECRs and because the mechanism for their production would be different, this is not ruled out by today’s IceCube result. “We could observe neutrinos from AGNs any day and prove that they are the source of the cosmic rays,” says Halzen.

Journal reference: Nature, DOI:10.1038/nature11068

quantumaniac:

The Case of the Missing Dark Matter

A survey of the galactic region around our solar system by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has turned up a surprising lack of dark matter, making its alleged existence even more of a mystery.

Dark matter is an invisible substance that is suspected to exist in large quantity around galaxies, lending mass but emitting no radiation. The only evidence for it comes from its gravitational effect on the material around it… up to now, dark matter itself has not been directly detected. Regardless, it has been estimated to make up 80% of all the mass in the Universe.

A team of astronomers at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile has mapped the region around over 400 stars near the Sun, some of which were over 13,000 light-years distant. What they found was a quantity of material that coincided with what was observable: stars, gas, and dust… but no dark matter.

“The amount of mass that we derive matches very well with what we see — stars, dust and gas — in the region around the Sun,” said team leader Christian Moni Bidin of the Universidad de Concepción in Chile. “But this leaves no room for the extra material — dark matter — that we were expecting. Our calculations show that it should have shown up very clearly in our measurements. But it was just not there!”

Based on the team’s results, the dark matter halos thought to envelop galaxies would have to have “unusual” shapes — making their actual existence highly improbable.

Still, something is causing matter and radiation in the Universe to behave in a way that belies its visible mass. If it’s not dark matter, then what is it?

“Despite the new results, the Milky Way certainly rotates much faster than the visible matter alone can account for,” Bidin said. “So, if dark matter is not present where we expected it, a new solution for the missing mass problem must be found.

“Our results contradict the currently accepted models. The mystery of dark matter has just became even more mysterious.”

(Source: universetoday.com)

lo-phi:

“The hydromedusa Aequorea victoria. In bioluminescent specimens, light is produced by photoproteins and associated green-fluorescent protein localized around the bell margin (not shown). The photograph, taken under white light, shows the medusa in its natural state, but does not show luminescence or fluorescence.”

kaleidoscopicmind:

The Solar Nebula Theory

Stems from the evolutionary hypotheses which proposes that the planets formed gradually and naturally as the sun formed.

The solar nebula theory supposes that planets form in the rotating disks of gas and dust around young stars. 

• A rotating cloud of gas contracts and flattens to become a thin disk of gas & dust around the forming star at the center.
• Planets form from the gas & dust in the disk and are left in orbit when the remaining bits are blown into space as the star becomes more luminous.

The planets are, in essence, tiny specks of matter scattered around the sun -The last remains of the solar nebula. 

According to this theory, Earth and the other planets of the solar system formed billions of years ago as the sun condensed from a cloud of interstellar gas and dust. 

One can assume that if planet formation is a natural part of star formation, most stars should then have planets.