Thursday, June 16, 2011

This up to 1000 years old snow has metamorphosed into highly...



This up to 1000 years old snow has metamorphosed into highly pressurized glacier ice that contains almost no air bubbles. Thus it absorbs the visible light despite the scattered shortest blue fraction, giving it its distinct deep blue waved appearance. This cavity in the glacier ice formed as a result of a glacial mill, or moulin.

Rain and meltwater on the glacier surface is channelled into streams that enter the glacier at crevices. The waterfall melts a hole into the glacier while the ponded water drains towards lower elevations by forming long ice caves with an outlet at the terminus of the glacier. The fine grained sediments in the water along with wind blown sediments cause the frozen meltwater stream to appear in a muddy colour while the top of the cave exhibits the deep blue colour.

Due to the fast movement of the glacier of about 1 m per day over uneven terrain this ice cave cracked up at its end into a deep vertical crevice, called cerrac. This causes the indirect daylight to enter the ice cave from both ends resulting in homogeneous lighting of the ice tunnel.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Gas From Uranus Makes For Great Starship Fuel

Actually the title should’ve been “gas from your anus” but that would be too inappropriate. (Though funny, real funny.) Long story abbreviated: enormous planet-wide helium-3 deposits in Uranus can be harvested for interstellar travel. Helium-3 is an ideal fuel because it’s abundant and reacts well with deuterium. Deuterium is also known as ‘heavy hydrogen’ and isn’t abundant, even if it did figure in the first hydrogen bomb some time ago.

Vastness of Space