Natural satellites that are striking a cord

There are some fairly interesting happenings in our universe these days. For now, I'm going to take a look at our own solar system, but I definitely will return to talk about other aspects of the universe.

Just in our solar system, there are purportedly several moons with liquid water oceans. This is surprising given we normally assume any object closer than Earth to the sun does not have water and any object further away has ice but not liquid water.

Europa is a moon of Jupiter's which has the highest likelihood of having a liquid ocean underneath its surface. Most planetary scientists believe that a layer of liquid water exists beneath Europa's surface, kept warm by tidally generated heat due to gravitational/magnetic influences from Jupiter itself. Unusual features on Europa's surface also hint at a hidden ocean.

Europa has emerged as one of the top locations in the Solar System in terms of potential habitability and possibly, hosting extraterrestrial life. Life could exist in its under-ice ocean, perhaps subsisting in an environment similar to Earth's deep-ocean hydrothermal vents or the Antarctic Lake Vostok. If life were to exist on Europa, it would not only prove that life exists beyond Earth but that life is likely to be common throughout the Universe.

Other moons of Jupiter, namely Callisto and Ganymede, as well as Neptune's largest moon, Triton, are also hypothesised to have liquid oceans for similar reasons to Europa, although there is less certainty about them.

Titan is Saturn's largest moon and the only moon in the solar system known to have clouds and a dense atmosphere. On the surface, water behaves like rock and hydrocarbons behave like liquids such as water. It has a dense atmosphere and the surface is rocky, similar to rocky planes on Earth. Titan has rivers and lakes populated by hydrocarbons. It is also thought to likely have a subterranean water ocean under the mix of ice and hydrocarbons that forms its outer crust.

Scientists believe that the atmosphere of early Earth was similar in composition to the current atmosphere on Titan, with the important exception of the lack of water vapor on Titan. Many hypotheses have developed that attempt to bridge the step from chemical to biological evolution.

Enceladus is one of the hottest places in the Solar System to look for life due to pure accessibility. This tiny moon has geyser-like jets of water bursting from the surface. There are a number of potential explanations, such as the source of the water being supplied from a liquid ocean underneath the crust, heated by Saturn's gravitional/magnetic influence. The presence of liquid water under the crust means there has to be an internal heat source. Scientists now believe it is a combination of radioactive decay and tidal heating, as tidal heating alone is not enough to explain the heat.

Sources:

Articles on "Europa, Callisto, Ganymede, Titan and Enceladus." Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition. Web. 17 Feb. 2011.

Briggs, Helen. "Saturn Moon May Have Hidden Ocean." BBC News - Home. 20 Mar. 2008. Web. 18 Feb. 2011. .

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterrestrial_liquid_water
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(moon)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus_(moon)

Longest-Living Organisms Part I

This edition of the Longest-living Organisms concerns the longest-living conifer, the bristlecone pine. Bristlecone pines are a small group of pine trees, one species of which, the Great Basin bristlecone pine, lives longer than any other type of tree. They occur only in high altitudes in the Western United States. The trees grow very slowly due to cold temperatures, dry soils, high winds and short growing seasons. The areas they grow in rarely harbour diseases that harm them. Their wood is very dense and resinous, and thus resistant to invasion by insects, fungi and other potential pests. They range from approximately 5 to 18.5 metres tall. By measuring the rings in wood from the older bristlecone pines, scientists can determine what the climate was like thousands of years ago.

The oldest documented living tree is a Great Basin bristlecone pine in the White Mountains of eastern California. It is more than 4,700 years old. A collection of bristlecone pines on Wheeler Peak in eastern Nevada is known to contain several trees over 3,000 years old, with one thought to be about 5,000 years old.

Sources:

"bristlecone pine." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2010. Web. 23 Sept. 2010 <http://school.eb.com.au/eb/article-9016487>.

Sprugel, Douglas G. "Bristlecone pine." World Book Student. World Book, 2010. Web. 23 Sept. 2010.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristlecone_pine

A Look into Animal Gigantism

The Komodo dragon is the largest living species of lizard. They grow to more than 3 metres long and can weigh up to 165 kilograms. The dragon has a forked tongue that is 40 centimetres long.

These flightless "dragons" are effective predators and have enough speed and strength to take down deer, wild pigs and water buffaloes. They don't need to capture live prey directly, since they have a venomous bite that severely decreases blood clotting. Their saliva contains bacteria that can kill wounded victims in a few days.

