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Apollo 8
According to Neil Armstrong, Apollo 8 was the most significant space mission! It was first space mission where humans left orbit. 200 000 miles to moon, cf 600 miles! Russians thought to be 4 months away from moon mission, second Saturn rocket test failed (still most powerful rocket ever), 3 deaths in Apollo 1 accident,…
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Bird migration
About 50% of all bird species migrate. 2 main patterns – long lived, soaring types e.g. Geese, who go in groups (better aerodynamics), and who learn routes from elders. Else flapping songbird types, who go alone, with no prior knowledge of route. Enormous physiological changes, weight can almost double, reproductive organs atrophy, flight feathers may…
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New planets
NASA’s Kepler space telescope increased its catalogue in 2016 by an additional 1,284 worlds — the greatest number of planets ever announced at a single time. It brings Kepler’s confirmed planetary haul to more than 2,000 exoplanets. The nearest is 4.2 light years away – in other words, around our nearest star, Proxima Centauri. Proxima…
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Super moon
I missed the super moon the other night, which is to say I saw the full moon but didn’t know it was the closest the moon had been since 1948. SO in theory the moon would have been about 20% brighter than average. But the moon is actually brightest at the time of an opposition…
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Pluto's icy heart
This 1000 km wide heart-shaped patch is free of craters, so must be very young. It’s actually a depression, probably a massive impact crater 7km deep, now full of frozen nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide, with glacial flows. It’s also on the move – the ice is denser than surrounding water ice, and so it…
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Lanikeya
Supercluster which contains Virgo group, in which you find our local group (Milky Way but also Andromeda Galaxy). Gold formed from collision of 2 neutrino stars (themselves remnants of bigger, older stars?) Dark matter postulated because stars spinning in a galaxy spiral do not move at expected speeds, also difficult to explain formation of galaxies…
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Germ theory
Girolamo Fracastoro – from Verona, theorized that epidemics were caused by invisible “seeds”, spread by fomites (Latin for tinder), not themselves dangerous but able to enhance transfer of disease. Cf Miasma theory (bad air – like “Malaria”). Took another 100 years before Van Leeuwenhoek found microorganisms under his microscope, scepticism continued even through the 19th…
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Metallic smells
It has often irked me that metals eg coins, old kitchen knife can have such a strong smell, when they surely can’t actually be vapourizing at room or body temperature? Dietrich and Glindemann at Virginia Tech explain that the odour results from a metal induced oxidation of lipids eg on the skin. The compounds people…
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Planetary genesis
http://shar.es/10UwSd The ALMA telescope’s image of a planetary system forming around a surprisingly young star may revolutionize theories on how planets grow.
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Chelyabinsk meteor
In Feb 2013 a meteor lit up the sky over Chelyabinsk in Russia brigher than the sun. It had not been anticipated, causing widespread panic. It measured about 20m across, weighed about 13 000 tons (about the weight of the Eiffel tower) and was travelling at over 40 000 mph (Mach 60). The energy released on impact…