This picture is something we have never seen before. It is the further and best way of showing how big space is. This picture was taken by using the NASA Hubble Telescope.  This picture is so big that it takes 4.3 GB of disk space. It is 1.5 billion pixels, and it was created by taking 411 images of the Andromeda galaxy, which is the nearest galaxy to ours.

NASA’s Hubble Telescope

The interesting thing about this photo is that you really get a deep look into the millions of stars. From a far glance of the photo you can clearly see plenty of stars with a good amount of black around them. But as you zoom in closer and closer into the black area you start seeing stars that you didn’t originally see. And the more you zoom in the more you realize that it is not black at all, but the closer you get the more tiny stars you see. It is really amazing they way they did this, and it is the best visual example to show how unimaginably big space is.

Watching this video makes you feel very very small. It is helping us move towards the understanding of how small Earth really is. This video takes you through over 100 million stars, and glances over 40,000 light years worth of stars.

Ducks have evolved a skill to stay away from predators that is pretty cool. Everything needs sleep, and if your not a rat or a bird that can easily isolate itself from predators, then your a duck or just a normal land animal that needs a way to not get eaten at night. And ways have obviously evolved for these animals to stay safe over time.

For a duck, that safety comes from sleeping in a group of ducks. When the ducks fall asleep the fall asleep in a group, or a line. Where the middle ducks get a normal nights rest. But for the ducks on the outside, they do something different. The ducks use something called “Unihemispheric slow-wave sleep”. This is where the duck allows half of its brain to sleep, and the other half to stay fully asleep.

The half of the brain that is awake has the full activity of an awake bird, which allows it to sleep with one eye open. Researchers tested this by having four ducks in a tank. And as they rotated the outside ducks with the inside ducks of the line they were able to switch roles. Where the birds on the outside were able to fall fully asleep, and the bird that was on the inside but now on the outside was about to turn half of its brain on to be aware of any approaching predators. When the researches threw a test predator at them, the birds were able to react with in a fifth of a second.

I would like to look more into how animals have evolved to be able to get their sleep and be safe at the same time. Its not a topic that is really noticed, but it really is a really cool thing to look into, thinking about the thousands of years that skill took to develop and evolve, its really quit amazing. I will definitely try to get another blog on a cool sleep technique, and with that I would like to leave of with a #STAYCURIOUS

Humans used to think any living thing couldn’t live without light. But little did we  were far wrong. The ocean contains 99 percent of the living space on our planet. And in that 99 percent, 95 percent of it remains unexplored. The reason why the ocean remains so unexplored is because of the water pressure. The record for the furthest a scuba diver has made it is 332 meters. To put in perspective the height of the Empire State Building is 443 meters. Around 535 meters, the water pressure is starting to become pretty intense. It would have the equivalent pressure of a polar bear standing on a quarter.

Around 1000 meters you reach the twilight zone. After this point light ceases to exist and it becomes pitch black. The water pressure here would be about the same as standing on the surface of the planet Venus. Around 1,828 meters we would reach the deepest point of the grand canyon.

When you reach 2,000 meters is when you would start to see lifeforms that are very different from what we are used to. And also life that is living with no light. This fish is only visible if light is shined onto it, as it reflects from its surrounding, and since it is pitch black, all you can see is its eyes.

As we reach the Abyssal zone at 4,000 meters, water pressure reaches to 11,000 pounds per square inch. These depths are home to alien like creatures, like the more famous fish, the angler fish.

Around 4,267 Meters is the average depth of the ocean where you would expect to hit the floor, but parts of the ocean goes way deeper than this. At 6,000 meters you reach the Hadal Zone. Water preacher is here is 1,100 times what we experience on land. It would be like carrying 50 Boeing 747 jumbo jets. You would be crushed in a second.  When you reach 8,848 meters you would reach the height of mount everest if it was upside down and under water.

The furthest a human has reached in the ocean was by Don Walsh in his submarine in 1960, at a depth of 10,916 meters. A window eventually cracked which forced them to resurface, which would take about 5 hours. At 10,972 we reach the average heigh of an airplane flight. So if you ever looked out the window of a flight you can get a good perspective for how deep that is.

Finally at 10,994 meters we have hit the deepest known ocean. But we are almost certain that the ocean goes even deeper than this, but has yet to be discovered. We estimate that only 5% of the ocean floor is accurately mapped. So you can’t imagine the crazy wildlife there is down there. The deep ocean is such a mysterious thing, where we find such mysterious creatures with such amazing ways of living life. Animals come up with unique ways to attract prey, or stay away from predators.

More than ever scientists are challenging these harsh conditions by coming up with technology allow us to explore. But it will take a very long time until we begin to even understand the ocean and the billions of creatures that live in it. I am willing to bet we could find dozens of living dinosaurs in the deep depths of the deep ocean.

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The Moon of Earth is a definitely a special moon. It is layered with thick layers of dust. The Apollo astronauts found it difficult to operate on this sticky dust surface. The dust was created by micro-meteorites colliding to the surface. The dust particles are just constantly grinding each other up for 4 billion years now.

The Apollo astronauts helped prove a theory, that Charles Darwin’s son hypothesized in 1878, that the moon is moving away from the Earth. The astronauts put a mirror on the moon, and astranomers shined a laser at it and measured the length of the laser. They found out that indeed the moon is moving away by about 3.5 cm per year.

The distance from the Earth to the Moon is 234,000 miles. It is locked in a phase lock with the gravity from earth, which means from earth we only see side of the moon. With the moon being 1/4 the size of the Earth it being in a phase lock changes the day to day ratio of moon to Earth. If you’re on the moon for one day,  27 earth days will have passed.

If you look up to the moon you’ll notice a face on it or, the man on the moon. It looks like theres a face on the moon. That was created by astroids railing into the moon creating craters that are 700 miles across. The larger craters were filled with lava which mad it darker than the rest of the moon. This big dips in the moon are called maria, which in latin translates to seas.

The moon exists in the vacuum of space, due to having no atmosphere. So the sky is always dark, because there no molecules to spread the sun’s light. Heat doesn’t stay as consistent in the darkness of space. As the moons temperatures can vary from 240 degrees F, and get to -240 F.

With the moon being one of the bigger moons we know about relative to the object it is orbiting it creates changes on the Earth. It has a gravitational effect on Earth, it changes the tides of our ocean. Tides are pulled back and forward, the tide goes towards the moon, so in result the opposite side of the ocean drys up. If you really think about this it is a crazy thing. With the mass of the ocean being as big as it is, that the moon can change position of the entire body. In some instances the difference is 55 feet.

The moon keeps the Earth in check. It is keeping the Earth tilt where it is supposed to be, which allows us to have our normal season. If we had a smaller moon this would not be a thing.

Have you ever looked up and thought the moon and sun looked the same size. I have but I never really looked into it. Well it turns out it is one of the craziest coincidence I have ever heard. So the reason they appear the same size is because the sun is 400 times the Moon’s diameter, and it is also 400 times apart from each other, which makes it a perfect fit for solar eclipses.

I have such a new outlook on the moon. Now noticing facts that I overlooked as a kid really turns out to be so interesting. And that really could be a lesson to not overlook little things, and look into things we take advantage of, and many to

#StayCurious