Komodo Dragons can live for 50 years. They display relatively tame behaviour within a short period of time in captivity and are also capable of recognising individual humans.

Their unusual size is attributed to "island gigantism", where the size of animals isolated on an island increases dramatically in comparison to their mainland relatives. The explanation for this is that large mammalian carnivores are often absent on islands, due to their large range requirements and/or difficulties in over-water dispersal.

In their absence, the ecological niches for large predators may be occupied by birds, or reptiles in this case, which can then grow to larger-than-normal size.

As such, these giant animals are closely related to their smaller counterparts. With the arrival of humans, many giant island endemics have become extinct.

Some other examples of island gigantism include giant rats, giant ducks, giant rabbits, dodos (closely related to pigeons and doves), giant tortoises, Haast's Eagle (largest known eagle which attacks at speeds of 80 km/h), elephant birds (largest known bird, growing up to 2.7 metres tall and weighing about 450 kg) and King Kong. (Okay, you got me, the last one was fictional.)

The cousin of island gigantism is the better known "island dwarfism". But who likes things that are tiny?

Another natural phenomenon is "deep sea gigantism", where deep-sea-dwelling animals to display a larger size than their shallow-water counterparts. This is probably due to better nutrients in the deeper water.

Examples include Japanese spider crabs (up to 3.7 metres across from the tip of one outstretched claw to another and weighing 18 kg), the seven-arm octopus (largest octopus, 4 metres long and 75 kg), giant oarfish (world's longest bony fish, reaching up to 12 metres long and weighing 270 kg), the colossal squid (larger than the giant squid, largest known invertebrate, 12-14m in length, weighs up to 495 kg).

Bibliography

Huey, Raymond B. "Komodo dragon." World Book Student. World Book, 2010. Web. 16 Jan. 2010.

Clarke, Simon James. "Elephant bird." World Book Student. World Book, 2010. Web. 16 Jan. 2010.

"Komodo dragon." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica,
2010. Web. 16 Jan. 2010.

"Aepyornis (Elephant Bird)." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica,
2010. Web. 16 Jan. 2010.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komodo_dragon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_gigantism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-sea_gigantism

Take that advertisements!

Do you hate websites that have animated advertisements? They are highly distracting and are often irrelevant to the actual content of the website. One example of a website I have recently gone to is CliffsNotes (free English notes about literature books), which is jam-packed with both animated and non-animated image advertisements.

I have found a neat (and free) add-on to Mozilla Firefox that blocks off the majority of animated advertisements. If you don't use Firefox already, I highly recommend you give it a try. Although it used to be much better than Internet Explorer, Microsoft have improved IE a lot recently. But there are still some very small things that you will find more convenient when you compare Firefox to IE.

Anyway, the add-on to Firefox I was talking about is called Flashblock. As its name suggests, it blocks parts of websites that use flash. Where the flash object used to be, an 'F' symbol appears, which you can click on to run the Flash program if you feel like it.

Click here to download Flashblock.

This wonderful add-on, coupled with unchecking Tools --> Options --> Content --> Load Images Automatically, easily took care of all the image advertisements on CliffsNotes. Of course, you will want to turn the latter option on again when you visit other websites, otherwise images won't load.

You'll be surprised at the number of advertisements that Flashblock will block during normal browsing (e.g. YouTube, Hotmail, etc.).

Top 5 Free Software Picks for 2010

See my new article on the top software picks.

In short, the suggestions are:

1. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware

2. Vuze

3. TeamViewer

4. RoboForm

5. TuneUp Utilities 2010

Click here to see the full article "Top 5 Free Software Picks for 2010".

The Feeling of Immortality

In my rather random research, I have found two animals that are "biologically immortal". They technically just keep regenerating and never actually "die".

According to Wikipedia: "The Hydrozoan species Turritopsis nutricula is capable of cycling from a mature adult stage to an immature polyp stage and back again. This means that there may be no natural limit to its life span. However, no single specimen has been observed for any extended period, and it is impossible to estimate the age of a specimen. Theoretically, this cycle can repeat indefinitely, rendering it biologically immortal until its nerve center is removed from the rest of the body."

