☲
I have seen the dark universe yawn.
Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind. ~Virginia Woolf


Apr 26th | 126 rhamphotheca: Seven species of salmonids: Five Pacific salmon and two trout—inhabit the rivers and streams of the Pacific Northwest. (Their North American ranges are indicated.) Although these fish share certain fundamental characteristics, the differences among them are numerous, both in behavioral traits and in appearance, as is evident from this rendition of spawning males. As the authors explain, conservation efforts aimed at protecting salmon often overlook the importance of preserving this biodiversity and focus instead on boosting the total numbers of fish. (via: Scientific American)      (artist: Emma Skurnick)

rhamphotheca:

Seven species of salmonids:

Five Pacific salmon and two trout—inhabit the rivers and streams of the Pacific Northwest. (Their North American ranges are indicated.) Although these fish share certain fundamental characteristics, the differences among them are numerous, both in behavioral traits and in appearance, as is evident from this rendition of spawning males. As the authors explain, conservation efforts aimed at protecting salmon often overlook the importance of preserving this biodiversity and focus instead on boosting the total numbers of fish.

(via: Scientific American)      (artist: Emma Skurnick)

126 notes ▶ Apr 26 via a-chupacabra「 originally rhamphotheca」
Apr 9th | 13 thenewenlightenmentage: Mystery of Saturn’s Walnut Moon Cracked? The giant ridge around the middle of Saturn moon’s Iapetus that makes it resemble an oversize walnut may have essentially formed as a “hug” from a dead moon, researchers say. Iapetus, the third-largest of Saturn’s moons, possesses a mountain range like no other in the solar system. This enormous ridge wraps along its equator, reaching up to 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) high and 124 miles (200 km) wide, and encircles more than 75 percent of the moon. Altogether, the ridge may constitute about one-thousandth the mass of Iapetus. “I would love to stand at the base of this wall of ice 20 kilometers tall that heads off straight in either direction until it dips below the horizon,” study lead author Andrew Dombard, a planetary scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told SPACE.com. Scientists had been at a loss to explain how this mountain range might have formed. Of all the planets and moons in our solar system, apparently only Iapetus has this kind of ridge — any process that researchers previously suggested to explain its formation should also have led to similar features on other bodies. [Photos of Saturn’s Moons] Now investigators suggest this ridge could be the remains of a dead moon. Their model proposes that a giant impact blasted chunks of debris off Iapetus at the tail end of the planetary growth period more than 4.5 billion years ago. This rubble could have coalesced around Iapetus, making it a “sub-satellite,” a moon of a moon. Under this scenario, the gravitational pull Iapetus exerted on this sub-satellite eventually tore it back into pieces, forming an orbiting ring of debris around the moon. Matter from this debris ring then rained down, building the ridge Iapetus now sports along its equator fairly quickly, “probably on a scale of centuries,” Dombard said. The researchers suggest that, of all the planets and moons in our solar system, only Iapetus has this kind of ridge because of its unique orbit so far away from Saturn. This made it easier to have a moon of its own — if Iapetus was closer in, Saturn might have tugged Iapetus’ moon away, Dombard said. More elaborate computer simulations of this process, from the giant impact to the raining down of debris, are needed to test whether the model Dombard and his colleagues suggested might be how Iapetus’ equatorial ridge formed. Such analyses would also help pin down specifics of the idea, such as how long it took the sub-satellite to tear apart. “My personal intuition suggests it took a half-billion to 1 billion years,” Dombard said. The scientists detailed their findings online March 7 in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets. Image Info: A ridge that follows the equator of Saturn’s moon Iapetus gives it the appearance of a giant walnut. The ridge, photographed in 2004 by the Cassini spacecraft, is 100 kilometers (62 miles) wide and at times 20 kilometers (12 miles) high. (The peak of Mount Everest, by comparison, is 5.5 miles above sea level.) Scientists are debating how the ridge might have formed. Image Credit:  NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

thenewenlightenmentage:

Mystery of Saturn’s Walnut Moon Cracked?

The giant ridge around the middle of Saturn moon’s Iapetus that makes it resemble an oversize walnut may have essentially formed as a “hug” from a dead moon, researchers say.

