Juno, the spacecraft traveling around Jupiter, collected a series of fascinating findings regarding the giant of the Solar System. Now, it offered NASA researchers an insight on the Great Red Spot, the big storm which kept growing for almost two hundred years. It was first observed in 1830, but researchers think it might actually be a lot older.

Juno discovered the root of the Great Red Spot

This year in July, Juno flew right above the Great Red Spot in the first journey of this type ever made by a spacecraft. It turns out the storm actually spread at far bigger depths below the atmospheric clouds. All the findings were presented by NASA during the American Geophysical Fall Meeting that took place this Monday.

To offer a better image of how the Great Red Spot looks like from a smaller distance, they released a video depicting Juno’s journey over it. Most of the images in the video come from the imager aboard the spacecraft, called JunoCam, but some of them have also been generated on the computer.

The images in the video are both simulations and actual footage from Juno

As mentioned above, the Great Red Spot goes quite deep into the clouds. For a long time, researchers have been wondering where this huge storm ends, and this video offers a partial answer to this question. The footage contains an altitude meter, allowing the watchers to understand how deep the spacecraft went.

Also, the images inside the Great Red Spot have been processed with the help of a Microwave Radiometer. By knowing how deep it runs, they could find out what kind of computer models they needed to perform to create more images and simulations of the storm. No storm on Earth could be as big and with such a deep root as the Red Spot, so the researchers knew from the start what kind of simulations they should rule out.

The findings have been presented during the meeting, but they can also be found online, on NASA’s website.

Image Source: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Cats are among the most popular pets in the world, but not many people know where they descend from and how they became so popular. Some think they were first domesticated in Egypt, since this is where they gathered their notoriety, but it turns out their history is much older.

When were cats first domesticated?

First of all, they originate from a certain species of wild cat, known as Felis silvestris lybica. As time passed, they spread all over the world and came to inhabit all continents, except Antarctica. The first registered event of cat domestication occurred in Turkey, around 9,000 years ago.

Farmers wanted to keep rodents away, so they turned cats into domestic animals which could guard their grains and prevent mice and rats from eating them. Since then, many others started domesticating them, but a second effort drew our attention.

The people of Ancient Egypt considered that cats were sacred, so they venerated them like deities. Experts couldn’t tell for sure the reason of this veneration, but some suggest that people saw them as protective animals. They were predators, and hunted some other dangerous creatures, so Ancient Egyptians regarded the animals as some sort of gods.

Are modern-day cats fully domesticated?

We discovered the common ancestor of all cats, but it’s harder to determine the origin of the modern house cat. These animals have been humans’ constant companion for millennia, so they mixed with many other species until the modern-day cat was born.

Researchers wanted an answer, so they analyzed around 200 cat skeletons from these 9,000 years, but they still couldn’t determine when modern cats were first domesticated. Looking back at today’s fancy breeds, they originate from 19^th century France, and were born as a result of selective breeding. However, some researchers say that they are still not fully domesticated.

Even so, researchers still don’t know where the Egyptian cats came from. To unravel this mystery, they would need to collect DNA from even older skeletons, and discover the ancestors of these creatures.
Image Source: Pixabay

New research confirms the overwhelming force of T. rex jaws depicted in Hollywood movies. It seems that Tyrannosaurus rex took down its victims with a terrible bite exerting almost 8,000 pounds of pressure upon them. The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Its bite exerted huge pressure

Researchers confirmed that Tyrannosaurus rex had a deadly bite which could smash the bones of its prey and made it impossible for them to escape. In fact, the force of its jaws was quite unimaginable, as the victims could literally burst into pieces after being bitten.

The jaws fashioned with sharp teeth were able to grasp and produce a pressure of 431,000 pounds per square inch on the bones. Such a pressure is higher than most of today’s hydraulic presses can produce. Therefore, the Hollywood depictions of T. rex prey exploding were not far-fetched.

Its force allowed it to feast on dinosaurs with strong bones

These special teeth and forceful jaws allowed the predator to feast on much larger dinosaurs with tough skin and strong bones. For instance, dinosaurs with large horns or with bones full of minerals and marrow were inaccessible for smaller species, as they could not bite through them. Therefore, T. rex owned the supremacy among them, as it could devour even the toughest bodies.

To identify the force of a Tyrannosaurus bite, researchers analyzed its living ancestors, crocodiles and birds, and performed tests on them. Then, they were able to produce an accurate model of a T. rex bite. Crocodiles are worthy descendants of the predators, as they currently exert the most powerful bites. Even so, their ancestor could bite with double the force of the fiercest crocodile.

The study is the first to look at the mechanics of a Tyrannosaurus rex bite. It also explains the dinosaur’s choice of prey, as well as highlight the reason why it has always been regarded as the king of predators.
Image Source: Flickr

The Mars rover Curiosity captured some impressive images on its journey towards Mount Sharp. From February to April, the rover passed near Bagnold Dunes and analyzed four sites situated along one linear dune. This sand formation is situated within the Gale Crater, in the northwestern area of Mount Sharp.

