Josephine Avila @josephineavilasworld - Tumblr Blog

Qualities of an excellent scientist

A scientist designs experiments, gets results and describes the outcome.

A good scientist seeks through literature, discusses with colleagues, looks for explanation of their observations. He asks for collaborations and tries to look at the problem from different perspectives.

An excellent scientist fits the new findings into a bigger frame, thinks about all possible consequences for his whole scientific field. An excellent scientist tries to interpret the data in a way that everybody understands. He tells a story based on the data. A story, which is simple and easy to comprehend.

One example for all - Discovery of DNA structure in 1953. Rosalind Franklin obtained X-Ray diffraction image of crystallized DNA and published this image in Nature in 1953. She gained fame for this image. Nobody was able to perform such an experiment before her.

However, Francis Watson and James Crick took her data further and built from it a sketch of a molecular structure of DNA. They took data only few experts understood and made a simple model which everybody understands. Their paper from 1953 is groundbreaking! Their insight and understanding is the most valuable thing a scientist can provide.

mostly-history

Patomskiy Crater (Irkutsk Oblast, Russia).

This giant crater, 40 metres high and 160 metres in diameter, is one of the greatest mysteries of Siberia. Hardly any locals knew about it until 1949, when it was first studied. They call it the “Fire Eagle’s Nest”, and in the past it was thought of as a bad place that even the animals avoided. Apparently, some who have visited the area have died strange deaths, and household animals disappear.

The Russian geologist Vadim Kolpakov discovered the crater in 1949 while doing research in the region. He said about his discovery:

“I thought I was mad. From a distance it reminded me of a giant pit mine and I even wondered if people were there. Why would they be? This is a dense area of the taiga. Plus there were no NKVD labor camps around here – I knew it for sure. Secondly, I thought that it might be an archeological artefact, but the local Evenk and Yakut people were not ancient Egyptians. They can’t built rock pyramids.”

The “crater” is actually a large mound of shattered limestone blocks with an estimated weight of a million tons. It was named “Patom” after a nearby river. Because of a lack of funding, it wasn’t examined thoroughly until the 2000s.

There have been many competing theories about how the Patomskiy Crater was formed. An underground nuclear reaction, a meteorite falling on the Patom Highland (perhaps a fragment of the 1908 Tunguska meteorite), part of a neutron star falling to Earth (punching straight through the Earth and out the other side), cryogenic formation, and the landing of an alien spaceship have all been suggested. Some believe it is a volcanic structure that has formed due to steam jets along fault zones at great depths.

The first scientific expedition was in 2005, but got no answers. The head of the expedition died of a heart attack, which many considered to be a bad omen.

Subsequent expeditions were more successful, finding that the crater formed about 500 years ago, and that it has a zoned ring structure, with individual zones having formed at different times.

It is likely that the Patomskiy Crater was formed by a phreatic (steam) explosion. This would have happened either during magma emplacement into hydrous rocks, or from the faulting and decompression of heated hydrous rocks.

miss-biophys

Qualities of an excellent scientist

A scientist designs experiments, gets results and describes the outcome.

A good scientist seeks through literature, discusses with colleagues, looks for explanation of their observations. He asks for collaborations and tries to look at the problem from different perspectives.

An excellent scientist fits the new findings into a bigger frame, thinks about all possible consequences for his whole scientific field. An excellent scientist tries to interpret the data in a way that everybody understands. He tells a story based on the data. A story, which is simple and easy to comprehend.

One example for all - Discovery of DNA structure in 1953. Rosalind Franklin obtained X-Ray diffraction image of crystallized DNA and published this image in Nature in 1953. She gained fame for this image. Nobody was able to perform such an experiment before her.

However, Francis Watson and James Crick took her data further and built from it a sketch of a molecular structure of DNA. They took data only few experts understood and made a simple model which everybody understands. Their paper from 1953 is groundbreaking! Their insight and understanding is the most valuable thing a scientist can provide.

miss-biophys

Qualities of an excellent scientist

A scientist designs experiments, gets results and describes the outcome.

A good scientist seeks through literature, discusses with colleagues, looks for explanation of their observations. He asks for collaborations and tries to look at the problem from different perspectives.

An excellent scientist fits the new findings into a bigger frame, thinks about all possible consequences for his whole scientific field. An excellent scientist tries to interpret the data in a way that everybody understands. He tells a story based on the data. A story, which is simple and easy to comprehend.

One example for all - Discovery of DNA structure in 1953. Rosalind Franklin obtained X-Ray diffraction image of crystallized DNA and published this image in Nature in 1953. She gained fame for this image. Nobody was able to perform such an experiment before her.

However, Francis Watson and James Crick took her data further and built from it a sketch of a molecular structure of DNA. They took data only few experts understood and made a simple model which everybody understands. Their paper from 1953 is groundbreaking! Their insight and understanding is the most valuable thing a scientist can provide.

zespaceblog

Titan

The largest moon of Saturn and the 2nd largest moon in the Solar System, Titan is the only moon to have a thick atmosphere and a stable liquid on the surface, so much so, you can see the reflection from it in the image above.

Like Earth, Nitrogen is the main constituency of this Atmosphere, although unlike Earth, there is very little Oxygen, it’s 98% Nitrogen. Atmospheric pressure is also 1.4 of standard Earth pressure, however gravity is 1/10th of Earth’s gravity, and just a little lower than that of the Moon.

Currently the temperature is a rather frosty -180′c, so hold off on any real estate purchases quite yet, but as the sun approaches it’s red giant phase and heats up, so will Titan. Some estimates have put the warming up to around -70′c, still not particularly pleasant, but such a change will also change the dynamics of how Titan works, maybe freeing water mixed with ammonia to exist as a liquid in some places.