Could Saturn's Rings be Older Than the universe?

Until now astronomers thought that the rings around Saturn were young and were formed only a 100 million years ago. Recently, on December 13th, scientists discovered that Saturn's rings were formed in the dinosaur age. The orbiting international Cassini spacecraft found evidence that the rings exited about 4.5 billion years ago! That's about the same time that the sun and other planets were formed. The data also showed evidence that the ring particles were constantly shattering and regrouping to form new rings. In addition, Saturn’s ring system consists of seven major rings and hundreds of small ones that are mostly made out of orbiting ice and dust. The theory that Saturn’s rings may be a permanent feature of Saturn was based on observations by the ultraviolet spectrograph on Cassini. The reason for scientists being so interested in studying the rings is because they are the disk of gas and dust that initially enveloped the sun and learning about them could lead to many new theories about the formation of the planets. In my opinion, Saturn’s rings have been there for so long and just like the sun they will eventually go away somehow.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/12/13/saturn-rings.html?dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000

Mythbusters Extra Credit

The episode of mythbusters that I watched was "Are jet enjines powerful enough to blow away a car?" For the experiment they built a remote control car that could be controlled from thousands of feet away. They also made a fake person that would sit in the passengers seat in the front. They didn't want to be sitting there for safety reasons. Then they went to the Mohabi Desert airport where they had arranged for a 737 jet airplane to be taking off exactly when the taxi was put near it. However, as soon as they arrived the airline people told them they couldn't do their experiment here just in case their aircraft was damadged by accidently by the car. Adam and Jamie were about to give up when they discovered another aircraft was available for them that was not as good as the 737, but still went 400 miles per hour. Adam's hypothesis was that the car would flip three or four times. They arranged the experiment so that the Taxi cab was about 20 feet away from the jet. Next, the jet took off, all the taxi did was shake and move a little. Then they tried a second time, this time they moved the car more closer to the jet. On this try the car shakeed and some parts broke. The front fender, back fender, taxi sign, and some mirrors broke and shattered. They fixed up the car before trying one last time. They also slanted the car a little this time by taking some tires out and flattening others. Again, the car shaked a little, but no more damadge was done. During the entire experiment neither of the men had gloves or goggles on. At the end of the experiment, Adam was very disappointed to be proven wrong and ashamed since Jamie's guess had been right. However, a car had been blown 75 feet in the Mohabi Desert airport by a 737 jet taking off near by some time ago and their car might have turned over too had they used a 737. This episode included science because they used the scientific procedure even though they didn't follow the steps in order. In addition, the episode sort of described push and pull which relates to science. Adam and Jamie probably needed a science background because they have to make many guesses while on mythbusters based on information, data, or just a wild guess. They would also need to make special effects to make entertaining shows based on science.

Things about me

The rules are as follows:
Each player answers the six questions posted on this blog.

The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those answers are listed.

At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their blog names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

Then follow the instructions about adding a page element at omegascience.blogspot.com.


1. My favorite TV show is.......(explain why)
My favorite show is Hannah Montana because it's hilarious!

2. My favorite meal is...... (explain the meal in detail)
My favorite meal is anything mexican. But most of all I love crunchwraps because I love sour cream, cheese, and beans.

3. My favorite nonschool activity is...... (explain why but do not give specific names that can identify you)
My favorite nonschool activity is going bike riding to the park or anywhere. I love bike riding with my friends because it's just fun to hang out on bikes.

4. Someone I look up to is....... (explain why)
I look up to my parents the most because they are always there for me whenever I need them. They set a good example to me and show me how to treat others. (even though already know)

5. My goal for the future is.....
My goal in the future is to become some type of docter, probably an eye docter because I'm interested in science more then any other subject. Or else I might become an astronomer because I like studying the sky, especially black holes.

6. In the first hour after school I usually do...... (explain why but do not give specific events or names that can identify you)
I usually eat snack and watch tv when I get back from school. Sometimes I do my homework so I could get over it and do other fun things later on in the day.

people I tagged: chocolatelover0901 glowriter54 cuddlybear94 sapphirestar1710 bluesoccer18 omegapeep bluesoccer18 softballgurll13

Longitudinal and Transverse waves

Longitudinal waves move in a horizontal motion and transverse waves move in a vertical motion. Longitudinal and transverse waves are formed when they pass through a medium. In longitudinal waves the displacement of the medium is parallel to the propagation of the wave. Unlike longitudinal waves a transversal wave is the total opposite. Instead, these waves move perpendicular to the propagation. In addition, longitudinal waves are usually more spread out than transverse One last difference between the two types of waves are that longitudinal waves have particles that do not move down the tube, instead they simply move around in their position. However, transverse waves have particles that move up and down. An example of a transverse wave is a ripple in a pond. Another example could be a wave on a string, or even a wave in a solid. But usually solids have a mixture of both a transversal and longitudinal wave. An example of a longitudinal wave is a sound wave in the air. Another example of a wave that involves transverse and longitudinal waves are the waves in water or an ocean. Last but not least transversal and longitudinal waves both have a trough and a crest. The crest is the highest point of the wave and the trough is the lowest point. I hope after having so much fun after reading this article you will stop by whenever you see a wave and try to identify it.