Iapetus, the third-largest of Saturn’s moons, possesses a mountain range like no other in the solar system. This enormous ridge wraps along its equator, reaching up to 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) high and 124 miles (200 km) wide, and encircles more than 75 percent of the moon. Altogether, the ridge may constitute about one-thousandth the mass of Iapetus.

“I would love to stand at the base of this wall of ice 20 kilometers tall that heads off straight in either direction until it dips below the horizon,” study lead author Andrew Dombard, a planetary scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told SPACE.com.

Scientists had been at a loss to explain how this mountain range might have formed. Of all the planets and moons in our solar system, apparently only Iapetus has this kind of ridge — any process that researchers previously suggested to explain its formation should also have led to similar features on other bodies. [Photos of Saturn’s Moons]

Now investigators suggest this ridge could be the remains of a dead moon. Their model proposes that a giant impact blasted chunks of debris off Iapetus at the tail end of the planetary growth period more than 4.5 billion years ago. This rubble could have coalesced around Iapetus, making it a “sub-satellite,” a moon of a moon.

Under this scenario, the gravitational pull Iapetus exerted on this sub-satellite eventually tore it back into pieces, forming an orbiting ring of debris around the moon. Matter from this debris ring then rained down, building the ridge Iapetus now sports along its equator fairly quickly, “probably on a scale of centuries,” Dombard said.

The researchers suggest that, of all the planets and moons in our solar system, only Iapetus has this kind of ridge because of its unique orbit so far away from Saturn. This made it easier to have a moon of its own — if Iapetus was closer in, Saturn might have tugged Iapetus’ moon away, Dombard said.

More elaborate computer simulations of this process, from the giant impact to the raining down of debris, are needed to test whether the model Dombard and his colleagues suggested might be how Iapetus’ equatorial ridge formed. Such analyses would also help pin down specifics of the idea, such as how long it took the sub-satellite to tear apart. “My personal intuition suggests it took a half-billion to 1 billion years,” Dombard said.

The scientists detailed their findings online March 7 in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets.

Image Info: A ridge that follows the equator of Saturn’s moon Iapetus gives it the appearance of a giant walnut. The ridge, photographed in 2004 by the Cassini spacecraft, is 100 kilometers (62 miles) wide and at times 20 kilometers (12 miles) high. (The peak of Mount Everest, by comparison, is 5.5 miles above sea level.) Scientists are debating how the ridge might have formed.

Image Credit:  NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Apr 7th | 341 Io, Jupiter’s most interesting moon. It is not the Earth but Jupiter’s innermost moon, Io, which is the most volcanically active body in our Solar System. Between 1995 and 2003, the space probe Galileo was able to detect around 120 volcanoes that shoot gas and dust up to a height of 400 kilometres. On average, every one hundred years the material emitted forms an approximately one centimetre thick layer all over Io, so that the surface is continually changing. Lava flows up to 300 kilometres long and with temperatures of 1500 degrees Celsius, containing sulphurous material and melted silicates, run over the surface. Various sulphur compounds are responsible for the reddish-yellow colouration. Where does the energy required for volcanism come from? On its orbit, Io is subject to the influences of the gravitational fields of Jupiter and the neighbouring moons Europa and Ganymede. Together with Io they orbit the planet in resonance – during one Ganymede orbit, Europa orbits Jupiter twice and Io three times. Thus, the three moons are regularly positioned in a line and the two outer moons exert a combined force on Io, their innermost partner. At the same time, Jupiter pulls much more strongly in the opposite direction and this leads to a strong tidal force. One the one hand, this causes an approximately one hundred metre-high bulge in the crust to move across Io’s surface like a flood wave. On the other hand, the interior of the moon is kneaded like dough. In the process, the material heats up so much that it melts and becomes lava, powering explosive volcanoes. 

Io, Jupiter’s most interesting moon.

It is not the Earth but Jupiter’s innermost moon, Io, which is the most volcanically active body in our Solar System. Between 1995 and 2003, the space probe Galileo was able to detect around 120 volcanoes that shoot gas and dust up to a height of 400 kilometres. On average, every one hundred years the material emitted forms an approximately one centimetre thick layer all over Io, so that the surface is continually changing. Lava flows up to 300 kilometres long and with temperatures of 1500 degrees Celsius, containing sulphurous material and melted silicates, run over the surface. Various sulphur compounds are responsible for the reddish-yellow colouration. 

