DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (CNN) — Humans may one day become Mars. This does not mean that we will become green aliens with three eyes and antennae, but rather that we will be born and raised on the red planet.

In preparation for the space agency’s ambitious plan to send the first astronauts to Mars in the early 2030s, NASA researchers are currently spending a year in the US state of Texas in a settlement that simulates the Martian environment, while the European Space Agency (ESA) is preparing for the first flight. Back and forth from Earth to Mars at the end of the current decade.

But accurate Earth maps and local weather data are essential for spacecraft to land safely.

Researchers at New York University Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (NYUAD) are trying to bring this dream closer to reality with their “Mars Atlas”.

By combining more than 3,000 high-resolution images carefully collected by the United Arab Emirates’ Hope probe, which has been orbiting Mars since 2021, the team created a “beautiful colorful mosaic of the entire planet,” said Dimitra Adri, head of the Mars Research Group. At NYUAD..

“If you look at the history of Mars, many probes have crashed,” Adri said, “because the thin atmosphere makes it difficult to slow rockets down, and even light winds can change landing trajectories.”

“When a probe goes down, it means a huge loss of science and resources,” Adri explained. “But when you send humans, you have to be very careful.”

Understanding daily and seasonal weather patterns will help researchers determine the safest time and place to land, Adri said.

Precipitation is one of the challenges that accurate maps can help solve, but finding the best places for human settlements based on environment, temperature and resources is another aspect they can contribute to.

“If ice is found, it can be turned into water that can be used for habitation purposes,” Adri explained, “It may sound silly, but in the future, it may be more common for people to go to Mars and live there.”

Dust and desertification

Astronomers have been mapping Mars for nearly two centuries, and the first map of Mars was made in 1840 by Wilhelm Baer and Johann von Modler in Germany.

But it was Italian astronomer Giovanni Chiaparelli’s 1877 map that sparked a continuing fascination with the idea of ​​a Martian civilization, misclassifying the natural waterways he identified on the map as artificial waterways.

NASA’s Mariner missions in the 1960s and 1970s provided a better understanding of the Martian landscape, including the first images of volcanoes, lava flows, rocky canyons, and massive dust storms.

In the following decades, NASA produced several maps, including one based on the planet’s minerals.

Earlier this year, the US space agency released a detailed, 3D interactive map of Mars.

NYU Abu Dhabi’s map is “the first to use true-color images of the entire planet,” Adri said.

NASA’s Goddard Space Science Institute is now using NYU Abu Dhabi’s map in its Mars 24 project to maintain accurate time on Mars.

JMARS has also integrated Atlas into its database, a publicly available database used by NASA scientists to plan missions.

In an email, JMARS base representative Scott Dickenshead told CNN that the NYU Abu Dhabi map was “created from recently acquired data compared to some previous global maps” and provides “an additional view of what Mars looks like.”

While NASA and ESA’s instruments provide high-resolution data over long periods of time, the instrument used to collect data for the NYU Abu Dhabi Atlas “can observe the entire Martian disk at once,” says Dickenshead.

Dickenshead added that this perspective would be “very useful for researchers monitoring cloud or dust storm activity at the planetary scale.”

Mars and Earth

Mars was once a water-covered planet like Earth, and its atmosphere thinned out and became colder and drier, leading to its current barren state.

The planet now faces regular dust storms, which have a significant impact on its climate, including blocking radiation and trapping heat, Adri explained.

Desertification is a growing problem on Earth, especially in regions such as the Arabian Peninsula and Africa.

Adri believed that climate scientists could apply information about Mars’ desertification to Earth to “understand what will happen to our planet in the future,” adding: “My concern is that if we don’t do enough on Earth (to address climate change), “it could become like Mars.”

In the future, Adri plans to recreate Martian conditions in the laboratory to study the behavior of plants.

Mars has a harsh and unforgiving environment, with its thin atmosphere, extremely low temperatures, and high levels of ultraviolet radiation.

Plants growing naturally in dry, salty soil in desert regions like the United Arab Emirates could help them understand how they can survive the Red Planet’s harsh climate and allow researchers to find the best, Atre said. Ways to grow food in space or improve agriculture in the arid regions of the planet.

The research is still in the early planning stages, and Adri hopes to get his first real samples from Mars around 2033.

But elsewhere, other researchers are already studying how innovations developed to grow food on Mars could affect Earth.

About 34% of total human-caused global greenhouse gas emissions come from food production, which consumes large amounts of land and water.

But system inefficiencies mean a third of the world’s food is wasted, with more than 345 million people suffering from severe food insecurity, high hunger and malnutrition.

Limited resources in space mean that food production technology on Mars must be highly efficient, closed-loop, and with little or no waste.

Last month, researchers in the United Kingdom published a paper in the journal Nature Food exploring how controlled ecosystem agriculture in space could provide a “gateway” to the development of Earth-like technology.

Two Canadian food scientists have published a book that says growing food on Mars could revolutionize agriculture on Earth.

