Science-o-mania!

Science Fact - 8

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Did you know that astronauts cannot belch. This is because there is no gravity to separate liquid from the gas in their stomachs.

Doha Climate Gateway: Extended Kyoto Protocol

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP18) which extended for two weeks in Doha, finally came to an end with the favorable result. 194 countries have agreed to implement the second phase of Kyoto Protocol which is initiating from 2013 to 2020. The Doha round of talks mark the beginning of a transition to a new global climate change regime that will come into effect from 2020 and include within its ambit all countries.

The talks in Doha have agreed that the last 20 years intended to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to climate change were not much of a success. The Kyoto Protocol, the only existing and binding agreement which developed countries commit to cutting greenhouse gases, has been amended so that it will continue as of 1 January 2013. The first commitment period ends on 31 December 2012. The length of the second commitment period will be eight years.

The outcome came 24 hours after the negotiations were supposed to close because of countries like Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus demanding use of the extra credit that had been given to them in the first phase. Doha Climate Gateway, the outcome of these two week long conference is being described as "historic" by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Christiana Figueres. She said, "Now, there is much work to do. Doha is another step in the right direction, but we still have a long road ahead. The door to stay below two degrees remains barely open. The science shows it, the data proves it. The UN Climate Change negotiations must now focus on the concrete ways and means to accelerate action and ambition. The world has the money and technology to stay below two degrees. After Doha, it is a matter of scale, speed, determination and sticking to the timetable."

In order to achieve this, countries will hold meetings and workshops next year to prepare the new agreement and to further ways to raise ambition; to submit information, views and proposals on actions, initiatives and options to enhance ambition to the UN Climate Change Secretariat, by 1 March 2013; and that elements of a negotiating text are to be available no later than the end of 2014, so that a draft negotiating text is available before May 2015.

Science Fact - 7

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

The Orangutan is the largest tree-dwelling mammal in the world.

Science Fact - 6

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

The Stegosaurus dinosaur measured up to 30 feet (9.1 meters) long but had a brain the size of a walnut.

Second-largest black hole found in NGC 1277

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Astronomers have found a giant black hole in a tiny galaxy, which is quite opposite of the general belief of scientists that the size of the black hole is perpendicular to the size of the galaxy it is present in. Our own galaxy, Milky Way, also hosts a black hole in the centre of the galaxy named Sagittarius A. The galaxy, NGC 1277, is one-fourth the size of our galaxy but hosts a black hole 4000 times the size of the Sagittarius A. This is the second-heaviest black hole ever discovered whose mass is 17 billion times of our Sun.

The black holes cannot be measured for size because they cannot be seen. This is because they absorb all the light reflected at them and thus their size is measured by their sphere of influence. The sphere of influence measures the gravitational effect the black hole has on its surrounding stars and gases.

Remco van den Bosch and his colleagues at University of Texas have found that some of the largest black holes are found in the small galaxies. NGC 1277 is one of these small galaxies in the constellation Perseus, which is 220 million light years away from our galaxy. It's black hole is as large as our Solar System and it contains 14% mass of the entire galaxy. Dr Van den Bosch said, "The only way to you can actually make those high dispersions in the centre is by having that really big black hole, there's really no other way around it."

With the help of NGC 1277's black hole, astronomers are now trying to advance their theories about the evolution of black holes and the relation between their size and the galaxy's size they are present in.