An underground tunnel was found in a giant crater on the moon, which may become an ideal site for a lunar base | Expo Daily

There may be a tunnel leading underground in the giant crater on the moon

More than 200 craters called skylights have been discovered on the lunar surface, some of which were formed after underground lava tubes collapsed.

Accessible lava tubes or passages could provide an environment warmer than the lunar surface, but it has previously been unclear whether they could lead to large underground caves.

According to a planetary science paper published in Nature Astronomy on the 15th, there is likely to be a tunnel on the moon that can lead into the underground.

A foreign team analyzed radar data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter of the Sea of ​​Tranquility Crater and observed an increase in radar brightness on the west side of the crater. Using radar images, they conducted simulations and found that the best explanation for these observations is the presence of a cavernous void or pipe expanding from the west side of the crater floor.

The team estimates that the pipe is located at a depth of 130-170 meters, 30-80 meters long and about 45 meters wide. The cave may be flat or inclined at an angle of up to 45 degrees and is accessible.

The research team believes that lava tubes or channels may be a common landform beneath the lunar plains, and that the Sea of ​​Tranquility crater and its channels may be an ideal location for a potential future lunar base.

Image credit: NASA

We are both the king bees, so why do you enjoy my work?

In the past two years, bumblebees have become popular on the Internet. As their name suggests, they are larger than ordinary bees, plump and round, and covered with fur, making them the representative of cute creatures in nature in the eyes of netizens.

Bumblebees live in groups like honeybees, and there is a difference between queen bees and worker bees. But the queen bee is notoriously lazy and gluttonous: besides eating, she also sleeps and lays eggs.

But the queen bee of bumblebees is different. It has to take on the responsibility of building the entire bee colony. In addition to laying eggs, it also works outside, which makes it a generalist.

Moreover, bumblebees are notoriously unselective. For example, the flower stalks of tomatoes have a lot of hairs, and the flowers are not very pretty, so most pollinating insects dislike tomatoes. And the tomato plants also emit a very pungent smell... But bumblebees don't care about all this and do their pollination work seriously.

The content comes from the speech given by Ge Jin, assistant researcher at the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, at the Gezhi Lundao.

Xinjiang desert moss can reproduce under Martian conditions

In the near future, humans plan to send astronauts to Mars. In the slightly more distant future, humans may also establish permanent bases on the moon or Mars. However, what organisms can survive in the harsh natural environment of Mars and improve the environment of Mars to pave the way for human habitation? On Earth, the cold and dry tundra may be the place most similar to Mars. Here, most plants cannot survive, only mosses or lichens can survive. Therefore, researchers began to study the extreme survival ability of mosses and tried to find the "physiological limits" of this type of small organisms.

Recently, the team of researchers Zhang Daoyuan and Zhang Yuanming from the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences published an article in the magazine Innovation, reporting a desert moss with amazing vitality: Erythromyces dentata . This moss lives in harsh environments on Earth, whether it is deserts, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, or even Antarctica. But these environments are still too "habitable" compared to Mars. How harsh are the conditions on Mars?

The temperature can reach minus 60 degrees Celsius; the atmosphere is thin, less than one percent of the Earth's atmosphere; water and oxygen are also scarce; and the radiation is many times stronger than that of the Earth. Researchers simulated the conditions on Mars to plant Erythrocephala, and found that this moss not only grew well, but also grew more and more ! Later, scientists discovered that the conditions on the surface of Mars are only the limit of Mars, not the limit of moss. After the Erythrocephala was quickly frozen at minus 196 degrees and the cells were 98% dehydrated, it still could not be killed.

This moss can survive exposure to 5,000 grays of gamma-ray radiation. In contrast, humans would be in danger of death if exposed to a dose of more than 5 grays. Compared with Erythromyces dentata, not only do humans pale in comparison, but even the water bears that have been studied before are inferior. Erythromyces dentata has a much greater resistance to stress than water bears and some known microorganisms. More importantly, as a plant, moss is a "producer" of nutrients and can serve as a cornerstone for building ecosystems, initiating primary succession, producing oxygen, and changing the ecological environment of Mars to make it more habitable. The author believes that Erythromyces dentata is a promising candidate for a pioneer plant in an extraterrestrial environment that can lay the foundation for establishing a sustainable human habitat beyond Earth.

Tiny mosses may be the first to conquer Mars

(Image source: phys.org)

Penguins sigh as it is not easy to change their feathers: the fashion disaster day of the penguin world has come!

All penguins molt, and it's an awkward period. When a king penguin is young, it looks like a kiwi fruit with its skin just peeled off, while a yellow-eyed penguin looks like it's wearing a worn-out down jacket...

All of these penguins undergo an intensive annual molting process during which they fast and the growth of new feathers precedes the loss of old ones.

Why do penguins molt? Because penguins live in cold environments, the thermal insulation of feathers is essential for them to maintain body temperature. Over time, old feathers will gradually lose their thermal insulation and waterproofing functions.

By molting, penguins are able to renew their feathers, ensuring that the new feathers have optimal thermal insulation and waterproofing properties, helping them maintain body temperature in extremely cold environments.

Image source: metro, Britannica

Neptune's year is about 60,000 days

Neptune is about 4.5 billion kilometers from the sun, about 30 times the average distance between the earth and the sun. A day on Neptune passes very quickly, about 16 hours on earth. But it takes 165 earth years for Neptune to orbit the sun. Since Neptune was discovered in 1846, we have only seen it complete one orbit in 2011.

The content is compiled from China Science Popularization Expo Weibo, China Science Daily, Gezhi Lundao Forum, Science Academy, CCTV Documentary Weibo

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