Month: September 2022

MIND IN SPACETIME. “Our galaxy of approximately 100–400 billion stars is only one of what has been estimated to be two trillion galaxies in the universe. Even if we assume one trillion galaxies, and that on average these galaxies have only one billion stars each, this leads to a low estimate of one billion trillion stars in the known universe. Contemplate the awesome reality of existence itself, and further that your mind evolved from inanimate matter as a result of a little less than 14 billion years of the natural history of the universe.” https://lnkd.in/d99G2yD View in LinkedIn

Limestone marker of lost significance near the Girona cathedral. View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE for this and next weekend focuses on a stunning Russian publication documenting microorganisms collected from the outside of the International Space Station during a spacewalk. Unlike their American counterparts, the Russians have maintained a strong public interest in exploring life in space, and this is an extremely important publication. The samples were collected in 2013, and the publication came out in 2018. View in LinkedIn

RUSSIAN PUBLICATION: “The DNA of Bacteria of the World Ocean and the Earth in Cosmic Dust at the International Space Station. By T. V. Grebennikova, A. V. Syroeshkin, E. V. Shubralova, O. V. Eliseeva, L. V. Kostina, N. Y. Kulikova, O. E. Latyshev, M. A. Morozova, A. G. Yuzhakov, I. A. Zlatskiy, M. A. Chichaeva, and O. S. Tsygankov.” (April 2018). https://lnkd.in/dNHWs6R View in LinkedIn

FIVE YEAR GAP. “Cosmonaut Misurkin A. A. (a crew member of the expedition 36) during his spacewalk (22.08.2013) collected the samples of space dust using the tampon from the sampler “TEST” (Central Research Institute of Machine Building).” https://lnkd.in/dNHWs6R View in LinkedIn

PART OF A SERIES OF EXPERIMENTS. “Previously, researches have already collected cosmic dust on the ISS, trying to find the ionosphere bacteria from the lower atmosphere. For this task, in the experiment «Tanpopo» a special collector of cosmic dust on the basis of hydrophobic aerogel was constructed on the Japanese segment of the ISS.” https://lnkd.in/dNHWs6R View in LinkedIn

EARLIER FAILURE. “The absence of PCR product in the samples of «Tanpopo» mission can be explained by the short duration of exposure and the location of the sampler. We guessed that a surface of the ISS is a more effective trap for the space dust, because it gathers the dispersed particles from the vacuum, just in the same way as the dust particles, including bacterial and fungal spores, are adsorbed from the gas phase on the surface of aircraft.” https://lnkd.in/dNHWs6R View in LinkedIn