Where does the energy required for volcanism come from? On its orbit, Io is subject to the influences of the gravitational fields of Jupiter and the neighbouring moons Europa and Ganymede. Together with Io they orbit the planet in resonance – during one Ganymede orbit, Europa orbits Jupiter twice and Io three times. Thus, the three moons are regularly positioned in a line and the two outer moons exert a combined force on Io, their innermost partner. At the same time, Jupiter pulls much more strongly in the opposite direction and this leads to a strong tidal force. One the one hand, this causes an approximately one hundred metre-high bulge in the crust to move across Io’s surface like a flood wave. On the other hand, the interior of the moon is kneaded like dough. In the process, the material heats up so much that it melts and becomes lava, powering explosive volcanoes. 

(Source: crownedrose)

341 notes ▶ Apr 7 via eddyizm「 originally crownedrose」
Apr 6th | 4 “An ancient 4,800-year-old Great Basin Bristlecone Pine, the Methuselah Tree grows high in the White Mountains of eastern California. Named, obviously, after the Biblical figure that lived for 969 years, the Methuselah Tree grows in the Methuselah Grove, which is in Inyo National Forest’s “Forest of Ancients,” where it is surrounded by other ancient trees. The exact location of the tree, though, is kept secret to protect it against vandalism. When Edmund Schulman and Tom Harlan took samples from the famous tree in 1957, they discovered it was 4,789 years old. It is estimated that the tree germinated in 2832 BCE, making Methuselah the oldest known living tree and non-clonal organism in the entire world. A germination date of 2832 BCE makes Methuselah older even than the Egyptian Pyramids. It has just a bit longer to hold old until it is older than Prometheus, another bristlecone specimen that was 4,844 years old when accidentally destroyed in 1964.”

“An ancient 4,800-year-old Great Basin Bristlecone Pine, the Methuselah Tree grows high in the White Mountains of eastern California.

Named, obviously, after the Biblical figure that lived for 969 years, the Methuselah Tree grows in the Methuselah Grove, which is in Inyo National Forest’s “Forest of Ancients,” where it is surrounded by other ancient trees. The exact location of the tree, though, is kept secret to protect it against vandalism.

When Edmund Schulman and Tom Harlan took samples from the famous tree in 1957, they discovered it was 4,789 years old. It is estimated that the tree germinated in 2832 BCE, making Methuselah the oldest known living tree and non-clonal organism in the entire world. A germination date of 2832 BCE makes Methuselah older even than the Egyptian Pyramids. It has just a bit longer to hold old until it is older than Prometheus, another bristlecone specimen that was 4,844 years old when accidentally destroyed in 1964.”

Apr 2nd | 14867

headlikeanorange:

The Pebble Toad from Venezuela is hunted by Toad-eating Tarantulas, but is able to escape by turning itself into a rubber ball. The toad is so tiny and weighs so little that bouncing doesn’t hurt it at all. (Life - BBC)

Feb 27th | 90 rhamphotheca: Fossils of the World’s Tallest Penguin Discovered by Stephanie Pappas New Zealand was once home to the tallest penguin species ever known — a lanky bird that stood as high as 4.2 ft (1.3 m). The penguin, dubbed Kairuku grebneffi, lived about 27 million years ago in a penguin paradise. More of New Zealand was underwater at the time, with only today’s mountaintops emerging from the sea. That made for excellent coastal nesting for a number of penguin species. The new fossil specimens were found beginning in the 1970s, and researchers have continued to turn up bones from the animals as recently as two months ago, said study researcher and North Carolina State University paleontologist Daniel Ksepka. The find expands the known diversity of ancient New Zealand penguins, Ksepka told LiveScience… (read more: Live Science)     (illustration by Chris Gaskin, Geology Mus., Univ. of Otago)

rhamphotheca:

Fossils of the World’s Tallest Penguin Discovered

by Stephanie Pappas

New Zealand was once home to the tallest penguin species ever known — a lanky bird that stood as high as 4.2 ft (1.3 m).

