1

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / Re: What are your favourite Plant Pictures?

« on: 14/06/2022 16:48:13 »

Datura innoxia, the downy thorn apple. Difficult to grow successfully in my climate(Ireland) due to blight attack. This is my wife's hand near the flower, not mine.

downy thornapple.jpg (52.13 kB . 480x640 - viewed 2340 times)

Paul, that is a beautiful flower. Well done !

2

Physiology & Medicine / Can JUST a head survive ?

« on: 27/05/2022 18:32:28 »

Dear Cranial Inplantologists,

As a sheepy I just love my head being where it is. Each day I find it at the end of my neck and it pleases me no end.

Say I was the unfortunate casualty of a horrific happenstance ! A very serious papercut that separates my brain bowl from my body.
I know the outpour of grief would stop the Earth spinning but Could my head(or anybody else's head) remain alive and well if attached to the appropriate equipment


As a firm believer in empirical study I perchance found myself removing my neighbour's *head at 3am this morning and with the aid of Lego I created a toy car that I threw at it  !..A toy car that after all my endless research (none) I thought was the appropriate equipment...................anyway no luck there !....sheesh !!!


whajafink ?










*Please do not try this tat home, I am a trained neighbour-head remover.

3

Physiology & Medicine / How Do Isolated Tribes Survive Inbreeding Birth Defects ?

« on: 09/09/2021 19:16:49 »

Dear Anthropologists,


Well, the kweschun is in the title !


After a few millennia, how do isolated tribes still survive ? Their cousin may also be their brother, aunt uncle nephew niece sister type thing eh  ?


Surely they'd all be eating grass and playing banjos by now !!


whajafink ?




 

4

The Environment / Does Earth Lose Water ?

« on: 09/09/2021 17:15:00 »

Dear Earthologists,


As a sheepy I of course know all about earth, I know doggies like to roll around in it and that it's also where grass grows.  I mean, what else is there to know ? That covers it.


Here is The Earth, to scale 1-1.



The Earth true to scale 1-1 cos I said so.


Is Earthy losing water ? Does any of the water in the atmosphere leak into spacey-wacey ?

If so, how much and does it get replenished whenever the ISS people flush the loo ?


whajafink ?

i don't know.....I'm a sheep !!


hugs and shmishes


mwah mwah

neil
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Oh H20 oh H20 !
How high do you go ?

5

General Science / Re: Science Photo of the Week

« on: 02/09/2021 19:56:01 »

Is that a 'Men At Work' reference ?

It's the movie called the dish. I like men at work.

My favourite track

It references Johnny playing Cricket !

6

General Science / Re: Why Do Toe Nails Zoom Off When Being Cut ?

« on: 08/08/2021 14:55:08 »

Hi.
   It's starting to worry me.  If you're going to put pictures like that on your posts please put a warning in the title.
Best wishes.  (Although I've got to stop reading your threads before I sleep).

I will forewarn of images included so ewe may sleep soundly !   

7

General Science / Re: Which direction does all the space junk and satellites travel ?

« on: 07/08/2021 15:58:15 »

Hi.

   This podcast by the NakedScientists:
https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/naked-reflections/space-oddity
   Talks about space junk, satellites and weapons in space.   I enjoyed it.  Can sheep hear podcasts?

Best Wishes.

I can indeed hear podcasts and I thank ewe for the link @Eternal Student

8

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / why Is WOMBAT poo CUBED ?

« on: 02/08/2021 13:16:00 »

Dearest Scatologist


Ewe can see why Arbuthnot Vombatidae the 3rd has tears in his eyes !!..he's just pooped cubed poop !!!!





Arbuthnot just moments ago with tears in his eyes

What on earth is going on here ?WHY DOES ARBUTHNOT POO CUBED POOP ? !!!

Do they have a shortage of dice in the wombat community ? have they got the recipe for ice cubes all wrong ?
Somebody help !!!

hugs et les shmishes

mwah mwah mwahNeilxxxxxxxx









As a firm believer in empirical study
I sneaked indoors to my neighbour buddy
At 3am I found a hole
Inserted a box inside his goal


No protest as he allowed to be sedated
A calm and cool neighbour I had created
He just winced in whined and moaned in the chair
I had tied him to it so no luck there[

9

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / What Propels Light ?

« on: 02/08/2021 12:44:37 »

Dearest Lightologists,


As a sheepy I am of course extremely fast and I can propel myself in  a variety of ways. I can EWEs my legs, I can back myself into a corner and do a "bottom burp" ! so, this got me thinking....what makes light or any other type or radiation type stuff move ? What propels it and how does it know what direction to go ?


