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Can Humans Live On Mars? Mars, that big red dot in the sky, has captured the imagination of humans ever since we first laid eyes on the Red Planet. While Galileo Galilei is credited with discovering the planet in 1610, there’'s really no way of knowing exactly when Mars was first discovered, since it has been documented for over 4,000 years. The first successful flyby of the planet was in July 1965, when NASA sent the Mariner 4 probe to take pictures of the planet via the onboard television camera. The 8-month voyage to Mars resulted in Mariner 4 becoming the first spacecraft to orbit another planet. Since then, Mars has had its own personal Peeping Tom and not one moment of peace. Currently, there are 8 spacecraft (that we know of) either on or orbiting Mars. But, the big question is, when do we stop spending our time (and millions of dollars) staring at it and actually go there? While once considered the stuff of science fiction, thanks to the advancements in technology (and Elon Musk’'s brilliance), putting humans on the Red Planet could become a reality that we witness in our lifetime. The answer to the question, “"can humans live on Mars"”, is not a simple yes or no. The Red Planet has divided humans into two distinct groups; those who want to explore other planets, either to further the human race, (or find little green men), and those who are skeptical about leaving our current home for a cold, desolate, and desert-like world (of little green men). Why Mars? While the hope for life in this lonely cosmos is unlikely to be found on Martian soil, it’'s easy to see why many folks are looking for ways to get to Mars and do what we humans do best -– colonize it. There are many reasons why Mars makes it to the top of the very short list of planets that humans could attempt to colonize. For starters (and the main reason, pretty much), Mars still has an atmosphere and a temperature that could maintain liquid water on the surface. In fact, scientists have already found signs of water buried underneath the Martian surface. Problems That Humans Will Face on Mars? First off, Mars does not have a magnetic field, or an ozone layer. The lack of the latter means that ultraviolet rays can easily penetrate its atmosphere. This means that radiation is 1,000 times higher on Mars as compared to our own planet and that radiation is not just coming from the sun, but also from something called galactic cosmic rays. These GCRs can be incredibly nasty and extremely difficult to shield from. Still, scientists are certain that the thin Martian atmosphere would offer some protection from the radiation, and the structures that the first explorers would live in would have to be partially covered with Martian soil that will also help absorb the radiation. Then, there’'s the temperature. On Mars, the average temperature is minus 64 degrees Celsius. So, apart from the soil-covered living structures, unforgiving temperatures, and the lack of a bowling alley, what other challenges could we face on Mars? The chemistry of life is simple. In order to survive, humans need oxygen, food, and water. According to experts, in order to sustain life on Mars, we would need 200 square meters of growing space within the settler'’s habitat to cultivate crops. This would increase oxygen levels to an unsafe amount, requiring a non-stop supply of nitrogen gas to reduce the level of oxygen from reaching the fire safety threshold. Of course, the amount of nitrogen in the tanks would deplete, resulting in a drop in atmospheric pressure in our human-made habitat on Mars. This would eventually suffocate the first explorers within an estimated 68 days. Not very encouraging for those wishing they were the first settlers on Mars. But, that’'s not the only challenge faced by the first explorers to Mars. One of the major concerns that have left scientists scratching their heads is how the human body is going to respond to an environment that’'s one-third or one-half of the gravity of Earth. NASA is already privy to the changes that astronauts on the International Space Station go through while living in an environment with little gravity. While the negative impact on bones and muscles have been well documented, there are still other anomalies that scientists aren’'t familiar with. What Can We Do? While Mars might not be able to sustain a large population of humans, visiting the Red Planet would be more helpful in letting us learn more about how life on the mysterious planet works. Who knows, in time, the two-story tin can that rocks and groans in the wind could be replaced with more self- sufficient living quarters, laboratory and engineering spaces, and better food options (seriously, if there’'s no cheese, I’m not going!). But first, we still have to get there. Currently, there’'s no safe way to travel from Earth to Mars (yes, we’'re looking at you, Elon). Space exploration has always been dangerous. Even after 50 years of sending humans into space, it still remains a challenge. Even the slightest mistake can have catastrophic consequences, which is why the real challenge lies in identifying the risks in every step of the mission. Those hard-earned insights on living on Mars will be critical to the survival of all future explorers of space –- the final frontier. Conclusion While this all might seem like a pipe dream, there will come a time when our own planet’'s sky will turn red and black with soot; when the plants will be ripped off their roots by raging storms and the sun will grow uncomfortably hotter. At that time, people will start to consider a better place, any place to survive. Only then, it will be too late. So, at the end of the day, colonizing other planets could be the only thing that’'s standing between the human race and extinction, and Mars seems like a good place to start.

