What is the use science our life

Ethane in the sky

  • On March nights, we were treated to the glorious spectacle of Hyakutake spreading across the sky. Astronomers from all over the Earth turned to look at the comet. They were well rewarded.
  • The Hubble Space Telescope got the first-ever look from the earth at the icy nucleus inside a comet. (It is just around 2 kilometers in size.) A comet was seen giving off X-rays faint for the first time, but because Hyakutake passed only 15 lakh kilometers from the earth. They were caught by an X-ray telescope.

 

  • Other astronomers have been busy looking at the spectrum of the comet.
  • This usually gives a lot of information about the compounds in the comet (Jantar Mantar, Sep-Oct ’95). Michael Mumma and Michael Di Santi found methane in the comet, forming almost 1% of the comet’s ice.
  • Until now, methane has only been found in the planets (such as Saturn) and their moons (like Titan). Happy at their success, Mumma and DiSanti then looked even more carefully at the spectral then even more carefully at the spectral lines of the comet.
  • They found the lines of ethane, a compound that has not been found in space before. Ethane is another 1% of the comet’s ice.
  • They are looking at the lines again. Who knows, they might even find something like naphthalene!

 

Rotation of the Earth

  • How fast does the Earth rotate? In 24 hours, obviously, for that is how we define our day.
  • That is how fast the surface of the Earth, where we live, rotates. What about other parts of the earth.
  • That seems a silly question. Because if, say, from 100 kilometers below the surface, the inside of the earth rotated at a different speed, the friction between that and the outside would split the crust apart. So the whole Earth has to rotate at the same speed.
  • Have you experimented with a rotating egg? But that question is not silly after all. Below the crust of the Earth lies the mantle, and below that lies the core.
  • The core of the earth is believed to be iron. It is liquid up to some depth, but the innermost core is solid iron. It must be something worth seeing, huge iron crystal 2400 kilometers in diameter, as massive as the Moon.
  • Science is a way of knowing about the world. At once, a process, a product, and an institution, science enables people to construct new knowledge and use the information to achieve desired ends. That gives the Earth freedom.
  • Science Literacy: Concepts, Contexts, and Consequences. Science News is an American bi-weekly magazine devoted to short articles about new scientific and technical developments, typically gleaned from recent scientific and technical journals. Wikipedia

Publisher: Maya Ajmera

First issue date: 1922

  • People also search for Scientific American, New Scientist, Science. The landmark report released yesterday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has left many people reeling about our planet's current and future state. But Tamsin Edwards at King’s College London, a lead author on the report, says it is understandable that it takes time for the gravity of the situation to sink in. “I think many people aren’t that aware that we have already committed ourselves to irreversible changes. That is a profound thing to take on board,” she says.
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  • Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2286579-ipcc-author-tamsin-edwards-still-possible-to-limit-warming-to-1-5c/#ixzz73KP3ZQkS.

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