Zion National Park, Utah
Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts
1/19/2017
11/23/2016
5/07/2016
Why Leaves Change Color in The Fall?
The primary thing that triggers the changing of colors in leaves is the length of day. However, moisture and temperature play a role as well. For instance, an extreme drought in the summer can delay somewhat the changing of the colors in fall. Why this is the case is not wholly understood, but it is possibly from the tree not being able to make as much food to store up for the winter, in the case of the drought, so it might be trying to push the envelope a little in terms of making food for a couple more weeks before needing to shed the leaves.
Temperature also plays a part in the ultimate vividness of the color. However, as far as the timing goes, seems to play a very small role given that trees of the same species at very high elevations, where it is colder, will have their leaves change color at nearly the exact same time as those of the same species at lower elevations on the same latitude line.
Primarily though, as the length of day shortens, at a certain point which varies by species, some mechanism in the tree will trigger it to begin the process of closing up the veins to the leaves and eventually shedding them, lest they freeze while the veins are still open which can potentially harm the tree.
There are three main things that give leaves their color. Those are: chlorophyll (green), which is necessary for photosynthesis; carotenoids, such as carotene and xanthophylls, which produce the orange and yellow colors, but whose roles are not entirely understood; and anthocyanins, which give us the shades of red and purple.
In the former two cases of chlorophyll and carotenoids, they are both present in the leaves during the summer, but the chlorophyll more or less covers up the carotenoids, so you see a mostly green leaf, rather than orange or yellow. The anthocyanins, on the other hand, are primarily produced as a result of glucose that is trapped in the leaves when the veins are closed off. These sugars then break down as a result of sunlight and produce the red and purple pigments.
During the summer, the plant is continually producing chlorophyll to aid in the production of glucose, which the tree uses for food. Once the day length decreases sufficiently, the tree gradually starts to decrease the production of chlorophyll and the veins to the leave slowly close off. When this happens, what you have left is the carotenoids and, depending on the species and environmental factors, possibly the produced anthocyanins.
5/06/2016
What Causes the Northern and Southern Lights
Simply put, these lights are caused by very fast moving electrons striking atoms in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, primarily oxygen and nitrogen atoms which make up most of our atmosphere. When this happens, it can put these atoms in an excited state. During the process with which they return to their normal state, they emit this excess energy in the form of visible photons.
So where do these fast moving electrons come from? Charged particles from the sun’s corona are constantly striking near the Earth and are more or less deflected by the Earth’s magnetic field, which in turn protects life on the Earth from being harmed by these solar winds. When these charged particles encounter the Earth’s magnetic field, they end up traveling along the field lines with some of them ending up interacting with the magnetic field lines, cutting across the field, thus producing a current which can accumulate to upwards of 10 million megawatts!
This current ends up creating a fairly unstable state in the magnetosphere. Occasionally, some of this current is discharged causing electrons in the magnetosphere to spiral down towards the poles and through the Earth’s upper atmosphere. As it descends into the atmosphere, it collides with primarily oxygen and nitrogen. When this happens, the atoms move to high energy orbitals. This state is fairly unstable for these atoms and they will return fairly quickly to their normal orbitals. To do so, they must release the excess energy they have stored up from this collision by emitting a photon. With enough of these atoms going from the high orbital state to the low orbital state, it will produce enough light to be viewable to the naked eye by people standing in appropriate locations on Earth.
5/05/2016
Carrots Used To Be Purple Before The 17th Century
before the 17th century, almost all cultivated carrots were purple.
The modern day orange carrot wasn’t cultivated until Dutch growers in the late 16th century took mutant strains of the purple carrot and gradually developed them into the sweet, plump, orange variety we have today. Before this, pretty much all carrots were purple with mutated versions occasionally popping up including yellow and white carrots. These were rarely cultivated and lacked the purple pigment anthocyanin.
It is thought that the modern day orange carrot was developed by crossing the mutated yellow and white rooted carrots as well as varieties of wild carrots, which are quite distinct from cultivated varieties.
Some think that the reason the orange carrot became so popular in the Netherlands was in tribute to the emblem of the House of Orange and the struggle for Dutch independence. This could be, but it also might just be that the orange carrots that the Dutch developed were sweeter tasting and more fleshy than their purple counterparts, thus providing more food per plant and being better tasting.
3/28/2016
3/21/2016
How The Heart Works ?!