The penguin, dubbed Kairuku grebneffi, lived about 27 million years ago in a penguin paradise. More of New Zealand was underwater at the time, with only today’s mountaintops emerging from the sea. That made for excellent coastal nesting for a number of penguin species.

The new fossil specimens were found beginning in the 1970s, and researchers have continued to turn up bones from the animals as recently as two months ago, said study researcher and North Carolina State University paleontologist Daniel Ksepka. The find expands the known diversity of ancient New Zealand penguins, Ksepka told LiveScience…

(read more: Live Science)     (illustration by Chris Gaskin, Geology Mus., Univ. of Otago)

90 notes ▶ Feb 27 via eddyizm「 originally rhamphotheca」
Jan 25th

Bonobos

“When the lively, penetrating eyes lock with ours and challenge us to reveal who we are, we know right away that we are not looking at a “mere” animal, but at a creature of considerable intellect with a secure sense of its place in the world. We are meeting a member of the same tailless, flat-chasted, long-armed primate family to which we ourselves and only a handful of other species belong. We feel the age-old connection before we can stop to think, as people are wont to do, how different we are.

Bonobos will not let us indulge in this thought for long: in everything they do, they resemble us. A complaining youngster will pout his lips like an unhappy child or stretch out an open hand to beg for food. In the midst of sexual intercourse, a female may squeal with apparent pleasure. And at play, bonobos utter coarse laughs when their partners tickle their bellies or armpits. There is no escape, we are looking at an animal so akin to ourselves that the dividing line is seriously blurred.

Whereas the bonobo amazes and delights many people, the implications of its behavior for theories of human evolution are sometimes inconvenient. These apes fail to fit traditional scenarios, yet they are as close to us as chimpanzees, the species on which much ancestral human behavior has been modeled. Had bonobos been known earlier, reconstructions of human evolution might have emphasized sexual relations, equality between males and females, and the origin of the family, instead of war, hunting, tool technology, and other masculine fortes. Bonobo society seems ruled by the “Make Love, Not War” slogan of the 1960s rather than the myth of a bloodthirsty killer ape that has dominated textbooks for at least three decades.”

Source : http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/d/dewaal-bonobo.html

This is only a portion of the entire piece. I highly suggest going to the source and reading it in it’s entirety.

Jan 25th Trưng Sisters 1st Century CE “The Trung sisters, Trung Trac and Trung Nhi, were daughters of a powerful Vietnamese lord who lived at the beginning of the first century. At the time, Vietnam was under the rule of the Chinese Han Dynasty. Vietnamese women still had many rights which they inherited through their mothers’ lineages, while in China women had lost their privileges due to the popular teachings of Confucius requiring women’s subservience. Vietnamese people did not actively oppose the Chinese rule until the year 39 AD when they began to feel oppressed. To frighten the Vietnamese and bring them to submission, a Chinese commander raped Trung Trac and killed her husband. In retaliation, the Trung sisters organized a rebellion. With the support of various tribal lords, they formed an army of about 80,000 men and women. Thirty-six of the generals were women, including the Trung sisters’ mother. The Trung sisters led their army in an attack on the Chinese forces occupying their land. They won back the territory extending from Hue into southern China and they were proclaimed co-queens. Their royal court was established in Me-linh, an ancient political center in the Hong River plain. In the year 42 C.E., the Chinese forces were sent to recapture the region. The queens and their people fought hard to resist the invader. One close comrade of the Trung sisters, a woman named Phung Thi Chinh, led one of the armies of resistance. She apparently fulfilled her mission despite being pregnant at the time. She delivered her baby at the front, hoisted the baby onto her back and continued fighting. However, in the end the Vietnamese troops were defeated. According to the popular belief, the Trung sisters elected to take their own lives in the traditional manner: by jumping into a river and drowning. Loyal Phung Thi Chinh did likewise. The Trung sisters became symbols of the first Vietnamese resistance to the Chinese occupation of their land. Temples were later built in their honor and the people of Vietnam celebrate their memory every year with a national holiday.” Source : http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/trung.html

Trưng Sisters

1st Century CE

“The Trung sisters, Trung Trac and Trung Nhi, were daughters of a powerful Vietnamese lord who lived at the beginning of the first century. At the time, Vietnam was under the rule of the Chinese Han Dynasty. Vietnamese women still had many rights which they inherited through their mothers’ lineages, while in China women had lost their privileges due to the popular teachings of Confucius requiring women’s subservience.

