Penguins

From Wikipedia:

Penguins (order Sphenisciformes, family Spheniscidae) are a group of aquatic, flightless birds living almost exclusively in the southern hemisphere, especially in Antarctica. Highly adapted for life in the water, penguins have countershaded dark and white plumage, and their wings have become flippers. Most penguins feed on krill, fish, squid, and other forms of sealife caught while swimming underwater. They spend about half of their life on land and half in the oceans.

Although all penguin species are native to the southern hemisphere, they are not found only in cold climates, such as Antarctica. In fact, only a few species of penguin live so far south. Several species are found in the temperate zone, and one species, the Galápagos Penguin, lives near the equator.

The largest living species is the Emperor Penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri): adults average about 1.1 m (3 ft 7 in) tall and weigh 35 kg (75 lb) or more. The smallest penguin species is the Little Blue Penguin (also known as the Fairy Penguin), which stands around 40 cm tall (16 in) and weighs 1 kg (2.2 lb). Among extant penguins, larger penguins inhabit colder regions, while smaller penguins are generally found in temperate or even tropical climates (see also Bergmann's Rule). Some prehistoric species attained enormous sizes, becoming as tall or as heavy as an adult human (see below for more). These were not restricted to Antarctic regions; on the contrary, subantarctic regions harboured high diversity, and at least one giant penguin occurred in a region not quite 2,000 km south of the equator 35 mya, in a climate decidedly warmer than today.

The penguin might not be the flightless, aquatic bird that we tend to believe and accept. Film taken by Terry Jones for the BBC shows a different story.

Penguins - BBC



View at YouTube.

Not so flightless it seems.

Follow The Poop!

Can you imagine a young child telling his or her teacher that he was going to study penguins by following their poop? Yet it is an easy, safe and cheap way to study penguin colonies.

Call it a case of high tech meeting low tech, really the lowest of tech.

British scientists are using pictures from high-powered satellites to pinpoint emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica.

The penguins are difficult to pick up on sea ice, because of their natural camouflage that helps them blend into the shadows -- so the British Antarctic Survey had to come up with another method.

Fortunately, penguin waste shows up nicely from space, staining the ice a light brown.

"We can't see actual penguins on the satellite maps because the resolution isn't good enough," said mapping expert Peter Fretwell. "But during the breeding season the birds stay at a colony for eight months. The ice gets pretty dirty and it's the guano stains that we can see."

The method helped scientists identify 38 penguin colonies -- of those, 10 were new. Of previously known colonies, six had re-located and six were not found.

"This is a very exciting development. Now we know exactly where the penguins are, the next step will be to count each colony so we can get a much better picture of population size," said penguin ecologist Phil Trathan.

"Using satellite images combined with counts of penguin numbers puts us in a much better position to monitor future population changes over time."

Estimates put the total number of penguins at between 200,000 and 400,000 breeding pairs.

Over the last decade we have seen the March of the Penguins, penguins dancing, penguins from New York City, and now we have scientists studying their poop. Perhaps a documentary is in the works?

The Hand of G-d?

I am always amazed at the wonders of nature and the Universe around us. All the more now at this time of year with this amazing picture:

Blue: Energy emanating from the nebula around the dying star PSR B1509-58.
Red: A neighboring gas cloud called RCW 89.

Science gives us this explanation:

Tiny and dying but still-powerful stars called pulsars spin like crazy and light up their surroundings, often with ghostly glows.

So it is with PSR B1509-58, which long ago collapsed into a sphere just 12 miles in diameter after running out of fuel.

And what a strange scene this one has created.

In a new image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, high-energy X-rays emanating from the nebula around PSR B1509-58 have been colored blue to reveal a structure resembling a hand reaching for some eternal red cosmic light.

The star now spins around at the dizzying pace of seven times every second — as pulsars do — spewing energy into space that creates the scene.

Strong magnetic fields, 15 trillion times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field, are thought to be involved, too. The combination drives an energetic wind of electrons and ions away from the dying star. As the electrons move through the magnetized nebula, they radiate away their energy as X-rays.

The red light actually a neighboring gas cloud, RCW 89, energized into glowing by the fingers of the PSR B1509-58 nebula, astronomers believe.

The scene, which spans 150 light-years, is about 17,000 light years away, so what we see now is how it actually looked 17,000 years ago, and that light is just arriving here.

A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers).

When I first saw this picture, I wasn't reminded of what science would disclose about this Nebula, but what is upcoming in the Passover Sedar to be held this week:

“We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the L-rd, our G-d, took us out from there with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm".

At a time when more and more nations of the world are turning away from Israel and turning towards her enemies, it is a good time to remind the leaders of the world what happens to nations that try to destroy G-d's people.

Egypt was smitten with 10 plagues by G-d to convince Pharaoh to "Let my people go." How many plagues and of what form will G-d's anger take next time?

Striped Icebergs

As sent to me by my good friend Jenny.

Icebergs in the Antarctic area sometimes have stripes, formed by layers of snow that react to different conditions.

Blue stripes are often created when a crevice in the ice sheet fills up with melt water and freezes so quickly that no bubbles form.

When an iceberg falls into the sea, a layer of salty seawater can freeze to the underside. If this is rich in algae, it can form a green stripe.

Brown, black and yellow lines are caused by sediment, picked up
when the ice sheet grinds downhill towards the sea.

Antarctica Frozen Wave Pixs - Nature is amazing!

Just look at how the wave froze in mid-air!!

Is this amazing??

The water froze the instant the wave broke through the
ice. That's what it is like in Antarctica where it is the
coldest weather in decades. Water freezes the instant
it comes in contact with the air. The temperature of the
water is already some degrees below freezing.




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