"SEIFUL pentru SFARSITUL LUMII"

 Un siloz din Arctica pastreaza 100 de milioane din plantele noastre. Svalbard International Seed Vault (SISV), cunoscut si ca “seiful pentru sfarsitul lumii", este conceput pentru a pastra cate un esantion din toate varietatile de plante cunoscute de om.

Obiectivul este de a-l transforma, intr-un fel de arca a lui Noe, o magazie enorma care contine esantioane din plantele necesare pentru ca o fiinta umana sa reinceapa cucerirea Pamantului daca s-ar produce un dezastru ecologic, fie datorata unei cauze naturale, fie actiunii omului.

Cuba zoo gets ready for Namibian wild animals

The National Zoological Park in Cuba's capital, Havana, is busy preparing for a delivery that it hopes will transform its fortunes: 146 wild animals, donated by the government of Namibia.

The operation is so large it has been dubbed Noah's Ark II.

The vast majority of the animals, which include lions, leopards and buffalo, will be flown from Africa at the end of September, followed several months later by 10 baby rhinos and five elephants.

HERODOTUS

Today, we visit Herodotus. The University of Houston’s College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.

From twenty five hundred years ago, Herodotus said these words:

Here are presented the results of the enquiry carried out by Herodotus of Halicarnassus. The purpose is to prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time, and to preserve the fame of the important and remarkable achievements produced by both Greeks and non-Greeks ...

Cele mai ciudate boli din lume

Oameni cu pielea albastra, sindromul vampirului, picioare gigantice? Copiii se sperie atunci cand aud sau vad asemenea probleme de sanatate, dar ele sunt cat se poate de reale si grave.

Totusi, departe de necazul omului, prima reactie a fiecaruia este sa se minuneze de ce ciudatenii a lasat natura. Iata care sunt cele mai incredibile boli din lume, conform Oddee:

Sonchis din Sais

Sonchis din Sais (greacă: Σῶγχις ὁ Σαΐτης) a fost un preot egiptean din secolul al VI-lea î.Hr. care este menționat în scrierile grecești pentru relatările sale despre Atlantida. Statutul său de figură istorică este o chestiune dezbătută.

În dialogurile dintre Timaios și Critias ale lui Platon, scrise în jurul anului de 360 î.Hr., se referă (prin vocea lui Critias) cum Solon, om de stat atenian, (638 - 558 î.Hr.), a călătorit în Egipt și în orașul Sais i-a întâlnit pe preoții zeiței Neith. Un preot în vârstă îi relatează că acum 9.000 de ani, Atena a fost în conflict cu o mare putere, Atlantida, care a fost distrusă de o catastrofă.

Probes Will Live in Van Allen Belts

The twin Radiation Belt Storm Probes will fly through the Van Allen Belts for two years, measuring charged particles, plasma waves and magnetic fields.

It’s a dirty job, but two NASA spacecraft are ready to do it.

On August 23rd, NASA plans to launch two spacecraft into the radiation belts around Earth. The twin Radiation Belt Storm Probes will investigate high-energy particles held in place by Earth’s magnetic field. Those fast-moving protons and electrons form two bands known as the Van Allen radiation belts, after physicist James Van Allen, who discovered them in 1958.

Wreck of Robert Falcon Scott’s Ship Terra Nova Discovered

A century after Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated trek to the South Pole, the ship that brought him to Antarctica has been found off the coast of Greenland. SS Terra Nova sank into the North Atlantic while carrying supplies during World War II.

One hundred years ago, British explorer Robert Falcon Scott died on an Antarctic ice shelf after a failed attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole. SS Terra Nova, the former whaler that had carried Scott’s expedition to Antarctica, sailed home without its captain and resumed its humble career as a seal fishing ship. Four decades later, while transporting supplies during World War II, Terra Nova, too, met an untimely end in the far reaches of the planet, sinking off the coast of Greenland after hitting ice.

Einstein discovered that gravity is not a force but a curvature

Albert Einstein called it “the happiest thought” of his life.

It was almost certainly the most revolutionary — and that, in the case of Einstein, is saying a lot.

At the time, the young scientist was struggling to broaden the framework of his special theory of relativity, which explains the behaviour of bodies in constant motion with respect to each other but does not account for acceleration, deceleration or the effects of gravity.

Highest Possible Resolution Color Images Achieved

This is an enlargement of
 an image just 50x50 micrometers, 
printed at the highest definition possible.

The highest possible resolution images — about 100,000 dots per inch — have been achieved, and in full-color, with a printing method that uses tiny pillars a few tens of nanometers tall. The method, described today in Nature Nanotechnology, could be used to print tiny watermarks or secret messages for security purposes, and to make high-density data-storage discs.

Each pixel in these ultra-resolution images is made up of four nanoscale posts capped with silver and gold nanodisks. By varying the diameters of the structures (which are tens of nanometers) and the spaces between them, it’s possible to control what color of light they reflect. Researchers at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore used this effect, called structural color, to come up with a full palette of colors. As a proof of principle, they printed a 50×50-micrometre version of the ‘Lena’ test image, a richly colored portrait of a woman that is commonly used as a printing standard.

New impact crater in the Canadian arctic revealed

Last week, NASA’s Curiosity Rover made its historic landing on Mars. And while scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena California get ready to examine the environs of Gale crater, a new impact feature was revealed by researchers right here on Earth.

Two years ago, surveyors for the Natural Resources Canada Geo-Mapping for Energy and Minerals program noted an unusual geological feature on Victoria Island in the high Canadian Arctic. This 25 km-wide circular feature displayed signs of tilted strata, shatter cones, and fractured radial lines atypical of the region, but typical of a meteorite impact.