Mars hosts dunes of different shapes

This is not the first time when Curiosity is exploring and analyzing Martian dunes. During a campaign in 2015, the rover visited barchans, which are shaped like a crescent moon. Besides capturing images, Curiosity also collected samples which it later analyzed and compared their composition with the composition of the surface.

Curiosity is on a ‘dune campaign’, and it is currently completing the second phase of this mission. This campaign will end when the rover will collect samples from them, too. Also, it will mark the first exploration mission of active dunes in the Solar System.

The fact that there are dunes of different shapes on Mars baffled the researchers, so they wanted to find out how they are formed. Therefore, they decided to study how the wind impacts them, and found out that it behaves differently in the case of linear dunes. In fact, their position might be to blame.

How does the wind affect the shape of the dunes?

The linear dunes are situated uphill from the crescent ones, and lie a mile south from them. Since the wind comes down from the mountain slope, it is more powerful and has a more drastic effect on the sand.

Moreover, researchers observed more distinctions between the two dune campaigns. When they looked at the crescent dunes, the wind was in a low season. Now, when they reached the linear ones, the wind is in a high season. Therefore, they could get a better view of how the grains move and how different sand formations come into being.

Curiosity keeps roaming the Martian surface since 2012, and it reached the base of Mount Sharp in 2014. The rover has already started its journey towards the top of the mountain, and is looking for environments to contrast with the dry surface.

Image Source: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Minnesota is affected by a terrible measles outbreak which affected many residents. On April 26, Somali leaders met with health officials in Minneapolis to discuss the current measles outbreak.  On April 27, state health officials have reported five more measles cases while one of them was identified in Stearns County. This measles case represents the first time when the outbreak spread beyond Hennepin County.

Five more measles cases were registered in Minnesota while one of them was in Stearns County

About 29 children have been infected by the end of March. Recent statistics indicated that this measles outbreak in Minnesota is the largest one since 1990. The case in Stearns County concerns a Somali-American child. Health investigators intend to establish the cause of the child’s infection, trying to find out whether the family traveled to the Twin Cities area where the kid could have contracted the dangerous disease.

Kris Ehresmann, the infectious disease director at the Minnesota Health Department, stated that they would need to investigate this situation, even more, to understand how the kid came in contact with this virus. Ehresmann noted that the department had already considered the theory that measles cases are likely to spread beyond the metro area, to places like Olmsted Country and Stearns County where large populations of Somali-American citizens live.

The measles outbreak began spreading to other counties because people refuse to vaccinate their kids

The Somali community became vulnerable to this virus due to decreased measles vaccination rates. In 2004, vaccination rates for Somali-Minnesota kids matched with the general vaccination rates of the entire population. Nevertheless, they stopped vaccinating Somali children a few years later because of several autism cases which scared all Somali families. By 2016, the rates of measles vaccination of 2-year-old Somali-Minnesota kids have dropped to 42%.

In the Stearns County case, the Somali-American child had been previously vaccinated for measles. Nevertheless, the child’s parents mentioned that he only received one shot of the two recommended ones. Based on the data provided by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one shot provides 93% effectiveness while two shots offer 97% protection.

Ehresmann pointed out that even if the child got only one shot, he or she is less likely to further transmit the disease. The Stearns County case will ask state health officials to open a new investigation to establish who came in contact with the child, involving people at medical facilities, child care homes, and centers. For unvaccinated people, a slight exposure to the disease may cause them to contract it.

Image courtesy of: pixabay

Rumor has it that UFO specialists spotted a tree stump on Mars. UFO hunters pointed out that NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover captured photos of a tree stump on the surface of the Red Planet. Paranormal Crucible posted a video on YouTube showing that there is something on the surface of Mars which looks like a tree stump. It may be the petrified remnants of a Martian tree from millions of years ago.

UFO hunters believe that the Curiosity rover captured the image of a tree stump on Mars

In a post which accompanied the video, UFO hunters explained that this object appears to be three-feet high. If they were to discover other remnants of ancient animals or plants which might have existed there in the past, then it would be logical to think that many trees had existed there. Now the presupposition is that these trees might have existed or they even exist there today.

The website UFO Sightings Daily stated that Paranormal Crucible developed this hypothesis, saying that this object could be an ancient Martian tree. This might be a feasible assumption since NASA had long reported that Mars was an Earth-like planet when a solar explosion occurred and affected it.

Others who are against this speculation stated that the object was a rock, not a tree

Obviously, the video posted on YouTube created a controversy, while some believed the theory stating that it was a tree stump and others claimed that it is just a rock. One commenter even explained that the object is a rock formation where the strata are similar to other rocks behind it, but this one is vertically tilted. It might have been flipped by the winds or something.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA indicated that the incredible image was taken by NASA’s Curiosity Rover using its Left Mastcam on March 25. Apparently, this is not the first occurrence when such an image created so many theories and contradictions. Back in 2015, UFO hunters stated that they spotted a strange woman-like figure in a picture captured by NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover.

This spaceship is known to be the largest one ever sent to Mars. It set off on November 26, 2011, and reached the Red Planet on August 5, 2012. Even if there existed so many hypotheses saying that there is water and alien life on Mars, we have no evidence that can support all these ideas.

Image courtesy of: nasa gov