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Spaceman Gennady Padalka creates world record by spending 804 days on ISS….

July 8, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

ARussian cosmonaut has achieved an astonishing feat by spending most number of days on the International Space Station (ISS). Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka has officially set a new Guinness world record by spending 804 days on the ISS.

Padalka, who is also the commander of the crew on the ISS, surpassed cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, former Russian Air Force officer who spent 803 days, nine hours and 41 minutes in the space, across six mission from 1998 to 2005. In addition, Padalka is scheduled to return to earth in September this year and by then he would have spend a total of 877 days in space.

Born on June 21, 1958, in Krasnodar, Russia; Padalka graduated from Eisk Military Aviation College in 1979; in 1994 he left UNESCO International Center of Instruction Systems, where he was an engineer–ecologist. After graduation from the Military College in 1979, Gennady Padalka served as a pilot and a senior pilot in the Air Force. In 1989, he was selected as a cosmonaut candidate to start training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. In 1991, Padalka was qualified as a test cosmonaut. Since then he never looked back and became the most experienced cosmonaut.

Coming to his personal life, Padalka is married to Irina Anatolievna Padalka (Ponomareva). They have three daughters, Yulia, Ekaterina and Sonya. Gennady enjoys the theater, parachute sport and diving.

Moreover, ISS is a space station that was launched in 1998.ISS is the largest artificial satellite body that orbits earth nearly 400 km above the surface and it can be seen with naked eye. Recently a man clicked a photo of ISS orbiting the earth. ISS moves at a very high speed and it completes 15.54 orbits per day.

Source….www.tecake.com

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Strange But True …!!!

July 8, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Strange But True Facts from Nature

Some days, a good dose of fiction will blow your mind, but today your mind can be blown with a good old dose of truth, brought to you by science. These fascinating facts lend credence to the saying that truth is stranger than fiction. Here are 16 strange tidbits that even a master writer couldn’t think up on his or her own.

Rogue planets

random science

Did you know there are millions of rogue planets hurtling through the galaxy? They do not orbit stars, and drift through empty space. There are supposedly billions of these in the Milky Way galaxy.

Giant dragonflies

random science

The Meganeura dragonfly lived 300 million years ago and was no small pest. It had a wingspan measuring over 2 feet wide.

Slow coach moon

random science

The moon slows down Earth. Every century the moon’s rotation adds 1.7 milliseconds onto a day. If you do some math, 350 million years back the year was 385 days long.

Marijuana bullseye

random science

The system in charge of regulating human mood, appetite, pain sensation and memory is called the endocannabinoid system. This is the same system that the THC in marijuana targets.

Oranges that aren’t orange

random science

Some orange species growing close to the equator stay green, despite becoming ripe. These species are exposed to direct sunlight, causing them to retain their green chlorophyll. Farmers use ethylene gas, cold shocking or wax to remove the chlorophyll because consumers won’t buy green oranges.

Tallest cliff in the solar system

random science

The tallest cliff in our solar system is called Verona Rupes. Located on Uranus’ moon Miranda, this staggering tall cliff is 6.2 miles high.

The Tunguska Event

random science

In 1908, an asteroid exploded 5 miles above Earth’s surface. The reason? Earth’s thick atmosphere. Fortunately, it landed in a remote part of Russia so nobody was hurt. Unfortunately, it knocked over some 80 million trees.

The Great Flood

random science

5.3 million years back, the Mediterranean Sea had been cut off and dried up. A massive flood, The Zanclean Flood, caused water from the Atlantic Ocean to spill through the Gibraltar Strait over several months, refilling the sea.

Corona heat

random science

The plasma surrounding the sun, called the Corona is actually hundreds of times hotter than the sun’s surface. This baffles scientists, who are still trying to figure out why.

Where lightning is likely to strike twice

random science

Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo has the most lightning on the planet. There are 150 nights of lightning per year, 10 hours a day and approximately 280 times per hour.

Best toaster in the world

random science

Source….www.ba-bamail.com

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Most Dangerous and Strange Airfields in the World ….

July 5, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Source….www.you tube.com

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Image of the Day….Lenticular Clouds Look Like UFOs….

July 3, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Enjoy these photos and a video of beautiful lenticular clouds taken in places around the world, and shared with us by EarthSky friends on Facebook and Google+.

