Marquette University bought the original manuscripts and multiple working drafts of “The Hobbit” and “Lord of the Rings” from J.R.R. Tolkien for only 1,500 pounds (less than $5,000) in 1956. At the time, no other institution had expressed an interest in Tolkien’s literary manuscripts.
The Elvis Presley’s manager, “Colonel”…
The Elvis Presley’s manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker prevented Elvis from touring outside of the US (except for 3 shows in Canada in 1957) because Parker was, among other things, an illegal alien from the Netherlands that was suspected of murder. Here are a few other things that Parker did. Some were poor judgement and many […]
On a trip to Nepal, Apollo astronaut…
On a trip to Nepal, Apollo astronaut Stu Roosa met Nepalese who believe the spirits of their dead reside on the Moon. Roosa could not understand why a few of the local citizens treated him like a god, nor why they were distressed when he told them he saw no one else on the Moon.
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A picture of a giant robot helping Russia revolutionaries storm the winter palace in 1917, was accidentally used in an Australian history exam. Some students wasted time in trying to figure out what the giant robot was, thinking it was a statue of a Russian politician or a battleship.
An AI machine given 8,000 cats’ names…
An AI machine given 8,000 cats’ names and then instructed to come up with its own suggested the following: Cheesemonger, Lilith the Vamp, Mr. Sinister, This Guy, Funky Moe and You’re Telling A Lie. For more AI Weirdness, head over to aiweirdness.com.
Chimpanzees are more likely…
Chimpanzees are more likely to spend time with another chimpanzee if they have watched a film together.
Chimpanzees are more likely…
Chimpanzees are more likely to spend time with another chimpanzee if they have watched a film together.
The Curiosity Rover Found Oxygen Behavior on Mars That Is Baffling Scientists
The Curiosity rover has been in Mars’ Gale Crater in 2012, and since then, has been studying all things Martian, so we can know more about the planet’s past.
Well, what we now know, more than anything, is how much we don’t understand about what’s happening out there.
Case in point: the rover’s tunable laser spectrometer (or Sample Analysis at Mars, SAM) recently found a huge amount of methane–the largest since landing there.
Photo Credit: NASA
Followed closely by the discovery that oxygen is behaving in a way scientists don’t quite understand.
In the past six years, SAM has determined the following about the atmosphere of Mars: 95 percent is carbon dioxide, 2.6 percent molecular nitrogen, 1.9 percent argon, 0.16 percent oxygen and 0.06 percent carbon monoxide.
Mars has seasons sort of like Earth, but they happen because the air pressure changes when carbon dioxide gas freezes at the poles during winter. This event causes the air pressure to lower. When the carbon dioxide eventually evaporates and is redistributed into the atmosphere, the air pressure rises for a Mars spring and summer.
Photo Credit: NASA
Nitrogen and argon followed a similar pattern.
Oxygen, however, didn’t.
It actually rose and peaked at 30 percent during spring and summer, then lowered to normal levels in fall.
Photo Credit: NASA
This pattern has repeated itself since Curiosity started monitoring. The only difference was that the levels of oxygen rising and falling varied.
Is the oxygen being created by something? What’s causing it to fall?
According to CNN, one of the authors of a new paper covering the seasonal variations, Sushil Atreya, said the data was “mind boggling.”
Photo Credit: NASA
The scientists involved in the study were so puzzled they even had the rover checked out for operational issues. But Curiosity was working as usual.
Melissa Trainer, study author and planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said:
We’re struggling to explain this. The fact that the oxygen behavior isn’t perfectly repeatable every season makes us think that it’s not an issue that has to do with atmospheric dynamics. It has to be some chemical source and sink (of elements into the soil) that we can’t yet account for.
So, what about the huge amount of methane?
The Tunable Laser Spectrometer on NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover
Photo Credit: NASA
On Earth, most of our methane is created by living things, but also by rocks and water. Mars has plenty of rocks and water.
Principal Investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, noted that current measurement systems cannot determine the exact source of methane. What they do know, however, is that the methane fluctuates with the seasons as widely as oxygen.
Could the strange behavior of the two gases be related somehow?
Atreya believes so, although no one can figure out how.
In the meantime, the team invites any and all Martian experts to chime in.
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More Than 100,00 Ribbons Were Hung Above the Berlin Wall to Commemorate the 30th Anniversary of Its Fall
It’s been 30 years since the first bricks of the Berlin Wall came down on November 9, 1989.
East German officials had just announced that all German Democratic Republic citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin, and that was only the beginning.
. . (Foto 1: (c) @kulturprojekteberlin, David von Becker) #nomorewalls #kulturprojekteberlin #mauerfall #fallofthewall30 #fallofthewall #friedlicherevolution #berlin #berlin365 #visit_berlin #brandenburgertor #poetickinetics #skynetart #patrickshearn #makingofThe process of German reunification would take another year, but November 9 is the day the country remember remembers this most Peaceful Revolution that happened only 30 years ago.
To celebrate one of the most important events in world history, artist Patrick Shearn and his team at Poetic Kinetics installed a huge art piece as a symbol of the unification effort.
today as we visit one of the highlights of the festivities! #visionsinmotion #poetickinetics #mauerfall30 #FatTireBerlinThe a massive kinetic installation was called Visions in Motion and went on display from November 4-10, 2019. The 20,000-square-foot work measured 450 feet in length at the Brandenburg Gate, the site of the former wall.
Shaped like the wall, the piece actually flew above the site and contained around 120,000 colorful streamers – 30,000 of which had handwritten messages from people in Germany and around the world.
The artwork was inspired by the words of Germans, how they did not have weight by themselves, but still wielded power.
In a statement, Shearn said:
In light of the state of affairs in the world today, I feel it is a time to be bold, gather together with a unified voice, and throw our shared colors and our dreams skyward for the world to see.
It was just 30 years ago that communism was cutting Germany and its people in two. And though walls may be built to keep people out, but those same walls keep people in.
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