However, Wikipedia is often inaccurate (not wrong, just inaccurate). I could find no information on this animal in the paid subscription websites Britannica Online Encyclopedia or World Book Student.

The Wikipedia article on Turritopsis nutricula also mentions the predatory species Hydra, another kind of cnidarian that is claimed to be immortal.

Now, I found an article on this creature on both Britannica Online Encyclopedia and World Book Student!

Britannica Online Encyclopedia mentions that Hydra is "a genus of invertebrate freshwater animals of the class Hydrozoa (phylum Cnidaria)." It is an "organism [that] consists of a thin, usually translucent tube that measures up to about 30 millimetres (1.2 inches) long but is capable of great contraction... All Hydra species feed on other small invertebrate animals such as crustaceans." However, it makes no mention of the species being supposedly "biologically immortal".

Nevertheless, I found positive evidence on the World Book Student website. L. Muscatine, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Biology, University of California, Los Angeles states: "Hydras can regenerate (regrow) parts of their bodies. It is estimated that in a period of several weeks a hydra replaces all the cells in its body. The hydra, therefore, never grows old."

I think this constitutes sufficient evidence to prove that this Hydra animal is biologically (but not physically if it gets eaten) immortal.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_long-living_organisms

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_nutricula

"Hydra." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition. 7 Nov. 2009 .

Muscatine, L. "Hydra." World Book Student. World Book, 2009. Web. 7 Nov. 2009.

Mass–energy equivalence

[Note: Do not read this article if you have learned physics or are talented in science.] Maybe you know it better as E = mc². The only reason I called it "mass–energy equivalence" was because Wikipedia calls it that, and also I couldn't write that "squared" thing in the title.

We've all heard of Einstein's formula for relativity, E = mc². Einstein proposed his formula in his 1905 paper, "Does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy-content?" But what does it really mean? Well, in the formula, E is energy, m is relativistic mass, and c is the speed of light in a vacuum (which is 299,792,458 meters per second).

So basically, expressing the formula in words: energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. Described using units, E (in joules) = m (in kilograms) multiplied by (299,792,458 m/s)². Thanks Einstein!

New McDonald's Video Game

Have you heard of the McDonald's Video Game? Basically, you control what happens at McDonalds, from the storefront, the pastures where you raise your cows and the slaughterhouse. Keep your eye on your money figure and make sure it doesn't run out!

This game was featured in a CNET article.

Click here to play the game.

10 Useful Programs for Your PC 2008

I have just published an article titled '10 Useful Programs for Your PC 2008'. Due to the success of my previous article, which I have renamed '10 Useful Programs for Your PC 2007' on EzineArticles.com, I have decided to write a new one this year.

The new list includes some programs from last year, which are still essential to me, like Mozilla Firefox and LimeWire. New programs which make it onto the list include Google Chrome, YouTube Downloader, Smart Defrag (a 'smart', i.e. self-learning, defragmentation tool), TuneUp Utilities 2009 (utilities for optimising your PC), Filezilla (FTP program) and PrimoPDF (Word-to-PDF conversion). All the programs which are suggested are still freeware or I suggest using the 'free version' of a paid program. There is one exception, which is the trial of TuneUp Utilities, but I felt that it was so good that even the trial deserves to be downloaded.

Click here to access '10 Useful Programs for Your PC 2008'.

Transition to HostGator

I have recently purchased a HostGator plan, and the website is currently being transferred to their servers. This explains some of the strange phenomena (strange template, and missing links and images) occurring on the website.



I moved from Yahoo! GeoCities Pro to HostGator because HostGator's plans were cheaper (Yahoo! had recently increased their price for additional benefits) and they were very generous with their disk space, transfer limit and other aspects.

Firefox 3 is now out!

Mozilla Firefox 3 was released on June 17, 2008. Updates include a sleek new design and lightning-fast web-paged loading. Firefox 3 uses version 1.9 of the Gecko layout engine for displaying web pages. The new version fixes many bugs, improves standard compliance, and implements new web APIs.



Click here to see the Mozilla Firefox 3 Wikipedia page.
Click here to see Mozilla's release notes for Mozilla Firefox 3.
Click here to download Mozilla Firefox 3 from Download.com.

GeniusProphecy.com Website Changes

Under advice from the owner of 2CreateAWebsite.com, there could be some subdomain changes to GeniusProphecy.com.