For more information visit: http://www.kettering.edu/~drussell/Demos/waves/wavemotion.html

Antartica was Warm in the past?

How can Antarctica be Warm?
On April 20, 2007 tiny fossil diatoms were discovered deep down in the ocean floor. This revealed a significant truth about Antarctica's past about 10 million years ago. Yes, it is true that it was much much hotter in the past. Let me start at the beginning so that you get it. First it was cold and there was a lot of ice in Antarctica. Then it became really hot in the middle, which the scientists very recently learned. Now, it's cold again. The scientists working on this topic were very surprised by the single-celled algae. They had never seen some of these diatoms and others they had only seen in waters with really really high temperatures. Scientists say that these diatoms are new to science and will help them understand future climate changes. Now their new goal is to recover sedimentary records close to Antarctica so that they can learn about Antarctica's history and understand how it's related to global warming. Hopefully, global warming will not occur again, but be prepared just in case...

To learn more about global warming visit:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6570185.stm

Memory

Don't you always remember the significant details and forget the minor ones in your life?
For example, you would remember that you had a party yesterday, but you'd forget who left before Anne. Well, on April 18, 2007 Jan Born and her research group discovered that long- term memories are formed while sleeping. This process relies on the brain replaying recent events during the night. The scientists also realized that sleeping not only strengthens your memory, but it also lets you remember the order that the events occurred. They even did an experiment to see if their results were really right. For the experiment a few students were asked to learn triplets of words one after another. The next day they tested each student and only the ones that had slept were able to determine the order of the words. However, they could only remember when they recited them in a forward direction not a backwards one. In the end, every student needs at least 8-10 hours of sleep if they want to do well in school!

http://brightsurf.com/news/headlines/30003/Sleep_enforces_the_temporal_sequence_in_memory.html

THE SUN

There are about 100 billion stars in our galaxy and out of them our sun is the closest. With a diameter of 1,390,000 kilometers it is also the largest and therefore the hottest even though it is only a yellow star. The mass of the sun is 1.989e30 kilograms and the temperature is 5800 Kelvin on the surface, which is called the photosphere as well as the chromospere, which is a small region right above the photosphere. There is also a layer above the chromosphere called the corona layer, which has a temperature of 1,000,000 Kelvin. This layer extends millions of kilometers into space, but can only be seen during a solar eclipse. The temperature on the core is 15,600,000, which is way more than the surface. This is because each second about 700,000,000 tons of hydrogen are converted into about 695,000,000 tons of helium and 5,000,000 tons of energy in the form of gamma rays. But by the time that these gases reach the surface they would've cooled down and become only visible light. In spite of that the amount of output is still humongous and is produced by nuclear fusion reactions. The sun also emits solar winds, which are a low-density stream of charged particles, which mostly contain electrons and protons. Unlike the Earth the sun is not a solid body, instead it's a planet made up of gases. In addition, hundreds of sunspots lie on the sun. These areas are "cool" regions and only 3800 Kelvin. They can be as big as 50,000 km. in diameter. These sunspots are created by complicated interactions with the suns' magnetic field. Occasionally spectacular loops and prominences are visible along with solar flares. They can rise hundreds of kilometers high and are huge. One day the sun will become a black hole or at least die and make the world cold and dark. Unless we find a solution humans will probably become extinct just like dinosaurs. But don't worry our sun has lived for 4.5 billion years until now and will live for another 5 billion years. So we're safe for now!!!

http://www.nineplanets.org/sol.html

Black Holes

On March 13, 2007, astronomers discovered over a thousand super massive black holes. They looked a t these humungous black holes from the Spitzer Space telescope from NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory. The images of the black holes that they captured show are hundreds of billions to several billion more massive than the sun. Astronomers are still trying to figure out the entire truth about the habits of black holes. They also want to locate the largest black holes. They are trying to prepare for when the sun becomes a black hole and sucks everything in. Hopefully, these outcomes will give the astronomers some sort of an idea on when these black holes that lie in the center of the galaxies are growing and in which environments they occur in. In conclusion, we need to solve this problem of black holes.