The Easier Ways: Black holes In fiction, we often see spaceships going inside black holes and ending up at another point in time. In reality, however, such an attempt would likely pulverize and compress a spaceship to infinity. No, to travel through time using black holes requires us to orbit it at near light speeds just far enough to not get tangled into its event horizon (the area around it where not even light can escape its gravity). The theory of relativity states that gravity can stretch the fabric of time and space. The more the gravity, the greater the stretch. Around the black hole, time stretches to such a extend that by orbiting around it, you are effectively experiencing time at half the speed of everyone outside the black hole's influence. So, say you were to orbit around it for ten years and then go back home to earth, you would have traveled ten years into the future. Cosmic Strings While a hypothetical concept, if they do exist, cosmic strings can provide us with the means of time travel. According to theory, cosmic strings are abnormalities left over since the early days of the cosmos, stretching across the entire length of the expanding universe. The creation of cosmic strings can be analogically explained as imperfections that form what a liquid solidifies. They are predicted to be impossibly thin, with a diameter of less than that of a proton but contain an impossibly huge amount of energy and mass, bending space and time around it. According to scientists, the approach of two such strings close and parallel to each other could create such a large distortion that by carefully moving a ship around them, one could travel through time. Other Methods: The Infinite Cylinder Proposed by the astrophysicist, Frank Tipler, the idea behind this mode of time-travel is very simple. Take matter roughly ten times the mass of the sun and roll it into an incomprehensibly long and dense cosmic cylinder (essentially a black hole spaghetti). Afterward, somehow get this object to start spinning at around a billion revolutions per minute. By following a very precise path around the cylinder, a spaceship can travel through time. However, there are some limitations to this. According to Stephen Hawking, this also requires the presence of negative energy to work, basically a thing that works opposite of gravity in that it pushes objects away. Scientists are still unsure of whether negative energy exists or not. Regardless, even it doesn't, there is another way to make the cylinder work, making its length reach infinity! Wormholes Think of space-time as a single sheet of paper, when you bend it, eventually there would be an instance where two points of it on the opposite come in contact with each other. This is what wormholes basically are, a connection between any two instances of space-time. Thus, by taking a ship through a wormhole, you can possibly land in any instance of time. Although when and where would be outside your control. Controlled time-travel with artificial wormholes is still possible. This would require you to create two wormhole entry points, one where time is normal and one where it is slower. Anyone coming from the region of space with a slower time would effectively travel back in time when the enter the normal time region. However, how old the instance they can travel back in time can only go as far back as the initial creation of the wormhole. However, while the existence of wormholes is theoretically plausible, actual evidence of their presence still remains to be discovered. Creating artificial wormholes is an even greater impossibility as there are current theoretical models that allow us to create wormholes without violating some fundamental aspects of physics. Traveling Through a Time Machine? All the instances we have discussed have involved some use of cosmic objects to travel through time. What about the more popularly imagined means? a time machine that physically travels through time. Is this possible? Again, such an approach would require you to somehow distort the fabric of space-time in the region around it. You can technically achieve it through a heavy concentration of negative energy but such an attempt would result in the destruction of the time-machine and you as well. An alternative would be to create a donut-shaped hole composed of a vacuum inside a spherical object. By concentrating gravitational fields inside of this hole, space-time could be bent. A person can time travel in time by racing inside the donut, going further and further backward in time with each lap. The problem is, of course, creating a strong enough field to start with. How to accurately manipulate it to safely achieve the intended purpose would also be difficult. Imagine standing on a black hole, whatever happens to you in the next nanosecond is what would happen to you in an unmanipulated concentration of gravitational fields within our hypothetical time machine. Conclusion: There is a reason why you or I haven't met a time traveler. Based on the current understanding of how things work, time travel is practically impossible, either because it is too impossibly dangerous or too impossibly difficult, even with some form of futuristic technology. Some may argue that, provided their actual existence holds true, natural wormholes could have propelled people or objects through time. However, the significance of such an event occurring would not be too different from a scenario where no such event occurred at all because the capacity of any time-traveling agent to successfully influence events would be nil. It is impossible to truly appreciate the vastness of space. The probability of someone going through a natural wormhole and going back in time to be even remotely near the same point in space is practically zero.