Like, how does light on the right hand side of a flame know to go one way and light on the other side know to go the other way ? what actually makes it move and one final kweschun, does it start off slow and then accelerate to C ?






ewe see, I don't know, but ewe telling me will help me know and I will then know !!


yayyyy...i will know stuff soon !!




hugs and shmishes




neil
xxxxxxxxx














Oh light oh light
I want to know what's right
I need to know your groove
About what makes ewe move

10

General Science / Can fire cast a shadow?

« on: 16/12/2019 13:40:24 »

Dearest Fireologists,

As a sheepy I of course know almost everything there is to know but one thing that eludes me is whether fire can have a shadow !

look , here's some fire being all firey !!


Fire Being All Firey Yesterday

As ewe can see, ewe can not see through it, so, if I was to shine a big enough torch at it would it make a shadow on the other side ? i'm curious because i can't see through it yet it's a source of light !!

whajafink ?

Can A Fire Have A Shadow ?

Hugs and shmishes

mwah mwah !!

Neil
"This girl is on fire !
OUCH Oooh OUCH !!"

11

General Science / Re: Science Photo of the Week

« on: 13/12/2019 14:24:45 »

Beautiful Bug found in South Africa

12

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Diet and Weight Loss | The best diet plan and natural ways of weight loss

« on: 11/05/2018 13:49:50 »

It would be convenient and help to freshen
If you simply asked a forum question
Are ewe here by chance to stealth ?
A sneaky spam about wealthy health ?

13

General Science / Re: Science Photo of the Week

« on: 25/04/2018 14:34:33 »

Storm in the Desert   


desert storm.jpg (201.34 kB . 2110x933 - viewed 35187 times)

Big Bend National Park, TX 3 June 2017 On a solo circum-country road trip camped on the desert floor I watched a nasty storm move left to right across the horizon. It was powerful and scary and magnificent! North of Chisos mtns, facing E
 
 8 second exp, f/2.8 ISO400 50mm Canon 5DMkII Increased the vib & sat to better reflect the colors the weird light was producing, clarity to bring out the depth in the clouds I was seeing. I didn't notice I'd also caught the stars until I got it on the laptop.

CREDIT: NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

14

Cells, Microbes & Viruses / Re: Where did the first virus come from?

« on: 25/04/2018 13:28:32 »

Somehow I missed this post the first time, so here I am, a decade later, answering the question! I hope @neilep you're not too frustrated by the wait. But look on the bright side, people have spent longer on hold on the phone trying to cancel their direct debit with Eon, HMRC or BT...

Viruses are obligate intracellular parasites. In plain English, they are infectious packets of genes that require a living cell to provide key functions that they lack so that they can replicate and increase their numbers.

Viruses come in many different shapes and sizes, both literally, and metaphorically. Some are absolutely tiny: particles of norovirus, which is one of the commonest causes of diarrhoea and vomiting, are just 30nm - 1/30,000th of a millimetre - across. Other viruses are enormous in comparison. The recently-discovered mamaviruses, pithoviruses and pandoraviruses are so large that there were initially mistaken for bacteria, which are usually orders of magnitude bigger than a virus.

This broad diversity, and the fact that viruses target every living entity on Earth including even other viruses (there are viruses that prey on viruses: these are called virophages), suggests that they have been around for a very long time and may even predate modern multicellular life itself.

One theory of the origin of viruses posits that they were initially a spin-off from the first cells. Genetic functions that had evolved to replicate themselves escaped the confines of their parent cell and became independent entities that nevertheless came home to roost in the cell to replicate but otherwise had little else in common.

Other hypotheses even regard some viruses as the origin of life on Earth.The giant viruses mentioned above (gyruses) contain such a broad repertoire of genes that cross all three of the main kingdoms of life, and also even include genes not seen in any living species, suggests that perhaps these entities gave rise to us all from the primordial soup.

The bottom line is that viruses contain an assemblage of genes that enable them to freeload off living cells, which they hijack by first fooling the cell into allowing them in, and then assimilating by using genetic tricks that can deactivate all but the most essential and useful cellular systems to enable the virus to grow rapidly, or they do the opposite and deactivate themselves so that they can lurk undetected within the genetic recesses of the cell, either by pretending to be a miniature chromosome that the cell ignores, or inserting themselves inside the host cell's own DNA. In both cases they end up immunologically "off grid".

But, next time you are sneezing into a hanky having fallen prey to another rhinovirus infection, you can take some solace from the fact that this is not a modern problem. Genetic analysis confirms that dinosaurs had herpes! More a case of T-sex than T-rex, perhaps...

I've literally worn a hole in the table tapping my fingers the last decade for this. Refreshing the page every thirty seconds !!

Thank ewe @chris. Absolutely fascinating and I was pondering the same all those years ago regarding how Mr and Mrs Virus may have done the deed and become mummy and daddy to life here.

 Brilliant answer. Thank ewe so much !!

Now to get that manicure after tapping my fingers for so long !!

