jueves, 25 de marzo de 2010
sábado, 20 de marzo de 2010
miércoles, 17 de marzo de 2010
Vida debajo de la Antártida
Page 1 of 3
A NASA research team drilled an eight-inch hole into an Antarctic ice sheet and deployed a video camera over 600 feet down. To their utter surprise, they found a shrimp-like creature swimming around, oblivious to the fact that humans did not expect it could survive in such hostile conditions. Guess they were wrong!
Between November 9, 2009 and December 10, 2009, NASA scientist Robert Bindschadler, an Antarctic researcher based out of the Goddard Space Flight Center, led an expedition to Wrinless Bight, Antarctica.
Along with him were researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Navel Postgraduate School, and the University of Alaska.
Their goal was to drill an eight-inch wide hole through a 200-meter (650-foot) thick ice shelf and explore the hidden world underneath with a video camera system. They were over 12 miles (20 kilometers) from seasonally open water.
The results of their mission produced the first-ever photograph of the underside of an ice shelf.
The results of their mission produced the first-ever photograph of the underside of an ice shelf.
However, to top it all off, the researchers also found a three-inch long "Lyssianasid amphipod" swimming around in waters they assumed would only harbor very simple life forms such as microbesLysianassidae is a family of amphipods (Amphipoda), which is an order of animals that includes over seven thousand species of shrimp-like crustaceans.
In fact, the orangish-colored creature swam to the camera, and clung to the cable of the camera system, for a close-up look at the strange-looking apparatus.
In fact, the orangish-colored creature swam to the camera, and clung to the cable of the camera system, for a close-up look at the strange-looking apparatus.
Page two continues with more information on this creature, and the NASA research. There is an amazing video, too, if you will read the rest of the story.
At such a location, six hundred fifty feet (200 meters) below the ice where light does not shine, the researchers only expected to find very simple life forms.
They did not even think about seeing more advanced forms of life, such as the shrimp-like creature, being called the “Lyssianasid amphidod.”
When they retrieved the camera system, they also found a long tentacle possibly from a jelly fish that is thought to have been about one foot in length.
To say the least, the NASA scientists were quite surprised. And, their amazement at such a discovery is spreading throughout the scientific community.
Now, scientists have for the first time found a higher form of life, specifically the "Lyssianasid amphidod," living (and surviving quite well) underneath a large Antarctic ice sheet.
Dr. Bindschadler exclaimed in the March 15, 2010 Associated Press article “NASA finds shrimp dinner on ice beneath Antarctica”, "We were operating on the presumption that nothing's there…. It was a shrimp you'd enjoy having on your plate…. "We were just gaga over it."
A descriptive picture of the shrimp-like creature and the video camera system underneath the ice sheet is found at the AP webpage “Lyssianasid amphipod and video camera.”
When they retrieved the camera system, they also found a long tentacle possibly from a jelly fish that is thought to have been about one foot in length.
To say the least, the NASA scientists were quite surprised. And, their amazement at such a discovery is spreading throughout the scientific community.
Now, scientists have for the first time found a higher form of life, specifically the "Lyssianasid amphidod," living (and surviving quite well) underneath a large Antarctic ice sheet.
Dr. Bindschadler exclaimed in the March 15, 2010 Associated Press article “NASA finds shrimp dinner on ice beneath Antarctica”, "We were operating on the presumption that nothing's there…. It was a shrimp you'd enjoy having on your plate…. "We were just gaga over it."
A descriptive picture of the shrimp-like creature and the video camera system underneath the ice sheet is found at the AP webpage “Lyssianasid amphipod and video camera.”
Page three provides a video, showing even more amazing images of the event below the ice sheet.
Even more amazing is a video of the event, which shows the shrimp-like creature swimming by the camera system. It is seen at the YouTube.com video “Scientists discover shrimp below Antarctic ice.”
The NASA article “Ice Shelf Drilling and Ocean Cavity Exploration” (you'll be asked to open or save the article) by Dr. Robert Bindschadler, from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, explains more about their journey of exiting discoveries.
And, the discovery by the NASA team furthers the debate as to how easily it will be to find extraterrestrial creates in the solar system.
If higher-forms of life are able to survive underneath the hostile environment of Antarctic ice, would it be possible for creatures to survive and prosper on other planets and moons, such as Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Titan?
These places, out there in our solar system (and beyond on exoplanets orbiting stars other than the Sun) are also very hostile environments to support life—but maybe ones that are not impossible to support life?