These lens-shaped clouds typically form where stable moist air flows over a mountain or a range of mountains. When this happens, a series of large-scale standing waves may form on the mountain’s downwind side. If the temperature at the crest of the wave drops to the dew point, moisture in the air may condense to form lenticular clouds. As the moist air moves back down into the trough of the wave, the cloud may evaporate back into vapor. So lenticular can appear and disappear relatively quickly. Plus they’re not familiar to people who live in low-lying or flat terrain. And, just to confound things, lenticular clouds have also been known to form in non-mountainous places, as the result of shear winds created by a front. For all of these reasons, lenticular clouds are often mistaken for UFOs (or “visual cover” for UFOs). Enjoy the photos!

Angela Mosley caught this lenticular cloud from Denver, Colorado in December, 2014

John Lloyd Griffith in north Wales captured this lenticular cloud on December, 2013.

Bottom line: Photos and video of lenticular clouds in various parts of the world, from EarthSky’s community on Facebook and G+.

source…..www.earthsky.org

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Image of the Day…Sunset…

June 27, 2015Natarajan1 Comment

Sunset over Greece

A beautiful sunset on one of the long days of summer.

Nikolaos Pantazis posted this photo to EarthSky Facebook a few days before the summer solstice. He wrote:

Every year, on the days around summer solstice, the setting sun aligns with that rock, near the village of Platanos, Peloponnese, Greece.

Source….www.earthsky.org

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” Birds’ Eye View …This is What the Birds Get to See..” !!!

June 25, 2015June 25, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

What Wonderful Sights Birds See From Up Above…

What does the world look like to a bird? As a child, all I wanted to do was fly or float above the world, going from place to place and seeing all the amazing sights there are to see. Indeed birds are lucky in that regard: up high, far from the noise of those pesky humans, they soar and see the world as it truly is. Here are some beautiful photos of that stunning world birds get to see.

The opera house in Sidney, Australia

Surfing the highest waves in Australia

The Mojave Desert in California, USA

family of elephants walking through Botswana

The Great Barrier Reef

Fuji Mountain on Honcho Island, Japan

The Anapolis submarine during a training exercise in the Arctic

Malé, capital of the Maldives

A foggy sunrise over a small village in Indonesia

Source….www.ba-bamail.com

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Image of the Day…”Flying Over An Aurora” …!!!

June 24, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) captured photographs and video of auroras from the International Space Station on June 22, 2015. Kelly wrote, “Yesterday’s aurora was an impressive show from 250 miles up. Good morning from the International Space Station! ‪#‎YearInSpace‬”

Image Credit: NASA

Source….www.nasa.gov

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Striking Photos Of Borders Around The World…

June 23, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Any experienced traveler knows that it’s possible to be in two places at once… and sometimes, even three. Some borders are simply metaphorical lines on a map. But other borders provide stark, physical contrasts between one country or region and another.

There are borders that blaze through trees, float on water and even cause roadway mix-ups in their effort to mark the spot where one place ends and another begins. See how it’s done around the world.

The Netherlands and Belgium

Here, the Belgian village of Baarle-Hertog and the Dutch village of Baarle-Nassau arepatch-worked together in little pieces. Travelers cross the international border all the time, and white marks on the ground tell them which country they’re in.

2. United States and Canada

Every few years, workers re-cut the forested border between the U.S. and Canada, affectionately referred to as the Slash.

3. Poland and Ukraine

This crop design was part of a 2012 art exhibition on the border between Poland and Ukraine.

4. Haiti and the Dominican Republic

Deforestation issues are obvious at the border between Haiti (left) and the Dominican Republic (right).

5. China and Macau

Macau is a special administrative region of China, where locals drive on the left side of the road. The rest of China drives on the right, hence the highway changeup at the border.

6. United States and Mexico

At Border Field State Park, a fence separates San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico.

7. Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil

Interesting landmarks abound at the Triple Frontier, where the Paraná River and the Iguazu River meet.

8. Germany and the Czech Republic

These countries clearly have different ways of dealing with their pesky bark beetle infestation.

9. Former East and West Germany

Near the town of Ifta, you’ll find one of many sites where the former East Germany meets the former West Germany. Museums, exhibits and memorials abound, too.

Source…www.huffingtonpost.in

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A Solution to Bringdown Noice Level ….Amsterdam Airport Shows the Way…!!!