Where Does Our Garbage Go? 2.7 trillion pounds – that is how much garbage is produced every year. That’s as much as in weight as roughly 7,000 Empire State buildings. However, while we can spot trash everywhere where there is a sign of human activity, it is nearly as much as one would think given the insane amount of it that we produce annually. So, the question arises – where does all our garbage go? In this article, we’ll attempt to explain what happens to all our thrown away trash. Breaking it Down Here’s a pop quiz – what’s the biggest category of solid waste we produce every year? The answer isn’t plastic, which only accounts for some 10% of the total. The biggest proportion of our wastage (46%) is made up of organic material – that comprises of the spoiled or unspoiled food we didn’t eat. The second-biggest category of waste is paper, amounting to around 17%. However, due to the increasing digitalization of publications and work documents, paper now accounts for less and less of the global trash volume. The Journey – From Your Doorstep to The Final Stop Once you leave the garbage at your doorstep, it will be taken by your local garbage collector to the landfill, where some of the recyclable material will be sorted out and shipped to recycling local facilities or ones abroad. A few years ago, much of the world’s recyclable trash used to be sent to China for processing. Roughly 70% of all recyclable plastic was imported into the country. However, with tougher restrictions in place now on what type of wastes can be imported, much of the recyclable waste today is being sent to other countries that do not have the facilities to process it. As a result, more and more of the world’s waste is ending up being dumped in landfills or getting dumped into the ocean. Moving back home, as for the non-recyclable solid waste in our landfills, they are simply compressed and plowed over to make room for more garbage. In some landfills, methane produced from the decomposing garbage is collected and used in gas power plants to generate electricity. Some of the solid garbage may also be sent for burning in waste-to-energy plants. These facilities differ from trash incinerators that were the norm a few decades ago. Unlike their older counterparts, these more modern plants remove hazardous or recycle material before burning the rest. The gases are filtered for any hazardous compounds before being released into the atmosphere. The residue ash and metal left after the burning are sold to manufactories for use as raw materials for many of their products. However, because of the cost associated with the building of such facilities (a typical plant costs 440 million dollars annually to build), only a few rich jurisdictions are able to process garbage this way. This includes countries like Sweden and U.S states like California. Now coming back to the landfill, some of the organic trash left behind may be sorted out and composted. The composted trash will naturally decay over time to become a highly nutrient soil for use as fertilizer. The Trend Within the U.S, an increasingly larger percentage of trash is getting recycled. In terms of tonnage, the total volume of garbage that remained left in the landfill peaked in the year 1990 and since then have been on a long-term gradual decline. A similar trend is also apparent in many other OECD countries. The Bigger, Gloomier Bigger While unrecycled trash is on a slow decline in many of the rich countries, it is important to remember that a large portion of it is the result of some of the trash being sent over to developing countries. As mentioned, these countries lacking the proper facilities to process it as well as increasing their own trash production as a result of the growth in the economy means that on a net global scale, solid waste pollution is growing, putting both lives and wildlife in danger. In addition, despite improvements in technology, investment in waste power plants has essentially ceased in many parts of the world. Within the United States, only one such facility came online since 1995. Likely the picture for the near future is a gloomy one, with more and more of the world’s growing solid waste simply being dumped in open landfills or ending up floating in the world’s ocean. Frequently Asked Questions Which Country Produces the Most Trash? The answer to this isn’t going to surprise anyone perhaps. The United States holds the unenviable position as the country that produces the most trash of any country. Per capita wise, an average American will produce 2.6 lbs. of garbage in a single day, that equals to their own body weight being produced every month. Which Country Produces the Most Trash Per Person? Taken per capita wise, the picture becomes entirely different with the average American nowhere close to the top ten waste producers. The country with the most wasteful people is Kuwait, where the average person produces a staggering 12.6 lbs. of trash every single day! How Long Does It Take for Trash to Break Down? Trash is composed of many different materials which all decompose at different rates. Organic food items can break down in weeks to months while packaging like milk cartons can take years. Batteries and other electrical equipment can take over a century to break down. While materials such as plastic will take multiple centuries to fully decompose.

