Pluto’s (Possible) Ice Volcano
It’s amazing to think that just a little over 100 years since the Wright brothers took to the skies in a spruce biplane, we’ve got spacecraft capable of charting the topography of Pluto. As of last July, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft had picked up evidence of two possible cryovolcanoes—volcanoes that that spew ice instead of lava. One of these sites, informally dubbed “Wright Mons” in honor of the Wright brothers, could be the largest cryovolcano discovered in the outer solar system so far.
To Lions, Zebras Are Mostly Gray
Why are zebras striped? Camouflage, right? They break up the zebra’s outline, or let them hide among the shadows of trees. At least that has been the main theory so far. But it turns out that to most predators, the black and white stripes show up as muddled gray at any real distance, which means camouflage isn’t all that necessary. The Atlantic’s Ed Yong summarizes new research on what zebras really look like to lions and the reasons it still might behoove zebras to wear such flashy coats. One of them has to do with a much smaller threat: blood-sucking flies.
Frozen Soap Bubbles
Here’s a lovely video inspired by a preschool girl who apparently did not want to put on her winter coat one day. “But it is very cold outside,” her daddy said. How cold? “So cold that even soap bubbles freeze and it looks really beautiful, you know?” Our thanks to Pawel Zaluska for braving the cold (5˚F) and filming this phenomenon for the sake of whimsy and wonder.
Space Archaeologist
Egyptologist Sarah Parcak is what you get when you cross Indiana Jones and Chris Hadfield. Using infrared images and data collected from NASA satellites, she searches for (and finds) lost archaeological sites. In this short TED talk, Parcak explains the role of space archaeology in her discovery of the long-lost capital city of ancient Egypt’s Middle Kingdom—an era known as a cultural renaissance in Egypt’s history. Excavation of the site is still in progress. But Parcak’s team has already found some promising clues, like pottery and precious stones (maybe from a ritzy jewelry shop).
