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Should we mine the moon?

Here's an interesting graphic discussing the possibilities of opening mining operations on the moon.

To see this in action, I really recommend the movie Moon, it's awesome - they're even mining Helium-3 in that movie!

We might be interested in other planets for these mining operations as well, but it would be pretty tough on Venus - check out this rundown of the brief moments that we've had rovers land on Venus (they promptly burned up and failed, which we knew would happen).

Mercury probably wouldn't be of interest to us - it's got major first world problems.

If it's water that we want in space (and it probably is, carrying water up to the space station takes a LOT of energy), then Europa is probably the place to be. Check out this gif of how much water Europa has compared to Earth:

Crazy...

I have a couple of sets of pictures for you. First the good, then the bad. Isn't our earth strange?

How about this picture, taken by the Curiosity rover, of the sunset on Mars:

Haunting in a way...

All of these seem incredible, but not when you compare them to our odds of being here in the first place:

Too much good stuff!

I have too many awesome things to share, so I'm just going to run them down!

Check out this snake biting a water balloon in slow motion. And this fish that is amazed by science.

Here's an awesome album of art integrated with its surroundings.

And my main topic for the day, this bus:

Real picture as always! 

This is a demonstration that they did in England to prove that the double-decker buses wouldn't just tip over.  So why isn't that bus falling over? It's all about its center of gravity, which is in the center of the mass of the bus.

I was typing up more of an explanation when I remembered that I did this last year - one of my favorite posts, check it out.

Finally, check out these funny animals:

 

Silly creatures

Volcano Lightning!

An epic volcano is erupting in Chile right now! There have been 2 massive explosions in the last week, and hot ash is dumping out of the top. The cloud of ash sometimes has lightning in it:

 

Yea this looks fake but it isn't

 Here's a detailed description of how lightning in a volcano works, but the basic principle is the same as regular lightning: there's a difference in charge that's so great that the charges come together violently.

Notice that each lightning bolt is connecting a heavily charged area to something else (source)

Why is there this difference in charge? Because of all the motion going on inside the cloud - the raindrops drag electrons downward with them, which leaves positive charges up top. Small note: positive charges cannot really move since they're from the protons inside of atoms - we get positive charges because of the absence of electrons (which are negative). Static electricity is a great example of this - when you rub your socked feet on the carpet, you're scraping electrons off the carpet and building them up onto yourself. Then you can get close to someone else and create a little lightning of your own :)

Step one: acquire electrons.

Lightning also comes with thunder, for a reason that sounds too crazy to be true: the lightning is so hot that it burns up the air, creating a temporary vacuum of empty air. In this case, vacuum doesn't mean like a vacuum cleaner; it means that the area is actually empty, there's not even any air molecules - space is the most common example. The air around that empty air fills in very quickly and that causes the noise of thunder!

The air is superheated and burned! Then the air collapses around it and you hear thunder. (giphy.com)