Amazing Source For An Amateur Rocket Scientist.

Top 10 Bizarre Galaxy Pairs From Hubble

“The Arp catalog illustrates galaxies in many different stages of a collision:

* prior to their first close pass, * in the collision process, * subsequent to an interaction but before merging, * and in the final merger stages.

Unlike ellipticals, spirals are easily disturbed, often becoming destroyed entirely by such an interaction.”

When you take a glimpse into the deep Universe, beyond the gas, dust, stars and planets of our own galaxy, you enter the realm of the galaxies. In general, they come in two types: the spirals, with neat, orderly arms, and the ellipticals, with a symmetric, bulging shape. But for everything that exists in the Universe a particular way in general, there are exceptions. In the 1960s, astronomer Halton Arp became fascinated with these exceptions, creating a catalog of 338 examples: the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. We now know that most of these are galaxy pairs or triplets in the process of major mergers, displaying features such as tidal disruption, stellar bridges, starbursts and occasionally a rare, ring shape.

Experts May Have Finally Found The Cause Of Crohn's Disease

Great news for those with the notoriously hard to treat condition.

People with Crohn’s disease know the uncomfortable symptoms of the chronic condition all too well: diarrhea, abdominal pain, weight loss and fatigue, among others. But what doctors have not been able to tell the approximately 565,000 people in the U.S. with Crohn’s is why they’ve developed the inflammatory bowel condition in the first place.

Most experts suspect the condition is the result of the body’s immune system attacking healthy cells, mistakenly triggered by bacteria in the digestive tract. Now, a new study has identified a specific fungus and two bacteria they think play a key role in what leads some people to develop the disease.

“Among hundreds of bacterial and fungal species inhabiting the intestines, it is telling that the three we identified were so highly correlated in Crohn’s patients,” the study’s senior author Mahmoud A. Ghannoum, professor and director of the Center for Medical Mycology at Case Western Reserve and University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, said in a press release.

Research has previously identified that E. coli bacteria contribute to Crohn’s symptoms, but this is the first study to show the bacteria Serratia marcescens and the fungus Candida tropicalis are also involved.

Continue Reading.

Why Sequencing DNA in Space is a Big Deal

… And How You Can Talk to the Scientists Who Made It Happen

Less than one month ago, DNA had never been sequenced in space. As of today, more than one billion base pairs of DNA have been sequenced aboard the International Space Station, Earth’s only orbiting laboratory. The ability to sequence the DNA of living organisms in space opens a whole new world of scientific and medical possibilities. Scientists consider it a game changer. 

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, who has a background in genomics, conducted the sequencing on the space station as part of the Biomolecule Sequencer investigation. A small, commercial, off-the-shelf device called MinION (min-EYE-ON), manufactured by Oxford Nanopore Technologies in the UK, was used to sequence the DNA of bacteria, a virus and rodents. Human DNA was not sequenced, and there are no immediate plans to sequence human DNA in space. 

(Image Credit: Oxford Nanopore Technologies)

The MinION is about the size of a candy bar, and plugs into a laptop or tablet via USB connection, which also provides power to the device. The tiny, plug and play sequencer is diminutive compared to the large microwave-sized sequencers used on Earth, and uses much less power. Unlike other terrestrial instruments whose sequencing run times can take days, this device’s data is available in near real time; analysis can begin within 10-15 minutes from the application of the sample.

Having real-time analysis capabilities aboard the space station could allow crews to identify microbes, diagnose infectious disease and collect genomic and genetic data concerning crew health, without having to wait long periods of time to return samples to Earth and await ground-based analysis.

The first DNA sequencing was conducted on Aug. 26, and on Sept. 14, Rubins and the team of scientists back at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston hit the one-billionth-base-pairs-of-DNA-sequenced mark.

Have more questions about how the Biomolecule Sequencer works, or how it could benefit Earth or further space exploration? Ask the team of scientists behind the investigation, who will be  available for questions during a Reddit Ask Me Anything on /r/science on Wednesday, Sept. 29 at 2 p.m. EDT. 

The participants are:

Dr. Aaron Burton, NASA Johnson Space Center, Planetary Scientist and Principal Investigator

Dr. Sarah Castro-Wallace, NASA Johnson Space Center, Microbiologist and Project Manager

Dr. David J. Smith, NASA Ames Research Center, Microbiologist

Dr. Mark Lupisella, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Systems Engineer

Dr. Jason P. Dworkin, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Astrobiologist

Dr. Christopher E. Mason, Weill Cornell Medicine Dept. of Physiology and Biophysics, Associate Professor

Jupiter’s Galilean Moons

Io - Jupiter’s volcanic moon

Europa -  Jupiter’s icy moon

Ganymede - Jupiter’s (and the solar system’s) largest moon

Callisto -  Jupiter’s heavily cratered moon

Made using: Celestia, Screen2Gif & GIMP Based on: @spaceplasma‘s solar system gifs Profile sources: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets, http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/joviansatfact.html

For any Apollo enthusiasts.

Yes yes and yes.

At least now we know why. But was it really worth it?

This Is How Elon Musk Plans to Build a City on Mars [Updating]

“I know there’s a lot of people in the private sector interested in funding a trip to Mars, hopefully there will be interest in the government side as well,” he said. “Ultimately this will be a huge private-public partnership.”

SpaceX plans to build a “self-sustaining city” on Mars, company founder Elon Musk announced today. Here’s what we know about how they plan to do it.

Musk dropped the news during an address at the International Astronautical Congress meeting in Guadalajara, Mexico, where he had promised to reveal how the company planned to send people to Mars—and how it would keep them alive once they got there. Today, we finally got the first news of how he intended to do that.

“I don’t have an immediate doomsday prophecy,” said Musk, but noted that he saw only two possible paths forward. “One path is to stay on Earth forever and there will be some extinction event. The alternative is to become a multi-planetary species, which I hope you will agree is the right way to go.”

Continue Reading.

Richard Dawkins weighs in on the political debate. / via

Ask A Biologist - Dr. Biology - School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University | Biology …