GeekwithEnvy

Discovery

Ancient Underwater Forest Discovered

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Alabama Under ocean Forest
Sonar Map of the Ancient Underwater Forest of the Coast of Alabama (CREDIT: Grant Harley, Kristine DeLong)

Just off the coast of Alabama, divers have discovered and ancient forest beneath the waves of the Gulf of Mexico. This Bald Cypress forest was hidden under the sand for over 50,000 years and was likely uncovered by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The undersea forest, which is about 60 feet below the ocean surface, was preserved amazingly well because of the lack of oxygen that exists under the ocean sediments. Now that the area is exposed it won’t be around for very long as it will soon be destroyed by living creatures.

Ben Raines was one of the first divers to see this amazing place. Ben is the executive director of the nonprofit Weeks Bay Foundation. He mentioned that a local dive shop owner had been trying to keep the place a secret because he feared that divers take things from the dive area and would eventually spoil the ancient underwater forest.

You can experience the underwater forest in the video above, which takes you down under the Gulf of Mexico and gets you up close and personal with these amazing ancient trees. You can read the complete article on this forest by LiveScience.

 

Big NASA Discovery On Mars? Not So Much

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About a week ago we received news that NASA was possibly on the brink of a major discovery, in fact it was mentioned that it could be for the “History Books”. Well, unfortunately it doesn’t seem like were going to get that kind of news from Mars anytime soon.

This discovery that apparently never happened is being described as a “big misunderstanding”. Here is the original report that I read from NPR. Planet Mars Viewed From Space

“Grotzinger says they recently put a soil sample in SAM, and the analysis shows something remarkable. “This data is gonna be one for the history books. It’s looking really good.”

“Grotzinger can see the pained look on my face as I wait, hoping he’ll tell me what the heck he’s found, but he’s not providing any more information.”

This was from an interview between science correspondent Joe Palca and scientist John Grotzinger. Apparently, what were being told now is that John meant to say that the mission in it’s entirety is historical and that in the next couple of years we expect to make great discoveries.

Something sound a bit strange here? This was big news that made it’s way quickly around the world and that means NASA had to have heard it too. The big question here is if NASA did hear this report earlier then why didn’t they try to correct this earlier?

They were still sampling soil at the time of the interview and were anxiously waiting for results, but apparently they weren’t “History Worthy”. Either way you look at this, it’s still a bit of let down. I guess we will just have to keep our hopes up for future discoveries on Mars.

Possibly a Big Discovery on Mars

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We have been receiving a steady stream of updates from the Mars rover, Curiosity, ever since it left the Earth’s atmosphere and began it’s mission. However, one of the more recent updates, which is being called “earthshaking”, can not be shared at this time.  So what in the world is going on? or to be more precise, what in the Martian world is going on?

Mars
Mars (Source:NASA)

One of Curiosity’s instruments, known as SAM, is able to determine what’s inside a particular sample by analyzing it and then letting us know what it’s made up of. John Grotzinger, who is part of the rover team, has mentioned that they have recently gathered a bit of soil to test with SAM and it has yielded some “Earthshaking”, results.

Unfortunately, we won’t find out exactly what these earthshaking results are until they have confirmed them beyond a shadow of a doubt. After all they don’t want to deliver big news only to have to take it back later and say they were wrong.

The funny thing about scientific discovery is that everybody interprets these sort of things differently. We could very well hear news that a never before seen gas has been found trapped in the soil sample, which would be interesting but not necessarily “earthshaking” to those of us outside the scientific community, with the exception being some of our fellow geeks of course. Either way we remain in state of suspense until we can find out more about whats going on out there. I can’t even begin to speculate myself.

There’s no doubt in my mind that these scientists are basically freaking out about not being able to tell us, and to make things worse, it may be several weeks before we can know. For now we will just have to wait and see what these earthshaking results are and hopefully we are in for a big suprise.

Possibly the Most Distant Object in the Universe and Looking Into the Past

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NASA has recently discovered what they think is the most distant object to ever be observed. This object is actually a galaxy named MACS0647-JD and it’s so far away that normally we wouldn’t be able to see it, even with our best telescopes. So, how are we able to see it then? Well, we lucked out, we got a little help from a cluster of galaxies known as MACS J0647+7015. Large celestial objects like galaxies have such large gravitational influence that they can actually distort and bend light passing near them. In the case of MACS J0647+7015, NASA was able to use this gravitational distortion as kind of a deep space magnifying glass. This effect is what enabled NASA to capture the light of this distant galaxy.

Nasa Most Distant Object
Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Postman and D. Coe (STScI) and CLASH Team.

The light of MACS0647-JD has taken nearly 13.3 billion years to reach Earth. We are essentially looking at an object from the theorized beginning of the universe (the big bang). This amazing discovery actually gets me thinking about the distances between objects in space and how long it takes for light to travel between them.

What if we could somehow instantaneously appear 65 million light years away from Earth, and what if we had a telescope with us that was capable of zooming in all the way to the Earth’s surface. Would we see dinosaurs walking the Earth? Theoretically, yes, we should. This raises some fun ideas about what’s possible in the universe. What if we just went a fraction of our first trip away from Earth? Perhaps we only go far enough away to witness the early  beginnings of human civilization and maybe we could just get it all on video. This video would be our exact history, nothing unchanged or lost from our true story. How amazing would that be?

Assuming that in our hypothetical world we can travel to almost any distance, we could actually watch the beginning of our solar system. We could know truly how the Moon was formed and perhaps even watch our solar system form, maybe even watch the Milky Way form. Of course we would need to somehow move our camera closer to the objects we are observing at a relatively quick rate in order to watch the creation of large objects like the Milky Way form in a reasonable amount of time, basically a galactic time lapse. Just a little food for thought.

To see a full article on the new discovery, head over to the official NASA post.