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Less Than a Week Remains Before NASA’s Biggest Rover Yet Lands on Mars

NASA’s newest Mars rover is less than a week away from its high-stakes landing on the surface of the Red Planet.

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover is scheduled to touch down on Mars at 10:30 p.m. PDT on Aug. 5 (1:30 a.m. Aug. 6 EDT, 0530 GMT). The car-size robotic explorer is designed to investigate whether Mars is, or ever was, capable of hosting microbial life.

With six days to go until Curiosity arrives at the Red Planet, project managers are bracing themselves for what NASA calls the riskiest part of the mission: the rover’s harrowing descent through the Martian atmosphere to the ground.

Full Article

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Spiral Galaxy Photo Sheds New Light on Recent Star Explosion

A new, extremely deep photo of the site of a supernova explosion that was observed in 1957 has revealed X-rays emanating from the source.

The photo, taken by NASA’s Chandra X-Ray space telescope, is the first to spot X-ray light coming from the remains of the dead star that sparked the explosion, and indicates that the supernova likely transformed the star into a pulsar. Pulsars are super-dense, fast-rotating objects that have been compressed so tightly they are composed only of neutrons.

The supernova, called SN 1957D (because it was the fourth supernova discovered in 1957), lies in the M83 galaxy, which is about 15 million light-years from Earth. Previous observations of the spiral galaxy have revealed only radio and optical light coming from the supernova site. Observation of the galaxy by Chandra from 2000 to 2001 collected light over 14 hours but did not detect any X-rays coming from the supernova remnant.

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Island in the Sky

The giant window of the False Kiva is a stunning “room with a view” to rock formations under a celestial night sky in the Canyonlands. A hauntingly beautiful place lost in time where a silent echo of a culture that suddenly vanished.

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Norway

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Effects of solar flare expected to hit Earth today The solar flare is likely only to land a glancing blow on Earth, but it is expected to bombard tiny Mercury.

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Supermassive Black Hole at Work

Image Credit: NASA, S. Gezari (The Johns Hopkins University), and J. Guillochon (University of California, Santa Cruz)

Back in 2010, astronomers witnessed an explosion of light from a star that was obliterated by a supermassive black hole. This is an accurate computer simulation of the event that took place.

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Crescent Sunset & Sunrise

by VegaStar Carpentier

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twicr:

Creepy robots dancing to “Thriller” is just the thing for All Hallows’ Eve. 

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mothernaturenetwork:

In 1998, Rishi Sowa built his first artificial island using 250,000 plastic bottles to keep it afloat, and today he lives on Spiral Island II, a smaller island that he built using 100,000 plastic bottles. The island features a house, beaches, ponds and even a solar-powered waterfall.   Even more ambitious than Sowa’s island is architect Ramon Knoester’s plan to build Recycled Island, a floating island the size of Hawaii made entirely of plastic from the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch. Read more.

This is so awesome :) wish i could contribute 

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nuestrahermana:

Dia De Los Muertos Is Not Your Halloween by Nuestra Hermana

As we all know, Halloween in America is right around the corner. Kids & adults alike will be dressed up in costumes, consuming candy, attending parties, navigating through haunted houses and thoroughly enjoying their night. Think about your last Halloween and look at the images above.

These are still shots of Dia De Los Muertos in Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, California & Arizona. They are small snippets of a vibrant, important and REAL holiday for Latin@s. This is not your Halloween.

Dia De Los Muertos developed out of over 2,500 years of indigenous ritual celebrating death and paying respects to loved ones who have passed away. Scholars state that the Aztecs originally held a month long festival dedicated to the goddess Mictecacihuatl, the ruler of the afterlife.

After Spanish colonization and many attempts to eradicate the rituals & festival, a new merging with the Catholic holidays All Souls Day & All Saints Day developed over time to what is now Dia De Los Muertos.

Dia De Los Muertos is celebrated November 1st & 2nd (in alignment with All Saints Day & All Souls Day respectively). It is NOT celebrated on October 31st, it is not tied in with Halloween in America at all.

In Mexico, November 1st is dedicated as Dia De Los Inocentes, a day to honor and respect the innocents, children & infants to be more specific. November 2nd is Dia De Los Muertos, the day to honor deceased adults.

On these days, altars are made in honor of them. People build them on their loved ones graves, at home or anywhere they find rightful to honor their loved ones. They make ofrendas (offerings) to the dead of their favorite foods, toys (for children), pictures, pan de muertos, sugar skulls and many other things that help guide the spirits of the dead safely to the altars. Marigolds, known as the flowers of the dead, are usually prominent in the altars.

In Mexico, many people sleep overnight at the graves. Every ritual & altar is not the same everywhere. Many places have their own traditions and ways of honoring the dead. One thing is for sure, Dia De Los Muertos is not Halloween. It is a sacred time and holiday for Latin@s everywhere.

So, when you’re dressing up for Halloween remember: doing this, this, this or this is not only disrespectful but it is also a erasure of someone’s real life culture. Think before you walk out of that door.

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Folk singer Pete Seeger, 92, joins others, as part of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, on a march down Broadway from Symphony Space on Broadway down to Columbus Circle late Friday night. Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/10/21/2011-10-21_bloomberg_city_will_be_stricter_on_occupy_wall_st_protesters.html#ixzz1bdnQAIhg

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The ‘Boi Za’* camp of #Occupy demonstrators in front of Ljubljana’s Stock Exchange. (Source.)

* BORZA is Slovenian for bourse, or stock exchange. At yesterday’s demonstration, the R was knocked off the archway. Today it was replaced with a J. BOJ ZA translates to, ‘Fight For’.

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Apparently the protester in Occupy Wall Street have set up library of their own. The books are checked out by the honor system :) So far they have about 1000 books at least last time i checked.