Milestone: China's Zhurong

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Sara Webb, PhD candidate in Astrophysics, Swinburne University of Technology

Rebecca Allen, Swinburne Space Office Project Coordinator | Manager Swinburne Astronomy Productions, Swinburne University of Technology

China's Zhurong rover landed safely on Mars on May 15, making China only the third country to successfully land a rover on the red planet.

More impressively still, China is the first Mars-going nation to carry out an orbiting, landing and rovering operation as its first mission.

Planetary scientist Roberto Orosei told Nature China is "doing in a single go what NASA took decades to do," while astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell described China's decision to include a rover in its maiden Mars outing as a "very gutsy move."

Where did it land?
Zhurong, named after the god of fire in Chinese mythology, separated from the Tianwen-1 orbiter and touched down close to the site of previous NASA missions, on a vast plain called Utopia Planitia.  TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...

Enjoy

 

Democrats are LOST

 

SIMZ ART on Instagram

 

Nanotechnology

 

Come Together

 

Two Short Clips

 

Cats

Muscled Females

 

Peas & Ham Soup

FROM: Angela Casley


This soup is my take on pea and ham with a few extra vegetables. It’s a great way to get your greens and feed a crowd. Soup is ideal to have on hand as a frozen meal too, so make extra and portion it out. Discover more of our favourite nourishing soup recipes.

VEGETABLE-PACKED PEA SOUP RECIPE
Serves 8

25g butter
1 leek, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 ham hock
1 litre water
3 cups dried split peas
4 cups shredded silverbeet
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Few extra leaves of silverbeet

1. In a large pot melt the butter. Add the leek and garlic, cooking for 3 or 4 minutes (it doesn’t have to completely soften). Add the hock, water and split peas, bringing to a simmer for 2 hours. Check the water level every so often and give it a good stir. Add the silverbeet and continue to cook for another 30 minutes. Remove the hock, shaking off any vegetables, and set aside.

2. Puree the soup until smooth, then return to your pot. Season with salt and pepper. Shred the meat from the hock and add back into the soup.

3. Serve hot with a few extra silverbeet leaves folded through and some hot crusty bread or toast.

Ducks

 

Most Complex Song Ever

 

Largest Migration Nightly

Bob McNally from Outdoor Life writes...

At dusk, countless millions of marine animals such as fish, squid, and crustaceans swim toward the surface to feed, reversing direction and returning to deeper water at dawn. This is the finding of new research by scientists with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

The researchers say the cover of night affords greater protection from larger predators, allowing sea life to swim more safely toward the surface, where they feed in energy-rich waters. These findings were made possible by innovative audio technology that recorded when animals migrated from the depths to the surface, and back again.

Their research documents sunset and sunrise movements of animals between the surface and the twilight zone, a layer of water that stretches from 660 to 3,300 feet deep. They explain that deep-sea creatures stay in these deeper waters during the day to avoid tuna, salmon, seabirds, and other predators that rely on sight to hunt their prey.

“Their movements are not just pre-programmed to go up or go down,” one of the researchers, Benoit-Bird, explained to Phys.org. “There’s a lot more nuance and decisions to be made night to night and even minute to minute, based on how hungry they are and how much of a risk there is.”

Scientists were able to record tens of thousands of single targets rising from the depths using the new audio technology. Analysis of that acoustic data revealed larger, more visible animals may delay their dinnertime migration up to 80 minutes after sunset. Meanwhile, smaller animals began their migration to shallower waters sooner than larger animals—just 20 minutes after sundown—and faster swimmers migrated earlier than weaker ones.

Squid, for example, are fast-swimming creatures, thanks to jet propulsion. They are better able to elude predators than many fish or crustaceans, so they are the first to leave the depths for the surface.

“The most interesting thing we found was how dramatically animals can change their migration when predators are nearby,” Benoit-Bird said, referencing dolphins as an example of predators that can immediately impact squid migration.


Their findings shed new light on why deep-sea animals embark on their massive migration each night. Studying this massive migration is critical to understanding ocean health, says Benoit-Bird, calling the migration a “biological conveyor belt” that moves energy and carbon around in the oceans.

Sign of Alien Life

The methane wafting from Enceladus may be a sign that life teems in the Saturn moon's subsurface sea, a new study reports.

In 2005, NASA's Cassini Saturn orbiter discovered geysers blasting particles of water ice into space from "tiger stripe" fractures near Enceladus' south pole. That material, which forms a plume that feeds Saturn's E ring (the planet's second-outermost ring), is thought to come from a huge ocean of liquid water that sloshes beneath the moon's icy shell.

And there's more than just water ice in the plume. During numerous close flybys of the 313-mile-wide (504 kilometers) Enceladus, Cassini spotted many other compounds as well — for example, dihydrogen (H2) and a variety of carbon-containing organic compounds, including methane (CH4).

The dihydrogen and methane are particularly intriguing to astrobiologists. The H2 is likely being produced by the interaction of rock and hot water on Enceladus' seafloor, scientists have said, suggesting that the moon has deep-sea hydrothermal vents — the same type of environment that may have been life's cradle here on Earth.

In addition, H2 provides energy for some Earth microbes that produce methane from carbon dioxide, in a process called methanogenesis. Something similar could be happening on Enceladus, especially given that Cassini also spotted carbon dioxide, and a surprising bounty of methane, in the moon's plume.

"We wanted to know: Could Earth-like microbes that 'eat' the dihydrogen and produce methane explain the surprisingly large amount of methane detected by Cassini?" study co-lead author Régis Ferrière, an associate professor in the University of Arizona's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, said in a statement.  TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...

Mindful Breathing

 

Voters

Cubans Protest COMMUNISM

A New Week

Some say that the new week begins on Sunday while some say the new week begins on Monday and I am sure that there are other opinions as to when the old week ends and the new week begins, but for me, I like it beginning on a Monday and ending on a Sunday.

So, here we are on a Monday and the beginning of a new week.

It is supposed to be another hot and humid day in this area so most of my day is going to be spent inside; however, this morning I am on my screened in back porch enjoying the rising sun with 2 of my 3 cats, along with my ever present YETI cup of decaf coffee with Cappuccino Mix...  but only two spoons per coffee pod.

This week is uneventful except for Wednesday and Thursday where I have early morning treatments.  Wednesday is my IVIG to help boost my immune system after13 years of monthly cancer treatments and Thursday is my monthly injection of Opdivo that is designed to suppress my metastatic melanoma.  Additionally, I take 2-140 mg pills of imbruvica daily to suppress my non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma.

For a month of two, I have managed to arrange my doctor's appointments so that I have a complete 2 weeks where I don't have to go anywhere...  

SIX years ago, my wife and I could not wait to go on some type of vacation at least every other month...  and we did for about 3-4 years, then we got tired of it...  right about the time that COVID-19 hit the US and for over a year, we went NOWHERE...  and we became nowhere people sitting in our nowhere land making plans for nobody.

Damned if we didn't like staying at home...  and, our cats like us staying at home as well...  now we don't want to go NOWHERE or is it anywhere?

What's Going On In CUBA?

 

Matt Damon Plays Trump Supporter