I know what you’re thinking; I hope by the end of this article I can find out if it really is true that I can MacGyver an electrical cord together and shock my heart into restarting should it stop! Quick answer….. maybe, if you’re an electrical engineer with all the appropriate gear, or go buy an automatic external defibrillator (they’re really not that expensive). Before you budding electricians all rush on out to RadioShack for all the equipment, let’s find out how this beast of an organ works.
The heart is a two part pump, one part mechanical and one part electrical. The mechanical function of the heart is governed by the electrical system within the heart. That electrical system, in turn, can be affected by neurotransmitters from the brain (or fancy pacemakers created by the Dr. Frankenstein-like minds of the world). But since we’re only talking about the heart today, we will only focus on the ability of the electrical system of the heart. Should you want to know how the brain governs it, I direct you to the many medical schools around the country!
The heart is a four chambered pump. The top two chambers are called Atria, the bottom two are called Ventricles. They are separated from top to bottom by valves; the right and left sides are separated by a septum. So what makes the pump squeeze? Well the heart is a muscle, and like all muscles, when it gets shocked by electricity, it contracts. If you don’t believe me, just stick a fork in the nearest electrical socket and see if anything tenses up! (DISCLAIMER: Due to our lawyers incessant need to justify themselves, they advised us to say, “Don’t do that. It could cause you harm”). When the hearts muscle gets “shocked”, they contract and force the blood down its path. The valves I just spoke of are one way, and will not allow blood to flow back through the system. If it does, see your nearest physician cause death could be imminent!
The blood’s path through the heart starts in a vein called the Superior Vena Cava. Then it enters the right atrium, flows through the tricuspid valve into the right ventricle. From there it travels through the pulmonic valve into pulmonary arteries, then the lungs. Take a deep breath. Awe…… the sweet feeling of oxygen entering the blood! Now let it out, OOUU….. the halitosis laden Co2 leaving the body! Now back to the heart and into the left atrium, through the mitral valve and Walla! The blood is now in the “strongest” chamber of the heart, the left ventricle. From there it gets pumped through the aortic valve and into the aorta and out to the rest of the body!
How The Moon Was Formed
the moon isn’t as old as the Earth and was formed approximately 30–50 million years after the Solar System based on what is called ‘the giant impact theory’.
Although no one can say for sure exactly how our moon came to be, there a few hypothesis and theories of which the ‘the giant impact theory’ is the most compelling and widely accepted. In this theory, the Earth had no moon until it was struck by a rogue planet which instantly vaporized. The impact is said to have created a cloud that reached roughly 13,700 miles or 22,000 kilometers high, where it condensed into solid particles that orbited the Earth. Over time they aggregated into larger moonlets, which eventually combined to form the moon we know today.
This theory is supported by quite a bit of evidence such as: even though the Earth has a large iron core and the moon does not, the moon has exactly the same oxygen isotope composition as the Earth, unlike other planets formed in other parts of the Solar System. This indicates the moon should have been formed from material in Earth’s neighborhood. Another significant piece of evidence comes from the oldest record of Earth’s ocean tides ever found, which were 3.2-billion-year-old rocks from South Africa. Pinstriped circular sand-and-silt layers in the rocks were deposited by daily, fortnightly and monthly tidal cycles. If the moon formed elsewhere, then was captured intact by Earth’s gravity as some theories state, the moon’s orbit would have been extremely elliptical and tidal rock layers would not have shown such normal cycles.
Computer simulations modeling a giant impact are consistent with measurements of the angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system, and the small size of the lunar core. They also show that most of the Moon came from the impactor planet and not from Earth. The post-impact mixing of the vaporized material between the forming Earth and Moon could have equalized their isotopic compositions, but this again is just speculation.
3/16/2016
Why The Sky is Blue ?!
For the short answer, when light from the sun enters our atmosphere it collides with molecules in the air. The blue part of the light gets scattered more than the other parts during these collisions and thus makes the sky appear to our eyes as blue. If the light from the sun took a straight path down to our eyes with no scattering or absorption in the atmosphere, the sky would in fact look much as it does at night in the day time, which would be kind of awesome in my opinion.
So a little background. White light waves from the sun are in fact mixtures of all colors of the light spectrum. Anyone who’s ever had a prism knows that when white light shines through it, the light gets separated and you get a rainbow spectrum showing up on the other side. Humans can only see a portion of the total light spectrum of energy; we see from Violet, which has a wavelength of about 380 nanometers, to red which has a wavelength of about 720 nanometers. Descending from red to violet, we get orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo between the two.
