#sciece

Ready to lend a hand? Check out these trained volunteers outplanting staghorn corals in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary for National Volunteer Week!

The Center for Conservation and Research at San Antonio Zoo is thrilled to announce another successful Texas horned lizard hatching.

 Although this is not the first clutch of eggs to hatch this season, it is an important milestone for the Texas Horned Lizard Reintroduction Project: they now have enough captive-born lizards to conduct their first release into the wild.  About 100 young lizards are expected to be released this Fall.  This is a tremendous step forward for the Texas Horned Lizard Reintroduction Project, which will bolster the survival of their species here in South Texas. Since launching the project four years ago, the Center for Conservation and Research team has been diligently working on breeding and preserving the State Reptile of Texas by utilizing Geographic Information System (GIS) data, genetics, and current knowledge about horned lizard ecology and distribution in an effort to release large numbers of captive-born individuals in suitable habitats. “I am proud of the work we are doing to bring back the beloved Texas horned lizard,” said Tim Morrow, President & CEO of San Antonio Zoo. “While we have a multitude of global conservation projects, it’s especially rewarding to be able to secure a future for wildlife right here in our backyard,” said Morrow. To monitor the lizards after they’ve been released, San Antonio Zoo will utilize a horned lizard detection canine, a dog that is specially trained to cue on the scent of Texas horned lizards as well as their shed skin, eggs, and scat.  In addition to post-release monitoring, the lizard detection canine will be used to survey potential release sites and to assist in the collection of founders for the captive breeding colony. Many people have fond memories of growing up with the Texas horned lizard, more commonly known as the horny toad. Once abundant, populations have declined or disappeared altogether in many parts of Texas. Habitat loss and fragmentation, as well as invasive species, are believed to be contributing factors to its decline. Staff at San Antonio Zoo have been executing both field and laboratory components as part of the Texas Horned Lizard Reintroduction Project—surveying and monitoring habitats while also breeding and caring for offspring. As the project grows, San Antonio Zoo hopes to release thousands of horned lizards annually. Funding is needed for conservation operations and equipment necessary for maintaining a robust program that will bring this iconic species back where it belongs.

Donations can be made on the zoo’s website:

What Kills Galaxies?

The above picture is of M87, 1 trillion stars (Milky way has around 250 Billion) it’s a monster of a galaxy, but unlike the Milky Way with it’s spiral arms and shape, it appears as if almost still with no definable structure except that of the core. These kinds of galaxies are called Elliptical, and ever since we started to realise that those nebula were not in fact nebula but galaxies, we’ve wondered why it is some galaxies appear to have little or no structure, and others amazingly complex or even totally random structure.

Researchers at UC Santa Cruz believe the detail is in the black hole.

M87 has a truly enormous central black hole, estimated at about 6.5 billion times the mass of our sun, compared to our Milky way’s tiddler of just 4 million. 

The researchers believe that as a galaxy forms and grows, gravity pulls towards the centre creating a whirlpool effect that we see in many spiral galaxies. As stars are born and die, super massive stars collapse and form stellar black holes, these then make their way towards the centre and the amalgamate into a super massive central black hole. Initially, this is a good thing, it pulls in more matter which in turn creates more stars at the outer edges of the galaxy. 

More stars means more black holes, which over time will seed the central black hole more and more. What Professor Faber’s team discovered was, there is a critical point at which the balance is broken, and the central black hole begins to dredge the galaxy of hydrogen, and kill off star formation.

This certainly appears to stand true, as quasars (super massive and very active black holes at the centre of some galaxies) are almost always elliptical galaxies and even our very first image of a black hole came from M87 and not our own much smaller central black hole.

If the logic follows, The milky way will enjoy a period of star growth, which will feed the very thing that will ultimately cut that star growth off, and the structure of our galaxy will change from Spiral to Lenticular and then finally Elliptical.

Of course, that’s assuming no other galaxy interfere’s with us before this occurs, and as it turns out, Andromeda spiral galaxy is heading straight for us in the next few billion years. Andromeda is much further down the path of exhausting it’s supply of hydrogen, but still enough for the spiral structure to be clearly seen.

We are making history!

OC tiem!

A little about my boy:

The Hollow-Face Illusion.

Seen here with an Einstein mask, the Hollow-Face illusion is an example of the biases our brain uses.

This example is the bias of seeing a face normally in a convex manner, which the brain will counter cues of light, shade and depth to be able to picture this face in a convex way.