Vietnamese people did not actively oppose the Chinese rule until the year 39 AD when they began to feel oppressed. To frighten the Vietnamese and bring them to submission, a Chinese commander raped Trung Trac and killed her husband. In retaliation, the Trung sisters organized a rebellion. With the support of various tribal lords, they formed an army of about 80,000 men and women. Thirty-six of the generals were women, including the Trung sisters’ mother.

The Trung sisters led their army in an attack on the Chinese forces occupying their land. They won back the territory extending from Hue into southern China and they were proclaimed co-queens. Their royal court was established in Me-linh, an ancient political center in the Hong River plain.

In the year 42 C.E., the Chinese forces were sent to recapture the region. The queens and their people fought hard to resist the invader. One close comrade of the Trung sisters, a woman named Phung Thi Chinh, led one of the armies of resistance. She apparently fulfilled her mission despite being pregnant at the time. She delivered her baby at the front, hoisted the baby onto her back and continued fighting. However, in the end the Vietnamese troops were defeated. According to the popular belief, the Trung sisters elected to take their own lives in the traditional manner: by jumping into a river and drowning. Loyal Phung Thi Chinh did likewise. The Trung sisters became symbols of the first Vietnamese resistance to the Chinese occupation of their land. Temples were later built in their honor and the people of Vietnam celebrate their memory every year with a national holiday.”

Source : http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/trung.html

Jan 24th | 31

Trajan’s Column

“Marcus Ulpius Traianus, Roman Emperor AD 98-117 Trajan was born in about the year AD 53 in Spain, the son of a Consul and thus a member of a noble Roman family. He showed such prowess in public and military service that he was chosen by Nerva to be his successor on the Imperial throne. Trajan was formally adopted in AD 98 by Nerva, who then promptly died and left the not-so-young man (he was likely about 45) emperor. Only three years later Trajan embarked on the first of what were to be two great and difficult wars against the Dacians, fairly highly civilized Germanic ‘barbarians’ who lived across the Danube in the area of modern Romania. The Dacians were led by the intelligent and skillful Decebalus, who made the war hard for the Romans. Nonetheless, Trajan and his army were victorious, and he returned to Rome the next year to celebrate a fine triumph and to receive the award of the title “Dacicus.” All was not well on the Danube, however, and Trajan returned to Dacia in 105. Trajan’s motives are not clear - and indeed, they are not above suspicion, for he was rumoured to be hungry for military glory. Nonetheless, the result of this new campaign was unambiguous: this time Dacia was not only defeated but also incorporated into the Roman Empire as a new province.

Trajan embarked on further conquests later in his reign, but it was for the Dacian wars and his subsequent grand building projects in the Eternal City that he is most remembered - and rightly so. Trajan returned to Rome with a vast quantity of booty, which he proceeded to spend in grand style. He was praised by the Romans of his time for his building of roads and aqueducts, but the crowning glory of Trajan’s Rome was not built of brick or basalt, but out of coloured, polished marble, bronze, and gold. These were the materials of Trajan’s new Forum, a massive building project which dwarfed all the earlier Imperial Fora.

The column of Trajan (within his Forum) was a unique monument. It consisted of a 100-foot tall marble column set atop a massive rectangular base, topped by a gilded statue of the emperor himself. Columnar monuments, albeit smaller in scale, were not new to the Romans; there were three things, however, which made this monument particularly novel: the chamber carved in its base to house Trajan’s ashes, the spiral staircase which wound upwards within its otherwise solid marble shaft to a viewing platform at its top, and, most of all, the continuous sculpted frieze which decorates the exterior of the column. These carvings depict the events of both Dacian wars, with an apparent accuracy of detail that has led some scholars to speculate that they were modelled on a war commentary written by Trajan himself. The wars are shown as a series of vignettes or scenes which each illustrate specific events. The scenes cover the entire range of Roman military activity, from fighting to collecting food, from marching to building. They also show many details of the land the Romans passed through - and of the enemies they fought. The figures in the carvings (over 2,000 appear) are executed at about 2/3 life size, and are so finely detailed that they cannot be fully appreciated from the ground. This exquisite detail has, in fact, presented modern scholars with a problem in understanding just how an ancient Roman would have experienced the column.”

