The bottom of the world is a frozen desert incapable of supporting human life. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to see. Gabrielle Walker, author of the new book Antarctica: An Intimate Portrait of a Mysterious Continent, should know; she's been there five times. Walker spent months traveling between far-flung bases and meeting snowsuit-clad scientists.
Above are some of her destination highlights.
Illustration: Radio
The biggest known volcano in the solar system is Olympus Mons on Mars, discovered by Mariner 9 in 1971. The mountain towers nearly 22 km (14 miles) above the surrounding plain, more than three times Mount Everest's elevation above sea level. It is more than 600 km across and occupies an area similar in size to Arizona. The cliff around the outer edge of the volcano is 6 km (3.7 miles) high. Olympus Mons is a shield volcano, similar to the much smaller Hawaiian Islands on Earth.
The image above is a mosaic from images taken by the Viking 1 orbiter in 1978. Below is a computer-generated image of Olympus Mons based on thousands of laser-altimeter elevation measurements made by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft.
Images: Top: NASA/JPL. Bottom: NASA/MOLA Science Team/ O. de Goursac, Adrian Lark
Nearly 200,000 light-years from Earth, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, floats in space, in a long and slow dance around our galaxy. Vast clouds of gas within it slowly collapse to form new stars. In turn, these light up the gas clouds in a riot of colors, visible in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is ablaze with star-forming regions. From the Tarantula Nebula, the brightest stellar nursery in our cosmic neighborhood, to LHA 120-N 11, part of which is featured in this Hubble image, the small and irregular galaxy is scattered with glowing nebulae, the most noticeable sign that new stars are being born.
Image: ESA/NASA/Hubble [high-resolution]
Caption: NASA
At high latitudes every winter carbon dioxide condenses from Mars' atmosphere onto the surface forming a seasonal polar cap. In the spring, the Sun shines through this semi-translucent layer of dry ice and heats the ground below.
The ice sublimates (goes directly from ice to gas) on the underside of the seasonal ice layer and the gas is trapped. When the pressure is high enough the ice cracks and ruptures allowing the gas to escape. When the conditions are optimal this gas may condense locally near the source, forming a bright fan.
The dark fans are fine bits of surface material that get carried along by the escaping gas up to above the surface ice. Fine particles are also carried downwind and deposited in dark fans on top of the ice, where they may slowly sink into the ice. The rows of dark fans outline the original crack in the ice that allowed the gas to escape.
Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona [high-resolution]
Caption: Candy Hansen
Petition Signatures: ~8,700
“All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology, Big Bang theory -- all that is lies straight from the pit of hell,” congressman Paul Broun (R-GA) said in October. He continued, “There are a lot of scientific data, that I’ve found out as a scientist [Broun holds an M.D.], that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don’t believe that’s Earth’s but about 9,000 years old.”
Filed Jan. 18, this petition suggests that Broun’s preference for religious teachings affects the decisions he makes as a member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.
That’s right: Broun is a member of the congressional committee that oversees non-defense federal research at agencies like NASA, NOAA, NSF, and USGS. In 1958, congress created the committee’s predecessor -- the House Committee on Science and Astronautics -- after the Soviets launched Sputnik 1. One of the committee’s first acts was to create NASA. Over the years, its reach expanded to include environment, alternative energy sources, weather, and atomic energy research programs.
Video: Bridge Project 21/YouTube
This mosaic of the four highest-resolution images of Ariel represents the most detailed Voyager 2 picture of this satellite of Uranus. The images were taken through the clear filter of Voyager's narrow-angle camera on Jan. 24, 1986, at a distance of about 130,000 kilometers (80,000 miles). Ariel is about 1,200 km (750 mi) in diameter; the resolution here is 2.4 km (1.5 mi). Much of Ariel's surface is densely pitted with craters 5 to 10 km (3 to 6 mi) across. These craters are close to the threshold of detection in this picture. Numerous valleys and fault scarps crisscross the highly pitted terrain. Voyager scientists believe the valleys have formed over down-dropped fault blocks (graben); apparently, extensive faulting has occurred as a result of expansion and stretching of Ariel's crust. The largest fault valleys, near the terminator at right, as well as a smooth region near the center of this image, have been partly filled with deposits that are younger and less heavily cratered than the pitted terrain. Narrow, somewhat sinuous scarps and valleys have been formed, in turn, in these young deposits. It is not yet clear whether these sinuous features have been formed by faulting or by the flow of fluids.
JPL manages the Voyager project for NASA's Office of Space Science.
Image: NASA/JPL [high-resolution]
Caption: NASA
Photo:Mary Keim/Flickr
A new image from the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope in Chile shows a beautiful view of clouds of cosmic dust in the region of Orion. While these dense interstellar clouds seem dark and obscured in visible-light observations, APEX’s LABOCA camera can detect the heat glow of the dust and reveal the hiding places where new stars are being formed. The image shows the region around the reflection nebula NGC 1999 in visible light, with the APEX observations overlaid in brilliant orange tones that seem to set the dark clouds on fire.
Image: ESO/APEX (MPIfR/ESO/OSO)/T. Stanke et al./Digitized Sky Survey 2 [high-resolution]
Caption: ESO
The haunting Veil nebula appears here as a gorgeous tangle of gas and dust. This remnant is the result of a supernova that exploded 5,000 to 10,000 years ago and can be found 1,500 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus.