James' World 2

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So how are we going to quench our thirst if we do start building condos on Mars? Importing water from Earth is expensive and unsustainable long-term. And trying to imitate the survival steps taken by the stranded astronaut from The Martian — burning oxygen and hydrogen to produce water — would be extremely dangerous. Some have suggested setting up a huge humidifier to extract water from Mars’ thin atmosphere. Others think that loading up soil, which contains trace ice crystals, into a heater is the way to go. You could trap the water vapor, then condense it back to a liquid.

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It’s common knowledge that dogs wag their tails when they’re happy and tuck them in when they’re anxious. Some body language, however, is a little less clear. Like, have you ever wondered what it really means when they put their paw on you? Turns out, it could be a sign of affection that translates into the three words that we long to hear: “I love you.” 

Rebecca Forrest, an assistance dog trainer for The Dog Clinic, wrote about how your dog’s paw could be a sign of thanks for the petting they’ve already received—and want to show that the loving feeling is mutual. “Studies have shown ‘feel good’ hormones such as oxytocin are released by both human and dog during a petting session,” wrote Forrest. “By putting his paw on you whilst you are stroking him, he is further extending contact and reciprocating affection back.”

Forrest expresses that this interpretation makes sense in the right context, like if you’re cuddled up on the couch with each other. If you’re already petting your dog and he touches you to return the favor, then it’s a fairly sure sign.

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Photo by dezy/Shutterstock

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Kelly Korreck is still thinking about the time her spacecraft flew into the sun, how one moment, the probe was rushing through a stormy current of fast-moving particles, and the next, it was plunging somewhere quieter, where the plasma rolled like ocean waves. No machine had ever crossed that mysterious boundary before. But Korreck and her team had dispatched a mission for that exact purpose, and their plan worked. For the first time in history, a spacecraft had entered the sun’s atmosphere.

“This is a totally cool place to go—well, I guess, hot place to go,” Korreck, a solar physicist at NASA, told me. “We’ve touched plasma and gas that actually belongs to the sun.”

The NASA probe, named Parker, made the historic dive in April of last year, but scientists waited until last month to announce the news, after they’d analyzed the data and made sure that the spacecraft had indeed crossed into the top layer of the sun’s atmosphere, known as the corona. NASA then declared that Parker had “touched the sun,” basking in a bit of poetic license. The spacecraft can’t reach down to the photosphere, the layer that radiates light, what’s commonly understood to be the “surface” of the sun. But even that isn’t a distinct, solid surface like the ground on Earth, hence the quotation marks. So touch, shmuch: Parker certainly has, to use a less scientific term, booped the sun.

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The sun, in three different wavelengths (NASA / SDO; The Atlantic)

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Pluto is the gift that keeps on giving as more photos from the distant dwarf planet continue to roll in from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.

The first hi-res color shot of the planet, a strange image of Pluto’s rippled, “snakeskin” surface, and a close-up of a couple of ice mountains were issued Thursday.

In the color image of the entire planet, Pluto’s surface sports a remarkable range of subtle colors, enhanced in this view to a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds, NASA said. Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a complex geological and climatological story that scientists have only just begun to decode.

Speaking about the “snakeskin” region (below), “it’s a unique and perplexing landscape stretching over hundreds of miles,” said William McKinnon from Washington University in St. Louis.

It captures a vast rippling landscape of strange, aligned linear ridges that “astonished” New Horizons team members, according to NASA.

“It looks more like tree bark or dragon scales than geology,” McKinnon said in a statement. “This’ll really take time to figure out; maybe it’s some combination of internal tectonic forces and ice sublimation driven by Pluto’s faint sunlight.”

In the other photo, a textured surface of the plain surrounds two isolated ice mountains.

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A high-resolution color-enhanced image of Pluto NASA

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