Sources: http://www.stoa.org/trajan/introductory_essay.html#experience, https://www2.bc.edu/~shawlc/trajan%20column.jpg, http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3484/3220425432_337401fce2_o.jpg

Jan 24th | 25

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

“The temples of Angkor, built by the Khmer civilization between 802 and 1220 AD, represent one of humankind’s most astonishing and enduring architectural achievements. From Angkor the Khmer kings ruled over a vast domain that reached from Vietnam to China to the Bay of Bengal. The structures one sees at Angkor today, more than 100 stone temples in all, are the surviving remains of a grand religious, social and administrative metropolis whose other buildings - palaces, public buildings, and houses - were built of wood and have long since decayed and disappeared.

Conventional theories presume the lands where Angkor stands were chosen as a settlement site because of their strategic military position and agricultural potential. Alternative scholars, however, believe the geographical location of the Angkor complex and the arrangement of its temples was based on a planet-spanning sacred geography from archaic times. Using computer simulations, it has been shown that the ground plan of the Angkor complex – the terrestrial placement of its principal temples - mirrors the stars in the constellation of Draco at the time of spring equinox in 10,500 BC. While the date of this astronomical alignment is far earlier than any known construction at Angkor, it appears that its purpose was to architecturally mirror the heavens in order to assist in the harmonization of the earth and the stars. Both the layout of the Angkor temples and the iconographic nature of much its sculpture, particularly the asuras (‘demons’) and devas (‘deities’) are also intended to indicate the celestial phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes and the slow transition from one astrological age to another.

At the temple of Phnom Bakheng there are 108 surrounding towers. The number 108, considered sacred in both Hindu and Buddhist cosmologies, is the sum of 72 plus 36 (36 being ½ of 72). The number 72 is a primary number in the sequence of numbers linked to the earth’s axial precession, which causes the apparent alteration in the position of the constellations over the period of 25,920 years, or one degree every 72 years. Another mysterious fact about the Angkor complex is its location 72 degrees of longitude east of the Pyramids of Giza. The temples of Bakong, Prah Ko and Prei Monli at Roluos, south of the main Angkor complex, are situated in relation to each other in such a way that they mirror the three stars in the Corona Borealis as they appeared at dawn on the spring equinox in 10,500 BC. It is interesting to note that the Corona Borealis would not have been visible from these temples during the 10th and 11th centuries when they were constructed.

Angkor Wat, built during the early years of the 12th century by Suryavaram II, honors the Hindu god Vishnu and is a symbolic representation of Hindu cosmology. Consisting of an enormous temple symbolizing the mythic Mt. Meru, its five inter-nested rectangular walls and moats represent chains of mountains and the cosmic ocean. The short dimensions of the vast compound are precisely aligned along a north-south axis, while the east-west axis has been deliberately diverted 0.75 degrees south of east and north of west, seemingly in order to give observers a three day anticipation of the spring equinox.

Unlike other temples at Angkor, Ta Prohm has been left as it was found, preserved as an example of what a tropical forest will do to an architectural monument when the protective hands of humans are withdrawn. Ta Prohm’s walls, roofs, chambers and courtyards have been sufficiently repaired to stop further deterioration, and the inner sanctuary has been cleared of bushes and thick undergrowth, but the temple has been left in the stranglehold of trees. Having planted themselves centuries ago, the tree’s serpentine roots pry apart the ancient stones and their immense trunks straddle the once bustling Buddhist temple. Built in the later part of the 12th century by Jayavarman VII, Ta Prohm is the terrestrial counterpart of the star Eta Draconis the Draco constellation.”

Source : http://sacredsites.com/asia/cambodia/angkor_wat.html