Science Saturday: 11/03

Welcome to another Science Saturday. Let’s begin:

Space.com: RIP Kepler

NASA retired the Kepler telescope this week, putting an end to a 9-year mission. Kepler was launched in 2009, and was tasked with identifying other stars in our galaxy that might host worlds that are similar to Earth. The data that the Kepler telescope gathered over its lifetime paints a remarkable picture of out galaxy, and likely the universe as a whole. there are a lot of other planets out there. (We now know of more than 3,800, thanks to Kepler.) Maybe someday we’ll get to see more of these worlds.

Physics World: Bose-Einstein Condensate Created in Space

A global team led by German scientists successfully conducted experiments on a Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC). A BEC is a state of matter that is formed when a dilute gas is cooled to near-absolute zero temperatures. This can be done on Earth, but gravity prevents accurate studies from being conducted on it. So naturally, the researchers launched an apparatus into space so it could generate a BEC while in free-fall for 6 minutes. More than 100 separate experiments were conducted during that time.

ScienceNews: Dinosaurs Had Speckled Eggs

Scientists have recently discovered that the egg pigmentation that is present in modern bird eggs actually evolved before the birds themselves did. By identifying certain color pigments in dinosaur eggs, the researchers were able to determine not only that the trait developed tens of millions of years ago, but also that it hasn’t changed much since. Since it was also discovered that dinosaurs might have all had feathers, we’d might as well classify chickens as dinosaurs.

BBC News: China Behind Mysterious Ozone Depletion

The Environmental Investigations Agency (EIA) found widespread use of CFC-11 in China, even though the chemical was fully banned back in 2010. CFC-11, also known as R-11 or Trichlorofluoromethane (no, I didn’t just sneeze) was commonly used as a refrigerant because of it’s comparatively high boiling point, which allowed for use in cheaper, lower pressure refrigeration systems. Unfortunately, it’s also really bad for the ozone layer, and therefore shouldn’t be used.

That’s all for this week.

Until next time,

-Sal