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The Leonids Meteor Shower 2019: Everything You Need to Know

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The Leonids are among one of a kind events, and they will be seen this month, as always. But this year, we could get even more: shooting star activity.

The Leonid meteor shower happens every year when Earth passes through a cloud of junk that was left behind by the comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle. This shower is active in November, but it becomes visible only at a certain point. The moon is set to be about 80% full, which would make it difficult for us to see the 15 meteors per hour, which are predicted to make their appearance.

What are the Leonids?

We are talking about shooting stars, which are typically moving at 44 miles per second – that’s 71 km/sec – which makes them bright, and even colorful in the night sky.

Every 33 years, the Leonids make a meteor storm, and when the Earth passes through the dense junk, it results in 1000 meteors per hour.

The effect is showing the meteors as rain. We won’t see this kind of storm in 2019, according to Russian astronomer Mikhail Maslov, who predicted possible “activity enhancements wide-open As per his calculations, the hourly rate can get to 20 to 27 meters between twilight and midnight.

To see the Leonids, you need to go as far from the city lights as you can, and it might be best to find a spot with a wide-open view of the night sky. Make sure you’re comfortable enough and just watch the sky. If you miss them, don’t worry, there’s another meteor event coming up next week – there’s a possibility that the obscure Alpha Monocerotids create a meteor storm on Thursday.

 

NASA Chooses Another Name for a Space Rock After the Nazi Controversy

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NASA has renamed a space rock after controversy appeared about the old name, which apparently had Nazi connections. The object was known as Ultima Thule. The name was chosen, and it was meant to mean “farthest place,” but it attracted controversy because “Thule” is a word that was associated with Nazis in the past.

The rock, which was studied in the first-ever farthest flyby conducted by a spacecraft, will now be known as Arrokoth, which is a Native American term, which means sky.

This new name comes from Powhatan/Algonquian, and it has been chosen in cooperation with the Powhatan Tribal elders, according to NASA. It was proposed by the members of the New Horizons team, who led the mission to study the space rock. They presented the name to the International Astronomical Union and Minor Planet Center, which officially give the names and then categorizes the Kuipter Belt objects. This new name does not associate the object with Nazi occultists. The name received a lot of criticism in the past ever since it was announced.

NASA chose the name because of how it related to a Latin metaphor, which was used to describe placed that are far away and entirely unknown. However, Thule was part of the Nazi mythology, describing the place where the Aryan race began. The German Thule Society was a part of the historical Nazi thought, and the word is still used by neo-Nazis today. Those from the New Horizons team, who chose the name, stated that they knew about the links, but decided to defend the name even with the connections there. They said that just because some bad guys liked the term in the past, they were not going to let this fact hijack the name.

 

NASA Just Got Unexpected Data About the Oxygen from Mars. Find out What’s Causing These Changes 

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NASA has recently spotted an unexpected change in the oxygen on Mars. This discovery comes exactly after NASA used the Curiosity rover to measure the seasonal variations in the gas, which fills the air that’s found above the Gale Crater on Mars. However, the data sent back from the planet made the scientists question their credibility. They say that they have no explanation for the data and for the unusual fluctuations in the oxygen from Mars.

The first time they saw the data, it was simply mind-blowing. This comes from Sushil Atreya, a professor of climate and space sciences at the University of Michigan. Researchers still continue to find out more about the methane on the red planet. As we’ve seen with oxygen now, the amount of gas from there dives in a random way, and scientists don’t know why.

When the study took place, they used an instrument in order to analyze the air on Mars. They did it over the course of three years on Mars – six years on Earth. Scientists found that gases, such as argon and nitrogen, behave entirely predictable. The amount of gas which rises and falls is relative to the amount of carbon dioxide, which is about 95% of the air on Mars.

Scientists believed that oxygen would go through the same changes. But the oxygen actually rose through summer and spring, and the amount of oxygen varied in the atmosphere. This thing showed that it’s produced, and then suddenly removed from the air.

Why is this happening?

Scientists were truly shocked to learn about these findings. They wanted to check the accuracy of the instrument that they used for this study, and they found that it was working just fine. So it was not the instrument. There were also other explanations, but they were all rejected.

 

The Satellites That Musk Wants to Send in Space Might Cut Us off Entirely from the Cosmos, Specialists Say

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Astronomers warned us that the number of satellites that are being sent into the orbit in the following months are able to cut us off from the cosmos. Not temporarily, but for good. This prediction came just days after SpaceX, launched 60 satellites at once. This takes part in a project that wants to send up to 42.000 satellites into space in the next years.  These are part of the company’s Starlink constellation of small satellites, which are made to give us flawless internet connections on Earth – even from the weirdest locations.

These 60 satellites, which were launched on Monday, will be added to the list, together with dozens launched in May, with the first Starlink flight. About 8000 satellites have been sent to space throughout history, and about 2000 are currently active out there.

SpaceX has permissions for more than 12.000 satellites from regulators, and they have also requested permissions for more 30.000 satellites.  Elon Musk stated that the project could get $30 billion, or even more than that in revenue every year.

An astronomers from the Paris observatory, Philippe Zarka, issued a warning on Tuesday, saying that such satellites risk polluting the space forever.

He said that the low-Earth orbit, which is the one that’s near our planet, is already full of many satellites and junk, and Musk wants to put up to 42.000 more satellites there. He also said that this idea is complete madness. With the radio fog and the pollution that these satellites are able to create, it would have been quite difficult for scientists to catch the first-ever photo of a black hole. The spacecraft would cut us off from the cosmos.

Philippe Zarka is not the only one concerned about this idea. . The International Astronomical Union are also concerned about it.

 

“Lucy” the Ancient Human Ancestor Was Not as Intelligent as an Ape; How Did She Die?

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Apparently, early human ancestors, such as Lucy, were less intelligent than the apes of today (orangutans, gorillas, and chimps), study finds.

Lucy was a so-called ‘Australopithecus,’ and she was one of the first early humans, who had a small brain if we are to compare it with us, but they did have many human-like features.

Researchers have previously thought that Lucy had a similar intelligence to the great apes, and they had facts that they had identical sized brains. But researchers now found that blood flowed less fastly to the Australopithecine brain than to the brain of the modern great apes. As a matter of fact, the openings for arteries from the skull of the modern apes would have allowed for double the rate of blood to flow to the brain.

Blood flow rates to the brain are known to show both the brain’s rate of metabolism and the level of intelligence.  As per findings, the intelligence developed much faster in the modern human, probably with the rising social complexity.

Who was Lucy?

“Lucy” is the fossil remains of a female Australopithecus afarensis, or, as it’s commonly known, the oldest early humans. She was found on a dig site which is called Hadar, in the north of Ethiopia, back in 1974. The remains are about 40% of her complete skeleton, and they have been dated to 3.2 million years ago. She had a small skull, and she was able to walk upright. Some experts suggested that she was spending time dwelling up trees. Back in 2016, researchers stated that she might have died from falling out of a tree.

Roger Seymour of the University of Adelaide measured the size of the canals from the skull of the living apes and then compared them to those that found the fossilized skulls of the human ancestors.