T-sex....lol .....Norty dino !!

15

Just Chat! / Re: Puzzles From A Trampolining Upside Down Sheeps Bottom (PFATSB) :-)

« on: 04/06/2017 14:06:14 »

Well done !!!

Yes , it's a list of the top twenty most used words in the English language in order of commonality !!

Yayyyy

16

General Science / Re: Science Photo of the Week

« on: 01/06/2017 11:19:21 »

Pink Rainbow Over Marysville, Ohio


Screen Shot 2017-06-01 at 11.15.52.png (440.93 kB . 686x388 - viewed 41333 times)

BIGGY PICCY



Photographer: Raj Muddana
Summary Authors: Raj Muddana; Jim Foster

I noticed this eye-catching pinkish rainbow as I was driving to work in western Ohio earlier this spring and pulled off the road to snap a photo. The camera is facing west. Since the bow is arching so high, it's evident that it was taken when the Sun was very low in the sky -- in this case, the eastern sky. The reason it looks pink is because the Sun is reddened when lying close to the horizon. The thicker atmosphere (greater path length) sunlight must pass through when it's very low in the sky effectively extinguishes the shorter wavelength colors (violets, blues and greens). Sunlight must pass through about 40 times as much atmosphere when the Sun is on the horizon compared to when it's overhead. So raindrops in between my camera and the antisolar point are being illuminated by the reddish Sun directly behind me. Therefore the rainbow takes on a pinkish hue. Note that a portion of the secondary bow can be detected near the ground at left. Photo taken on March 20, 2017, at 7:36 a.m.

Photo Details: Camera Maker: Apple; Camera Model: iPhone 6; Focal Length: 4.2mm (35mm equivalent: 29mm); Aperture: ƒ/2.2; Exposure Time: 0.0083 s (1/120); ISO equiv: 500.

CREDIT EPOD

17

Just Chat! / Re: Puzzles From A Trampolining Upside Down Sheeps Bottom (PFATSB) :-)

« on: 01/06/2017 10:42:24 »

This weeks puzzle from an upside down trampolining sheeps bottom has been excreted below !!


upsidedowntrampoline_picmonkeyed.jpg (73.97 kB . 788x575 - viewed 28934 times)

What is the significance of the above rather convoluted sentence eloquently pronounced by my anal sphincter  ?

18

General Science / Re: Science Photo of the Week

« on: 27/05/2017 10:41:55 »

A Whole New Jupiter: First Science Results from NASA’s Juno Mission


Juno.jpg (260.25 kB . 2048x1152 - viewed 41548 times)

This image shows Jupiter’s south pole, as seen by NASA’s Juno spacecraft from an altitude of 32,000 miles (52,000 kilometers). The oval features are cyclones, up to 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) in diameter. Multiple images taken with the JunoCam instrument on three separate orbits were combined to show all areas in daylight, enhanced color, and stereographic projection.BIGGY PICCY HERE



Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Betsy Asher Hall/Gervasio Robles


Early science results from NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter portray the largest planet in our solar system as a complex, gigantic, turbulent world, with Earth-sized polar cyclones, plunging storm systems that travel deep into the heart of the gas giant, and a mammoth, lumpy magnetic field that may indicate it was generated closer to the planet’s surface than previously thought.

“We are excited to share these early discoveries, which help us better understand what makes Jupiter so fascinating,” said Diane Brown, Juno program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "It was a long trip to get to Jupiter, but these first results already demonstrate it was well worth the journey.”

Juno launched on Aug. 5, 2011, entering Jupiter’s orbit on July 4, 2016. The findings from the first data-collection pass, which flew within about 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometers) of Jupiter's swirling cloud tops on Aug. 27, are being published this week in two papers in the journal Science, as well as 44 papers in Geophysical Research Letters.

“We knew, going in, that Jupiter would throw us some curves,” said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “But now that we are here we are finding that Jupiter can throw the heat, as well as knuckleballs and sliders. There is so much going on here that we didn’t expect that we have had to take a step back and begin to rethink of this as a whole new Jupiter.”

Among the findings that challenge assumptions are those provided by Juno’s imager, JunoCam. The images show both of Jupiter's poles are covered in Earth-sized swirling storms that are densely clustered and rubbing together.

“We're puzzled as to how they could be formed, how stable the configuration is, and why Jupiter’s north pole doesn't look like the south pole,” said Bolton. “We're questioning whether this is a dynamic system, and are we seeing just one stage, and over the next year, we're going to watch it disappear, or is this a stable configuration and these storms are circulating around one another?”