visit this website for more information
http://www.brightsurf.com/news/headlines/29304/New_panorama_reveals_more_than_a_thousand_black_holes.html

Heroes

IT'S HARD TO BELEIVE, BUT THE SHOW HEROES IS CONNECTED TO GENETICS IN MANY WAYS. ONE OF THE WAYS IS HOW THE CHARACTERS LOOK. CLAIRE, THE DAUGHTER HAS BLONDE HAIR THAT IS MOSTLY STRAIGHT, BUT A LITTLE WAVY ON THE ENDS. SHE HAS GREEN EYES AND NO GLASSES. HER MOM HAS THE SAME EXACT PALE SKIN-COLOR. HER HAIR IS STRAIGHT AS WELL, BUT IT'S KIND OF GOLDISH COLORED. IN ADDITION, SHE HAS HAZEL EYES AND NO GLASSES. CLAIRE'S FATHER DOES HAVE GLASSES AS OPPOSED TO CLAIRE AND HER MOTHER WHO DON'T. HE HAS STRIGHT BROWN HAIR AND EYES AND HIS SKIN-COLOR'S A LITTLE DARKER THAN HIS DAUGHTER'S. THEY ALL HAVE RED EARS THAT AREN'T ATTACHED AND POINTY NOSES. AT THE END OF THE SHOW CLAIRE MET HER GRANDMOTHER (DAD'S MOM) WHO HAD NO GLASSES, BROWNISH BLACK HAIR, THAT WAS STRAIGHT, AND DARK BLUE EYES. FROM ALL THIS INFORMATION YOU CAN DETERMINE WHICH TRAITS CLAIRE GOT FROM EACH OF HER PARENTS. FOR EXAMPLE, SHE GOT HER SKIN-COLOR FROM HER MOM AND STRAIGHT HAIR FROM BOTH HER PARENTS. SHE PROBABLY GOT HER GOOD EYES FROM BOTH HER GRANDMOTHER AND MOTHER. YOU COULD ALSO TELL FROM THIS INFORMATION THAT SHE DIDN'T AS MANY TRAITS FROM HAR FATHER AS SHE DID HER MOTHER. OVERALL HEROES IS AN AWESOME SHOW AND DEFINATLEY GREAT FOR EXTRA-CREDIT ASSIGNMENTS!!!

TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD

The setting of "To Kill A Mockingbird" is in Maycomb. Maycomb is an old town where it rains a lot, is very humid, rarely snows, and is very muddy. This community includes many consumers and producers. One type of population in this community is mammals/humans such as Jem, Scout, Atticus, Tom Robinson, Dill, or Boo Radley. Some other consumers in Maycomb are dogs, flies, cows, and mocking birds. Some producers in this envirnoment are oak trees, grass, camellias, and scuppernongs. This habitat doesn't include many decomposers, but organisms living here can still obtain the resources that they need to survive. For example, it rains a lot and is sunny, so that's perfect for the producers. And the consumers can consume the producers for energy. Overall, this is a perfect ecosystem.

Cells

What is a cell?
A cell is the smallest complete piece of a living thing. cells are like building blocks because they go together to form whole plants, animals, and any organisms. They are living things and need water, food, air, and energy. In order for them to obtain these resources they have to absorb them through their cell membrane. They are also a structural and functional unit of all living organisms.
How many cells do organisms have?
The amount of cells that organisms have varies. some organisms such as bacteria may be unicellular and consist of only one cell. Other organisms such as humans are multicellular and have around 100,000,000,000,000 cells.
What is the cell theory?
The cell theory was developed in 1839 by Schleiden and Schwann. It states that all organisms are composed of one or more cells. This means that all cells come from preexisting cells.
What can cells do?
Each cell has its own set of directions. It has to take in nutrients and convert them into energy. Some cells carry out functions. Others reproduce if necessary.
What types of cells are there?
There are two types of cells that all other cells fall in. There are Eukaryotic and prokaryotic. Eukaryotic cells are found in multicellular organisms, have nuclear membrane, and are ten times the size of prokaryotics. Prokaryotics are found in unicellular organisms, are small, and lack in nuclear membrane.
What is metabolism?
In successive cell divisions cells grow through the functioning of cellular metabolism. This is the process in which individual cells process nutrient. first the cells break down complex molecules to produce energy and reduce power. Then the cells use all that energy to construct complex molecules and to perform other biological functions. When cells use this process they can brek sugar that the organism has consumed into a less chemically-complex molecule called glucose. Then the glucose is broken down into ATP, which is a type of energy.
What is cell division?
This process involves a single cell dividing into two daughter cells. This process leads to growth in a multicellular organism. Prokaryotic cells divide by binary fission. Eukaryotic cells usually go through a process called mitos followed by the division of cells called cytokinesis.

