Una prueba más de lo avanzado que estuvo Leonardo Da Vinci para su tiempo…
¿Se puede determinar la inteligencia por medio del clásico test? ¿Sirven los juegos “brain training” para mejorar nuestra capacidad intelectual? Las respuestas, pulsando aquí.
Fuente: El Correo
Launched in 2004, the NASA Messenger spacecraft has been orbiting Mercury since April 2011, bringing a new light over the smallest and closest planet to the Sun of the Solar System. It has been the first mission to explore this planet since the Mariner 10 mission back in the 70′s, and the results have been highly surprising.
In november 2012, NASA announced that Messenger had revealed the presence of ice and frozen tar deep inside craters at the poles of Mercury, where sunlight never reaches and the temperatures is -200ºC, quite a contrast to the +400ºC at the lighted surface of the planet. Messenger has also done high-resolution maps of the surface of Mercury, down to the scale of a few meters, revealing the complex chemical composition of this highly-dense planet.
Now NASA has revealed a new colour-coded map of the surface, where the different compositions of the rocks are shown. What is surprising is the high amount of volatile compounts such as potassium or sulfur which most models of planet formation predict that they should evaporate during the early stages of formation. Mercury is therefore quite paradigmatic, with an enormous iron core that creates a large magnetic field and a surface with unexpected elements. New models will be needed to explain these, and astronomers are already thinking about diferent theories like diferents chemical conditions at the inner part of the nebula that created the solar system or an enormous impact at early formation stages that would have stripped Mercury of most of its rocky external layers.
So far, more observations are needed but we can enjoy already this fabulous colored view of that mistery planet that Mercury still is. The more orange areas are volcanic plains while the make-up of the rocks in the deep blue areas is unknown. Though Messenger was able to detect the abundance of individual elements on Mercury’s surface – including iron, titanium, sulphur and potassium – without rock samples to study, it is impossible to determine the exact compounds or minerals in which those elements are arranged.
The number of refereed papers published based on data from ESO and other telescopes over the period 1996 to the 2012. Credit: ESO
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) Library compiles the number of peer-reviewed papers published every year using the data obtained by the Astronomy comunity worldwide. They are able to produce this very nice statistic about which observatory is the most productive around.
For 2012, the ESO Telescopes have been the most productives with more than 870 peer-reviewed article, slightly ahead of NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) which has been the most productive telescope for the last 15 years. The Very Large Telescope/Very Large Telescope Interferometer of ESO, which is located at Atacama (Chile), is the single most productive ground based telescope nearly doubling the output of the Keck Telescopes, located at Mauna Kea, Hawaii (USA).
Some space-based telescopes like Chandra and XMM are seeing a decline in production the last few years since their operations are either over or closing to their end. They still produce quite an interesting amount of science. But the Astronomy community is more productive than ever with an increase in production every year, despite the decrease in budgets which has been hitting all the observatories in recent years. Congratulations to all!
Today is the 540th birthday of Nicolaus Copernicus (19/02/1473 – 24/05/1543), the polish astronomer and mathematician who changed our view of the Universe by stating that the Earth was just one planet revolving around the Sun, at the center of the Solar System. His book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium published in 1543, after his death, is probably one of the most important science books in history.
To mark this birthday, I invite you to discover the Symphony No.2 wrote by the polish composer Henryk Górecky (06/12/1933-12/11/2010). This symphony called “Copernican” was comissioned to him in 1972 to celebrate the 500th birthday of Copernicus in 1973. It is an impressive grand scale work for Solo Soprano, Baritone, Choir and Orchestra, consisting in two distinct movements. The text featured includes parts of Psalms 6, 135 and 145 as well as excerpts of Copernicus’ masterwork, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium.
Listen to the amazing finale of the symphony, close your eyes and let your mind float freely between the stars…
Todos estamos esperando el paso del asteroide 2012 DA14 (cómo verlo en directo o por internet) y esta mañana nos sorprende la noticia de un meteorito caído en Rusia, dejando más de 950 heridos y 3000 edificios dañados.
Esta caída fue vista por multitud de personas, muchas de ellas pudieron grabar el momento (gracias en gran medida a la costumbre que hay en ese país de colocar una cámara en el salpicadero del coche), lo subieron a Internet y ahora ya disponemos de una recopilación de varios de ellos en Youtube para disfrutar de los curiosos de estos fenómenos 
La imagen corresponde a un fragmento de este vídeo.