Another needed piece of information is that the atmosphere of the Earth is made up of almost all nitrogen and oxygen.
So without getting too technical, what is happening here is that oxygen, which makes up 21% of the Earth’s atmosphere, has a diameter such that it fairly effectively scatters radiation that has a wavelength of around blue-ish light, while the reds, oranges, and others more or less passing straight through the atmosphere without being scattered much at all. So when you look up at the sky, everywhere you look looks blue as the blue portion of the light spectrum bounces off an oxygen molecule and into your eye.
It actually turns out that the Earth’s atmosphere is also scattering quite a bit of violet light as well. So why doesn’t the sky look more like a blueish/violet? This is for a few reasons. Most important is that our eyes are most sensitive to blue, red, and green. So our eyes are naturally more inclined to respond to blue over violet. Also important is that the sun doesn’t put out light at the same intensity at all wavelengths of the spectrum. In addition to this less amount, some of the violet also gets absorbed in the upper atmosphere; so not as much of it gets to our eyes. So it turns out more or less a combination of these three things makes it so we see the sky as blue instead of violet or blueish/violet. It is interesting to note however, that our eyes are picking up some of the violet and indigo being scattered. Without this, we would in fact see the sky as more of a blueish green. This is because the green cones in our eyes respond to the small amounts of scattered yellow light wavelengths to some extent; meanwhile our eye’s red cones respond to the indigo/violet somewhat which balances things out a bit and so we only perceive the blue being scattered.
So you might now be asking, “Why is the sky red or orange when the sun is setting?” What’s going on here is that as the sun is setting, the light you are seeing from it is having to travel through a lot more atmosphere given your angle to the sun. Light at lower wavelengths gets scattered more than at the higher wavelengths. So less of the blue light gets to you as it’s being scattered more than, for instance, yellow, orange, and red. In this case, if it is a relatively clear day, the sky will appear more yellow than blue as you watch the sunset because the blue is being scattered so much it never reaches you or at least, not as much of it, but the yellow isn’t scattered nearly as much but still scattered enough to make the sky look yellow. If it is dusty or there are a lot of other types of particles in the air along the path to where you are looking at the sun, the sky will appear more red. If there is a lot of salt in the air, such as at sea, it will appear more orange.
2/29/2016
Bachalpsee, Switzerland
Bachalpsee, Switzerland
Bachalpsee (also known as Bachse or Bachalp lake) is a lake located in centeral Switzerland.
The lake is situated at 2,265 meters above seal level and is divided into two lakes (the smaller is a little lower).
During summer and on clear days, the lake acts as a mirror and a truly captivating piece of nature.
2/28/2016
Door to Hell, Turkmenistan
Door to Hell, Turkmenistan
Derweze is a small village in Turkmenistan, not far from the village, in the middle of the Karakum Desert there is a giant burning hole in the ground! This hole is called by the locals “The Door to Hell”.
Soviet geologists (back in the early 70’s) held surveys around the area when in one drilling their rig collapsed into the ground creating a 70 meter wide hole in the desert.
Since the hole was filled with poisonous and inflammable gases, they decided to light it up so the fire will consume the gas, they miscalculated and the fire is burning constantly since 1971.
Soviet geologists (back in the early 70’s) held surveys around the area when in one drilling their rig collapsed into the ground creating a 70 meter wide hole in the desert.
Since the hole was filled with poisonous and inflammable gases, they decided to light it up so the fire will consume the gas, they miscalculated and the fire is burning constantly since 1971.
12/08/2015
5/30/2015
Brinicle - pic and video
What looks like the aquatic version of the Nothing from The NeverEnding Story up there is actually ... well, no, turns out that analogy is pretty accurate. The Brinicle is an icy tentacle of doom that instantly freezes any sea creatures unlucky enough to be caught in that ominous river of frozen death up there. And you really have to watch it in time-lapse action to see how disturbing it is.
It happens when newly formed sea ice creates very salty brine that is denser than the sea water. When that brine inevitably sinks to the bottom, the water surrounding it freezes over, leaving an "icy sheath" in its wake. As soon as the frozen brine hits the bottom, the surrounding sea floor is enveloped in a catacomb of ice, killing any life caught in its path.
That's right: The Brinicle is the literal icy finger of death.
Firebows
High altitude cirrus clouds sometimes contain a large number of hexagonal ice crystals, and if these are struck by sunlight at just the right angle, with the sun elevated at least 58 degrees, the sky suddenly looks like somebody waved a giant magnet in front of an old-school computer monitor.
