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POPSFor Those Of You About To Vote; Here's A Few Words From Shelley continues (full text of 'The Mask of Anarchy' by Shelley, through link ) 'And that slaughter to the Nation Shall steam up like inspiration, Eloquent, oracular; A volcano heard afar. 'And these words shall then become Like Oppression's thundered doom Ringing through each heart and brain, Heard again—again—again— 'Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number— Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you— Ye are many—they are few.'
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POPSVolcanic lightning may have sparked life on Earth In the classic Miller-Urey experiment, a mixture of gases and water that Miller thought were present on early Earth was heated and zapped with electricity to mimic lightning. This created five identifiable amino acids. Yet Miller tested three versions of his spark flask. One of the two lesser-know setups – the volcanic apparatus – created 22 amino acids that could be positively identified. The findings could also give clues to life on other planets. The conditions found in the volcanic spark flask could conceivably have once existed on Mars or Titan, and Bada is developing instruments that could detect tiny amounts of amino acids frozen beneath the surface of the Red Planet.
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POPSA satellite eye on the Earth last 2 pictures: a) Kasatochi volcano, Aleutian Islands, August 8: Dormant for 200 years this small volcano in the Pacific erupted without warning on August 7. The volcano’s plume is seen here as a brown streak in the cloud b) Phytoplankton bloom in the Barents Sea, Norway, August 12 2008. Phytoplankton are tiny plant-like organisms that are the foundation of the ocean food web. Like plants, they contain chlorophyll that they use to harvest sunlight for photosynthesis. In northern waters, these organisms are starved for sunlight much of the year, but during the summer months, they explode in colourful blooms such as this one
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POPSMartian Life: Where Fire Meets Ice? "It's possible that volcanic activity on Mars is much more widespread and recent than people on the whole thought," Hovius said. "This is a flood bigger than anything we've seen on Earth."
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POPSThe Mars Webcam The VMC is operated by the Mars Express Flight Control Team, based at ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany. This activity is conducted on a 'best-effort, last-priority' basis given the availability of planning time, command upload time and data down-link capacity. This is a unique situation, as Flight Control Teams for ESA missions usually do not 'operate' payload instruments; this is done by dedicated, specialised science teams. But the VMC is different: it had a purely operational purpose (successfully completed in 2003 with Beagle's separation) and as such it is not operated by scientists, but by flight controllers.
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POPSIce Volcanoes of Titan May Habor Life For almost thirty years, scientists have known that complex carbon compounds called tholins exist on comets and in the atmospheres of the outer planets. Theoretically, tholins might interact with water in a process called hydrolysis to produce complex molecules similar to those found on the early Earth. Could tholins formed in Titan's atmosphere react with liquid water temporarily exposed by meteor impacts or ice volcanoes to produce potentially prebiotic complex organic molecules — before the water freezes? Laboratory research by Catherine Neish, a graduate student working on her doctorate in planetary science at the University of Arizona, suggests, not without controversy, however, that, over a period of days, compounds similar to tholins can be react with water at near-freezing temperatures.
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POPSStudying volcanoes with flying balloons :) "The balloons are piloted remotely by satellite link," Durant explained, "with flight visualization using Google Earth. We were looking at tropospheric volcanic emissions of sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide and water, which can be hazardous to human and animal health and degrade ecosystems."
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POPSday in pictures you may have to go to source to see them all, and my favorite is the active volcano
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POPSMugtada al-Sadr keeps the truce for now.... Cont.... Such tales abound. Sudani said she'd heard of troops bursting into a woman's home and arresting her four sons, as a soldier threw the mother to the ground and put his boot on her head. Iraqi troops are said to have seized gasoline canisters from a Sadr City resident and distributed them to others, claiming they were from the government. Ali Jassim, 30, another resident, said his cousin's phone rang at a checkpoint with a ringtone containing a chant about Sadr. When soldiers heard it, they slapped him, he said. Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, has suffered a series of setbacks since last spring. It lost control of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, and the southern city of Amara after Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki ordered his forces to retake those areas. Many charge that Maliki is waging a political war against his former allies in time for fall's provincial elections.