Interesting discussions of the possibility of extraterrestrial life on such celestial bodies, as related to this latest discovery of shrimp under ice sheets in Antarctic, is found at the 3.16.2010 Christian Science Monitor’s article “Does Antarctic shrimp (lyssianasid amphipod) mean extraterrestrial life?”
viernes, 12 de marzo de 2010
La religión del hombre. Rabindranath Tagore
¿Oh Tú, que eres el más íntimo espíritu de mi ser!
¿Estás contento de mi, Señor de mi vida?
porque te he dado el caliz,
lleno de toda la pena y todo el júbilo
que los prensados racimos de mi corazón despidieron.
Yo tejo con el ritmo de colores y cantos la cobertera de tu lecho,
y con el oro fundido de mmis deseos
hice jugetes para tu pasatiempo.
No sé por qué me elgiste como tu compañero,
¡oh Señor de mi vida!
Almacenaste mis días y mis noches,
mis actos y mis sueños para la alquimia de tu arte,
y pulsando en la cadena de tu música mis cantos de otoño y primavera,
recoges las flores de mis momentos maduros para tu corona...
Veo tus ojos que contemplan lo oscuro de mi corazón,
¡oh Señor de mi vida!
Pienso si mis caidas y mis yerros estarán perdonados.
Porque muchos fueron mis días sin servicio
y mis noches de olvido;
vanas fueron ls flores que se mustiaron en la sombra,
no ofrendadas a ti.
Con frecuencia las cansadas cuerdas de mi laúd
saltaron en la tensión de tus canciones.
Y también con frecuencia, ante la ruina de las horas disipadas,
se llenaron de llanto mis desoladas noches.
Pero, ¿han llegado mis días finalmente a su término?,
¡oh Señor de mi vida!,
en tanto que mis brazos en torno a ti flaquean
y mis besos pierden su verdad?
Si es así, corta el encuentro de este lánguido día,
renueva lo viejo en mí en nuevas formas de placer,
y que se repitan las nupcias
en una nueva ceremonia de vida.
lunes, 8 de marzo de 2010
In the Making
“¿Comprendes ahora, Bulkington? ¿Puedes aceptar esa verdad que a todo mortal se le antoja intolerable, que todo pensamiento profundo y honrado no es sino el intrépido esfuerzo que hace el alma por mantener la libre independencia de su mar, mientras que los más fuertes vientos del cielo y la tierra conspiran para arrojarla contra una costa engañosa y servil?”
-Moby Dick, XXIII-
Es un capítulo muy corto, el XXIII, pero genial y que me ha recordado cosas que escribí hace tiempo (en V.O.)...
In the Making
The sailor is a solitary man. Silence, work, and prayer, although this last not always being religious according to orthodoxy, are routine activities. The sailor lives surrounded by a horizon, the horizon between sea and sky and between heaven and earth. The sailor is merely a spot in the midst of the immense ocean, yet the greatest creature of the universe.
The sailor (metaphorically speaking) can become either a real mystic or a complete imbecile. Navigation means facing the truth revealed in a whisper coming from the solitude of the sea. The truth that there is no Creator without Creation and there is no Creator without Creatures. The real sailors, even those who neither do know how to read or write, have reached this truth.
There is no navigation without a horizon. The horizon may disturb the peace of both creation and the creature when it discloses to the sailor the reality of poverty and the lives of the poor in Third World countries (e.g., Brazil). The horizon that announces a personal destiny may be frightening when it remains blurred and still unknown. It calls for courage, or faith, to be willing to cross to the other side. Paradoxically, the most difficult boundaries to cross on is precisely that which man has created: the destitution line, the ethnic line, the color line, the religious line, the I-Thou line, and so on so forth. However, despite religions, cultures or ethnicity, the horizon discloses the reality of the poor, the miserable, the destitute, the dweller on the margins, and the eternal inhabitant of the boundaries. In order to erase their presence, one must deny one’s self. When the horizon discloses and reveals the poor, man discovers his self as being alienated from the human family, where the restless self reaches the juncture of its existence and must decide whether or not to join a common destiny with humankind or estrange oneself from it.
Man becomes imprisoned in his own identity when he awakens to his status quo, both the haves and the have-nots identity becomes determined making it difficult to change. So it was for the pious young man in the gospel who, besides being fond of his riches, was fond of his religion. Man is fond of riches and religion, and both can get along well in his culture. Either the young missionary or the young sailor carries his cultural identity in the register of his memories…
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)