Overall, cells are a cool topic to learn about visit this website for more information. http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~acarpi/NSC/13-cells.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(biology)

Gregor Mendel

Who was Gregor Mendel?
Gregor Mendel was an important scientist who developed a method of cross-pollination when he was in Eastern Europe. He was born in 1822 and died in 1884.

What did Gregor Mendel do that was important to genetics?
Gregor Mendel did many things that were important to genetics. First of all, he experimented with pea plants. By experimenting with pea plants he discovered the method of cross-pollination. He picked pea plants to experiment with for many reasons. He picked them because they grew easily in large numbers and their reproduction could be manipulated. In a pea plant there is both male and female reproductive organs. This means that they can either self-pollinate themselves or they can cross-pollinate with another plant. In Mendel's experiments he was able to cross-pollinate purebred plants with traits. He also discovered what happens in the transmission of heredity traits from parents to children. He learned that some traits of parents don't pass onto their offspring.

What are some results that he came up with after experimenting with pea plants?
After experimenting with pea plants Gregor learned that the first offspring generation always have yellow pea plants. The second generation always has a ratio of 3:1 of yellow to green offspring.

What are the three main conclusions that Mendel came up with in his life?
He learned that the inheritance of each trait is determined by the genes that are passed on to the offspring unchanged. Mendel discovered that an individual inherits one unit, from each parent, for each trait. Lastly, he learned that a trait might not show up in an individual, but can still be passed onto the next generation.


http://anthro.palomar.edu/mendel/mendel_1.htm

Icy Weather

As you probably already know we've been getting very unusual weather changes lately.
In Tulsa, Oklahoma the weather has gotten freezing. On Friday, freezing rain fell and there was a huge windy storm. The storm left several states coated in ice. This storm has also been very deadly. In fact, at least two deaths have been blamed on this storm. In addition, a few schools closed down early and dozens of flights were delayed. Some people predict that this is going to be a very long-term event.

In Kansas, several inches of snow was expected at the end of the week. A few deaths were blamed on this storm as well. One of the deaths that was blamed on this storm was of a 16-year-old boy who was riding to school on a pick-up truck. While he was riding to school the truck slipped on ice and overturned. The same thing also happened to an 81-year-old man.

In Oklahoma City a lumber truck flipped on an icy interstate 44 off exit ramp Friday.

Unfortunately, because of all these deaths and injuries we will have to be much more careful from now on.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070112/ap_on_re_us/winter_blast

Triplets!!!

Have you guys ever seen triplets or quadruplets?
Well 1 out of 38 times a mother gets twins, 1 out of 8000 a mother has triplets, and 1 out of 64 million a mother has quadruplets. Anyways, on January 11th Jennifer Clapp-Bennet and her husband Daniel got to see their triplets on an ultra sound record and then a computer generated view that was very accurate. Jennifer really thought that this was a miracle. She couldn't believe that 3 boys were growing in her womb. She said that they were doing gymnastics in her belly and that they kept kicking her stomach and each other. Even though her pregnancy was very complicated she was very excited about it. The three babies in her stomach were also growing very quickly. In fact, their fetus grew 9 inches in just a few months, which made the uterus very crowded. In addition, Jennifer also thought that it was so amazing that her children had began sibling rivalry that early.



http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2788721&page=1

E. coli

Hey guys!

I'm here to tell you about E.coli, the disease that had spread throughout the entire nation in Taco Bells. This disease began spreading around the third week of November. It was spreading through green onions most likely. Because of this deadly disease over 5800 Taco Bells had to close down nationwide. Over 160 people fell sick. The disease began spreading in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. There are 103 cases in new York. Approximately 7 cases were reported in Pennsylvania. There were 41 sick people in Long Island. There were about 55 cases going on in New Jersey. Anyways, if you don't know what E. coli is, then it is a type of bacteria that normally inhabits a person’s intestine. Some of these strains are capable of causing disease under certain conditions when the immune system is compromised or disease might result from an environmental exposure. But don't worry if you haven't gotten this disease yet then you won't get it ever. But be careful just in case it spreads again

http://www.monheit.com/taco-bell/index.asp

Hey!!!!

hey guys!
This blog sight is awesome. Leave as many comments as you want. So guys, how was your your break? I really wanted it to snow. Well I gotta go. Bye!