Another surprise comes from Juno’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR), which samples the thermal microwave radiation from Jupiter’s atmosphere, from the top of the ammonia clouds to deep within its atmosphere. The MWR data indicates that Jupiter’s iconic belts and zones are mysterious, with the belt near the equator penetrating all the way down, while the belts and zones at other latitudes seem to evolve to other structures. The data suggest the ammonia is quite variable and continues to increase as far down as we can see with MWR, which is a few hundred miles or kilometers.

Prior to the Juno mission, it was known that Jupiter had the most intense magnetic field in the solar system. Measurements of the massive planet’s magnetosphere, from Juno’s magnetometer investigation (MAG), indicate that Jupiter’s magnetic field is even stronger than models expected, and more irregular in shape. MAG data indicates the magnetic field greatly exceeded expectations at 7.766 Gauss, about 10 times stronger than the strongest magnetic field found on Earth.

“Juno is giving us a view of the magnetic field close to Jupiter that we’ve never had before,” said Jack Connerney, Juno deputy principal investigator and the lead for the mission’s magnetic field investigation at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Already we see that the magnetic field looks lumpy: it is stronger in some places and weaker in others. This uneven distribution suggests that the field might be generated by dynamo action closer to the surface, above the layer of metallic hydrogen. Every flyby we execute gets us closer to determining where and how Jupiter’s dynamo works.”

Juno also is designed to study the polar magnetosphere and the origin of Jupiter's powerful auroras—its northern and southern lights. These auroral emissions are caused by particles that pick up energy, slamming into atmospheric molecules. Juno’s initial observations indicate that the process seems to work differently at Jupiter than at Earth.

Juno is in a polar orbit around Jupiter, and the majority of each orbit is spent well away from the gas giant. But, once every 53 days, its trajectory approaches Jupiter from above its north pole, where it begins a two-hour transit (from pole to pole) flying north to south with its eight science instruments collecting data and its JunoCam public outreach camera snapping pictures. The download of six megabytes of data collected during the transit can take 1.5 days.

“Every 53 days, we go screaming by Jupiter, get doused by a fire hose of Jovian science, and there is always something new,” said Bolton. “On our next flyby on July 11, we will fly directly over one of the most iconic features in the entire solar system -- one that every school kid knows -- Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. If anybody is going to get to the bottom of what is going on below those mammoth swirling crimson cloud tops, it’s Juno and her cloud-piercing science instruments.”

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for NASA. The principal investigator is Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, in Denver, built the spacecraft.

CREDIT NASA

19

General Science / Re: Science Photo of the Week

« on: 11/05/2017 11:10:18 »

The Multiwavelength Crab


multiWcrab_lg1024c.jpg (71.55 kB . 1024x714 - viewed 41338 times)



Image Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Dubner (IAFE, CONICET-University of Buenos Aires) et al.;
A. Loll et al.; T. Temim et al.; F. Seward et al.; VLA/NRAO/AUI/NSF; Chandra/CXC;
Spitzer/JPL-Caltech; XMM-Newton/ESA; Hubble/STScI


Explanation: The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first object on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant, expanding debris from massive star's death explosion, witnessed on planet Earth in 1054 AD. This brave new image offers a 21st century view of the Crab Nebula by presenting image data from across the electromagnetic spectrum as wavelengths of visible light. From space, Chandra (X-ray) XMM-Newton (ultraviolet), Hubble (visible), and Spitzer (infrared), data are in purple, blue, green, and yellow hues. From the ground, Very Large Array radio wavelength data is in shown in red. One of the most exotic objects known to modern astronomers, the Crab Pulsar, a neutron star spinning 30 times a second, is the bright spot near picture center. Like a cosmic dynamo, this collapsed remnant of the stellar core powers the Crab's emission across the electromagnetic spectrum. Spanning about 12 light-years, the Crab Nebula is 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus.

Biggy PiCCY HERE

credit:APOD

20

General Science / Re: Science Photo of the Week

« on: 08/05/2017 11:03:19 »

Ancient Ogunquit Beach on Mars



Screen Shot 2017-05-08 at 11.02.36.png (864.5 kB . 869x579 - viewed 37850 times)


Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS;
This was once a beach -- on ancient Mars. The featured 360-degree panorama, horizontally compressed, was taken by the robotic Curiosity rover currently exploring the red planet. Named Ogunquit Beach after its terrestrial counterpart, evidence shows that at times long ago the area was underwater, while at other times it was at the edge of an ancient lake. The light peak in the central background is the top of Mount Sharp, the central feature in Gale Crater where Curiosity has been deployed. Curiosity is slowly ascending Mount Sharp. Portions of the dark sands in the foreground have been scooped up for analysis. The light colored bedrock is composed of sediment that likely settled at the bottom of the now-dried lakebed. The featured panorama (interactive version here) was created from over 100 images acquired in late March and seemingly signed by the rover on the lower left. Currently, Curiosity is carefully crossing deep megaripples of dark sands on its way to explore Vera Rubin Ridge.

CREDIT APOD