Who can NOT love puppies? Those cuddly, floofy, warm fuzzballs of cuteness are just too adorable to not just melt your heart. But these lovable little pups are also quite fascinating. Continue reading and be enchanted by these 15 wonderful facts about puppies. 1. Puppies Like Baby Talk Just like our own babies, puppies also do like when we ‘baby talk’ to them. A 2017 research project played a recording of women engaging in baby talk to a separate group of adult dogs and puppies. Virtually all of the puppies started barking and running toward the source of the sound after they heard the recordings. In contrast, adult dogs just largely ignored the sound altogether. 2. Puppies Have Baby Teeth Too Just like most other newborn mammals, puppies also have baby teeth. Puppies are born toothless but by 2 to 4 weeks of age, will start to develop their baby teeth. At 12 to 16 weeks of age, their 28 baby teeth begin to fall off, and by the time they are six months, they have been completely replaced by a full set of 42 adult teeth. 3. The Word ‘Puppy’ is French in Origin Like many other words in the English language, the word ‘puppy’ has French roots, stemming from the Old French poupee, which originally meant ‘doll or plaything’. Shakespeare’s play, King John, which was written in the 1590s, is believed to be one of the earliest known works to use the term puppy-dog. Before that, the common word in English used to describe a baby dog was whelp. 4. Puppies Are Born Blind and Deaf Neither a puppy’s eyes nor ears are fully developed when they are born. Only after two weeks of age are they able to use these senses. Until then, they primarily rely on their sense of smell to find their mothers. 5. Puppies Can Be Born Green Yes, you heard that right, sometimes puppies can be born green. A puppy named FiFi was born with a very green-tinted fur and a Golden Retriever was born with a green hue. What’s the reason behind this? This has to do with a natural pigment called Biliverdin found in both humans and animals, an overabundance of which can lead to a greenish skin or hair color. The green color of a puppy’s fur will gradually start to disappear after a few weeks as it grows. That’s why we never see a green adult dog anywhere. 6. Puppies Need A Lot of Sleep Just like our own children, puppies too require a lot of sleep – up to 16 to 20 full hours of it in fact. Sleep is essential to aid in their rapid growth, helpful for the healthy development of their brain, muscles, and body size. It is exactly for this reason why it is strongly advised not to disturb your puppy while they are taking a nap. If it is possible, a quiet undisturbed part of your house should be designated as a puppy sleeping place so that they can snooze peacefully without any interruption. 7. Puppies Don’t Find Yawns Infectious Ever yawned and saw others around you do the same afterward? To us yawns may be infectious but not to puppies, even though adult dogs are definitely not immune to it. Back in 2012, a study was carried out on a group of 35 dogs between 4 and 14 months by a team of Swedish researchers. They found that dogs less than seven months of age didn’t react to the yawning while many of the older dogs did. This behavior seems to mirror our own development. Human children don’t pick up the habit of contagious yawning until around age 4, when they began developing rudimentary social skills. 8. Puppies Fully Mature Within a Year Puppies grow really fast and almost reach their full adult size and maturity by the time they are one year of age. In human years, that’s an equivalent of 15 years of age. 9. Dalmatians Are Born Without Their Spots The most distinct characteristic of a Dalmatian is its spots but did you know that when they are young, they are pretty much spotless and completely white. Their recognizable markings only began to show once they reach fours of weeks of age. 10. A Puppy Once Destroyed Half the Manuscript of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men Of Mice and Men is a famous classic American novella that has been widely read in many schools. However, the story was almost completely lost when the Author’s little puppy named Toby (who was teething) thought that the story’s manuscript would make a good chew toy. When Steinbeck arrived at the scene, his puppy has eaten through nearly two months of his work. However, rather than get angry at his pupper, he simply sat at his desk and started rewriting the destroyed chapters, proving that he was not just a great writer but also a genuinely great person. 11. A Puppy With His Own Baseball Card Back in 2009, the former President of the United States, Barack Obama, adopted a puppy named Bo and the White House decided that it would be a great idea to put together an official baseball card for the canine friend. It’s loaded with fun information about the dog such as the fact that he can’t swim, even though his breed is known to be proficient in the skill. 12. Looking at Puppies Can Make You More Productive Looking at your beloved pooch from time to time while you work can make you more productive. Even looking at a picture of the pupper can boost your performance. A 2012 study from Hiroshima University found that participants who had recently just seen pictures of puppies and kittens had an easier time concentrating on their tasks compared to those who saw other types of images. 13. Puppies Are Aware They Can Manipulate You With Their Adorableness Those cute ‘puppy eyes’ they show to gain our attention is a learned behavior. By raising their eyes brows and thus, making their eyes appear bigger and sadder, they know that they will more likely get what they want out of us. A study conducted back in 2017 found that puppies were more likely to make cute facial expressions like puppy-dog eyes when they knew humans were watching. So, if you are on a low ebb while at work, start googling some images of cute puppies. 14. Puppies Can Be Twins While puppies may look alike to many of us, they are not in fact identical and people who have spent a great deal of time with dogs can learn to pick up subtle differences. Regardless, identical twins can happen as one scientist in South Africa found out when he tested DNA on a set of puppies and found them to be identical. 15. The Soviets Gave JFK a Special Puppy In their meeting with their Soviet counterparts, the Kennedys were given a very special puppy by Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Named Pushinka (fluffy in Russian), the puppy was one of the babies of Strelka, a dog recently sent into low-Earth orbit by the Soviet space program. The canine cosmonaut did safely return to Earth after its mission.

Bruce Lee comedy. This was shared to spread some cheer 😂

Deep Relaxation Meditation Audio Perfect For Relaxation. This is a good meditation for beginners and all levels. I had so much fun making this, editing the meditation music together and crafting a peaceful guided experience. Comment below what you think and if you'd like more of these!