I asked whether it would "negatively affect my website's ranking in the search engines if it covers a broad range of subjects", and the reply was that "I think it does affect it negatively. And not so much because you have a variety of topics but because engines now focus so much on quality of inbound links... I think having multiple topics devalues your site and makes it look like you're trying to do too much."

"And as far as rankings I do believe Google would rank you lower for chess related keywords compared to someone who's site is entirely devoted to chess.

If you think about it, popular sites are all focused around one niche. And the ones that aren't (Yahoo, MSN, CNN, etc.) are all heavily popular, branded sites that we all know we couldn't compete with because we don't have the brand awareness.

Niche sites are always best."

But instead of deleting all my content about different topics, I figured that I should put my individual niches into subdomains (which Google treats as a completely different website), each focusing on their own topic, to avoid this "negativity" when a website covers a broad range of topics, as well as to avoid deleting the content I tried so hard to make on this "range of topics".

Some examples of subdomains
http://chess.geniusprophecy.com/
http://runescape.geniusprophecy.com/
http://rubikscube.geniusprophecy.com/

Easy Internet Security - Keep your computer secure

I have created a new guide on how to keep your computer secure on the internet. It's a basic guide to help get beginners around the common terms and the protection issues. Click here to go to Easy Internet Security - Keep your computer secure.

Labels corrected

The labels on this blog have been corrected. I have labeled every post on this blog with one of these labels:

personal
cadets
chess (includes international chess)
Australian chess
websites

Previously, I did not know how labels worked. But now I have read about them, and I have made a few corrections. The vast majority of labels on this blog are useless and only lead to one or two posts, but it would take too long to remove them all. The labels above are the ones to use in order to distinguish posts about different subjects.

GeniusProphecy.com Holiday Plans

GeniusProphecy.com has undergone some major changes in the last few weeks and we have big plans to come.



Here are some of the things recently completed:
1. A new sitemap has been created
2. The article on why should people play chess
3. The real estate page has had a makeover
4. The RuneScape tips page has been updated with the latest information
5. The 10 Useful Programs for Your PC page has been introduced
6. An introduction on the most recent Star Wars games specifically light-saber wielding and with excellent effects

Search Engine Optimization - GeniusProphecy.com changes

I'm currently going through the book Search Engine Optimization for Dummies (2nd ed. 2006) by Peter Kent. If you don't really know what SEO is, it is basically designing your website specifically for search engine indexing, searches and traffic.



I'm reading through the book and making changes as I go, so you can expect some changes at GeniusProphecy.com.

How to Solve a Rubik's Cube

I've just created a guide on How to Solve a Rubik's Cube the Easy Way. The Rubik's Cube (or rubix, rubick's or rubics cube) is a mechanical square colour puzzle. It was invented by a Hungarian professor of architecture and a sculptor, Ernő Rubik. Since its invention in 1974 and worldwide release in 1980, the Rubik's Cube has baffled millions of people. Using my guide, you can solve a Rubik's Cube in a simple and clear-cut manner.



To access the Rubik's Cube guide, go to http://www.geniusprophecy.com/rubiks-cube.html.

Computer Safety - Antivirus, Firewall and Antispyware Information

These days, people are always worrying if their computer's private data is secure. I have provided a guide to what people should have on their computer. I believe that adequate protection should be completely free. The access this guide, go to http://www.geniusprophecy.com/computer-safety.html.

New Reviews Section and Other Changes

I've added a new reviews section at http://www.geniusprophecy.com/reviews.html, where I have already reviewed the recent movie Rush Hour 3 starring Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan as well as The Survival Guide to Competitive Chess by GM John Emms and paper. There has also been major changes with a range of other pages including the Star Wars page (http://www.geniusprophecy.com/starwars.html) and Ben's page (http://www.geniusprophecy.com/ben.html).

GeniusProphecy.com Template Problems and Chess Changes

I have changed the chess page considerably at http://www.geniusprophecy.com/chess/.

Currently the template is being annoying and some borders and lines are getting messed up (you can find the template at http://www.thetemplatestore.com/). It's so much easier with Blogger because everything is done for you.

Currently, I only plan to put the template on my frontpage (i.e. index.htm) and on my other pages, I plan to just put a logo on the top left and a link back home, e.g. http://www.geniusprophecy.com/main/recent-news.html.