June 23, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Noise is an issue at many airports, including Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. Source: Getty Images

TWO years ago, Dutch land artist Paul de Kort was given a tough brief.

Administrators at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS) had long been looking to address the levels of aircraft noise that affected those living near the airport.

So, taking inspiration from the ground, de Kort created a landscape that has had a significant effect on dampening the roar of planes for those living near one of the world’s busiest airports.

But long before de Kort broke ground, researchers from the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) had already been studying the noise level at AMS. They noticed that in the fall, after the fields surrounding the airport had been ploughed, noise levels decreased significantly.

It turns out that the furrows created by ploughing helped to absorb, deflect and mute aircraft noise.

The labyrinth design. Picture: Schiphol Group Source: Supplied

Working off these findings, de Kort collaborated with architectural firm H+N+S Lanscapearchitects and scientists from the TNO to create Buitenschot Land Art Park.

Located to the southwest of AMS, just off the edge of the runway, this huge green space is laid out in an interlocking system of ditches and trenches.

While its primary purpose is to dampen the ground noise created by passing aircraft, the park also features bike paths, sports fields and even sculpture to create a space that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing.

To create this mazelike park, de Kort also drew heavily on the past and was particularly inspired by the work of Ernst Chladni, a 17th century German physicist. The scientist’s Chladni patterns served as the inspiration for the furrows and ridges now seen at AMS.

Completed in October 2013, this collaborative project has since been viewed as a renowned success. The creation of Buitenschot had an immediate effect, cutting the decibel level of aircraft noise down by half, the Smithsonian reported. And it has continued being a success since then.

De Kort, however, has one regret. Speaking to Hansman, he explained that, “The ground sound spreads behind the plane that’s taking off, so in fact you fly away in the other directions. You won’t be able to actually see the area from the air.”

Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport is one of the world’s busiest. Source: Getty Images

For more travel updates go to FlyerTalk.com.

Source…www.news.com.au

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In The Future, Your Interstellar Tourist Selfies Will Look Like This…!!!

June 22, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Imagine a world some time in the semi-distant future where space travel is a banal indulgence not unlike a luxury cruise. What would you do upon stepping on Mars soil, an astronaut helmet over your head and Earth but a small speck in the distance.

Be real, would you take a selfie? It would get soooooo many likes.

French photographer Julien Mauve juxtaposes the looming potential of space exploration with the stereotypical actions of earthly tourists in his narrative series “Greetings From Mars.” The sci-fi photos combine alien landscapes with behavior that’s all too familiar — performing for the camera, inserting oneself into foreign landscapes, and striking a pose.

“I’ve been fascinated with Mars since I was a child,” Mauve explained to The Huffington Post. “I can picture myself back in college making presentations about it. We hear a lot about NASA, Elon Musk and SpaceX these days. Mars One also, the company that offers people a one way ticket to establish the first human colony on Mars (and intend to create a TV show out of it). Space exploration and colonization is the greatest adventure of the century and the fact that we may witness it in our life-time makes it even more exciting.”

Mauve couples the possibility of space tourism in the future with the reality of social media influence in the present. “We’ve literally developed a new language to communicate emotions through pictures and that really fascinates me,” the artist said, identifying smartphones as the technology that allows us to write our own stories in real time.

“In the mean time, Earth has become really small. We are only 12 hours and $800 away from the other side of the world. Those easy traveling conditions have made tourism a lucrative activity. People can visit and enjoy places we would have never imagined only 50 years ago… Once transportation issues will be solved and if we don’t encounter any massive disaster, space tourism for middle class people is something we can imagine happening in less than 100 years.”

Mauve’s series offers a wonderfully deadpan view of the red planet, with anonymous explorers eager to survey the grounds, and, possibly more importantly, document the process. “It’s an observation of our current behaviors and a projection of what we hope for the future,” he explained. “I’m not trying to stick to the scientific truth.”

Of his series, he explains the setting: “It’s a couple experiencing Mars as tourists for the first time and sharing their experience through photographs. They include themselves in front of those landscapes and affirm their presence but the funny thing is that we don’t see their faces. It could be anyone in those suits and, in fact, it goes against the original purpose of taking a selfie or souvenir pictures. It was also a way to illustrate this endless pursuit of self-definition we seek with pictures.”

Check back with us in 100 years to see if Mauve’s grim prediction has come to life. If so, please let us know what filters look best in space. Thanks.