Earth & Environmental Sciences Blogs

Moon of Jupiter With hundreds of volcanoes, some spouting lava fountains dozens of miles (or kilometers) high, Io is the most volcanically active planet in the Solar System. Io is caught in a tug-of-war between Jupiter's huge gravity and the lesser but perfectly timed gravitational pulls of two nearby moons, Europa and Ganymede, which orbits farther from Jupiter. Io is a mortal lady who was turned into a cow in Greek mythology amid a dispute between the Greek god Zeus (Jupiter in Roman mythology) and his wife, Hera (Juno to the Romans). Size and Distance Io, Jupiter's third largest moon and the fifth in distance from the planet is somewhat larger than Earth's Moon. Orbit and Rotation The massive moons Europa and Ganymede cause Io's orbit to become unusually elliptical, despite the fact that it always points the same side toward Jupiter in its orbit around the giant planet. As a result, Io is subjected to immense tidal forces at various distances from Jupiter. ...

  Community Water Treatment Drinking water sources can be contaminated, and disease-causing substances must be removed with proper treatment. To supply safe drinking water to their communities, public drinking water systems employ a variety of water treatment processes. The following are the most frequent water treatment steps employed by community water systems today (mostly surface water treatment): Coagulation and Flocculation The first processes in water treatment are usually coagulation and flocculation. The water is treated using chemicals that have a positive charge. These compounds' positive charge cancels out the negative charge of dirt and other dissolved particles in water. When this happens, the particles bind to the chemicals and create floc, which is bigger particles. Sedimentation Floc settles to the bottom of the water supply during sedimentation because of its weight. Sedimentation is the term for the process of settling. Filtration The clean water on...

The world's largest and most powerful hurricanes have ever occurred across 1000 miles with winds up to 200 mph. This is wide enough to spread almost around the world. But the Great Red Spot, a giant Jupiter storm, is still diluting that sort of storm. Gigantic means there double the width of Earth. The Great Red Spot has stirred violently over Jupiter's skies for the last 150 years – perhaps far longer than this – with chaotic winds peaking at 400 mph. While individuals have seen a large place in Jupiter as early as the beginning of a telescope in the 1600s, the question of a distinct storm is still uncertain. Scientists today know that the Great Red Spot is there and has been there for some time, but still, strive to discover what generates its rotten tones. Figure 1 Jupiter great red spots, image capture on June 2008. The great red spot is not easy to comprehend, and this is mainly the fault of Jupiter. Jupiter contains mainly gas, a thousand times as large as Earth. The ce...

History Ceres is the only dwarf planet in the inner solar system and the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. When Giuseppe Piazzi discovered it in 1801, it was the first member of the asteroid belt to be discovered. Ceres became the first dwarf planet to have a spacecraft visit when Dawn arrived in 2015. Ceres was previously classed as an asteroid, but astronomers classified it as a dwarf planet in 2006 because it is so much larger and different from its rocky neighbor’s. Even though Ceres makes up 25% of the overall mass of the asteroid belt, Pluto is 14 times more massive. Ceres is named after Ceres, the Roman god of corn and harvests. The word cereal is derived from the same word. Size & Distance  Ceres is 1/13 the radius of Earth, with a radius of 296 miles (476 kilometers). Ceres would be around the size of a poppy seed if Earth were the size of a nickel. Ceres is 2.8 astronomical units distant from the sun, at a distance of 257 million m...

Evolution Like dinosaurs, ancient amphibians evolved in a range of shapes and sizes over different geological periods. In the late Devonian period, the first was Ichthyostegelia and looked like current salamanders with wider tails. In the Carboniferous epoch, these were soon replaced by fully aquatic Lepyspondyli, whose boomerang-shaped heads were too heavy or too impractical to work on earth. And so these ancient organisms evolved, right before the emergence of dinosaurs, through the Carboniferous age and into the Permian era. Figure 1 First Amphibians in the time period.  One feature of the Permian region is the emergence of bigger terrestrial animals, and there was no exception to amphibians. The enormous Eriops (the "Labyrinth teeth," for example,), grew to more than eight feet, a sub-order of labyrinthodontics. For example. The skull was two feet broad by itself. And there were lots of teeth. In contrast to most previous amphibians, Eryops possessed strong legs and was...