Lessons learned about Mars’ geography, climate and atmosphere could help determine whether any of the thousands of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system are habitable or capable of maintaining an atmosphere, Adri noted.

Many scientists believe life originated on Mars billions of years ago on Earth, and Adri believes the Red Planet is the perfect laboratory to explore this theory.

“We need to understand our neighbor,” Adri insisted: “Maybe it had life at one point, or there’s still life beneath the surface. Maybe we have a common ancestry. Who knows?”

“It’s the best way to understand ourselves and where we’re coming from,” Adri said.

Written by Merwat Rashad

Thursday, September 28, 2023 04:00 AM

The heart is the most important organ for human health, and for its functions to be effective, we must devote time to physical activity every day, and also pay attention to nutritious food. Now common among teenagers and children, one should know the obvious symptoms For heart problems Early treatment can save lives and damage, fatigue, swelling in legs and feet, dizziness and irregular heartbeat should not be ignored. Here are the symptoms as published on the website.In Hindu times“.

Some important symptoms that should not be ignored are:

1. Chest pain or discomfort

A heart problem is often indicated by chest pain, which is characterized by tightness, pressure, squeezing, or burning. The arms, neck, jaw, or back may also be affected.

2. Suffocation

Shortness of breath that occurs even with mild activity or at rest can be a sign of a heart condition, which can be accompanied by a feeling of shortness of breath or gasping for air..

3. Fatigue

Low energy levels can result from your heart’s inability to pump blood effectively, especially if a heart condition interferes with your ability to perform normal tasks, such as persistent, unexplained fatigue..

4. Arrhythmia

Pay close attention to your heart palpitations, palpitations, or feelings that your heart skips a beat, as an irregular heartbeat can indicate a more serious heart condition..

5. Inflammation

Swelling or swelling in the legs, ankles, feet, or abdomen may indicate heart failure. The body fills with fluid when the heart cannot pump enough blood..

6. Fainting or Fainting

Insufficient blood supply to the brain, which may be associated with heart disease, can cause dizziness or fainting.

7. Excessive sweating

Excessive sweating can be a sign of a heart condition, especially a heart attack, especially when accompanied by other symptoms such as chest pain or shortness of breath..

8. Nausea or vomiting

Some people — especially women — experience nausea or vomiting during a heart attack or other heart problem..

9. Pain in upper body

Especially in women, pain or discomfort in the upper abdomen, arms, shoulders, neck, or jaw may indicate heart problems..

10. Unexplained weight gain

Attention should be paid to sudden weight gain as a result of fluid retention due to congestive heart failure.

A study published today (Wednesday) reports that the mass of the Milky Way galaxy is four to five times less than previously thought, results that overturn what is known to date about the galaxy that contains the planet Earth.

As astronomer François Hamer, co-author of the study published by the journal “Astronomy and Astrophysics,” explained to Agence France-Presse, the result is “the result of the Gaia revolution.” Gaia, a satellite dedicated to mapping the Milky Way galaxy, revealed the positions and motions of 1.8 billion stars in its latest data in 2022.

It represents a small fraction of the total contents of our spiral galaxy, a disk about 100,000 light-years in diameter and consisting of four large arms, one of which includes our Solar System, all of which extend around a very luminous core. .

The authors of the study report that by studying the Gaia data they were able to calculate the rotation curve of the Milky Way with unprecedented precision. The task is to determine the speed at which celestial bodies rotate around the center of the galaxy.

Observations of spiral galaxies have previously concluded that this curve is “flattening”, meaning that once a certain distance from the center is reached, the rate of rotation is constant.

But “this is the first time we find that the curve descends outside its disk,” according to Francois Hamer, “as if there wasn’t a lot of matter” in the galaxy between 50 and 80 thousand years from the center.

As a result, “the mass of our Milky Way Galaxy has been revised to very low values,” about 200 billion times the mass of the Sun, five times less than previous estimates.

“Bold Decisions”

The study, conducted by an international team and led by astronomers from the Paris Observatory and the National Center for Scientific Research in France, has a second major conclusion, as it questions “the relationship between luminous matter and dark matter.” Astronomer.

This hypothesis is also called thematic theme because it is so far invisible and undetectable. It is thought to provide the mass necessary for the coalescence of galaxies, and represents about six times the mass of luminous matter that contains stars and gas clouds. For the Milky Way, the study calculates that this ratio is much lower, with three times as much dark matter as bright matter.

But astronomer François Combes, a colleague of François Hammer at the Paris Observatory, told Agence France-Presse that the results were “a bit bold” or “perhaps not well founded.”

This is significant because this study focuses on low galactic radii, while astronomers typically calculate galactic masses by taking greater distances into account.

However, apart from gas, globular clusters, dwarf galaxies or the Magellanic Cloud, “up to this distance we have a lot of dark matter,” notes Francois Combe, a senior expert on galaxy evolution.

But the Gombe galaxy, about 80,000 light-years away from the center of the galaxy, welcomes “very precise work that will improve our knowledge of the stars and their rotation”.

François Hammer’s team defends this work by talking about the uniqueness of our galaxy. Unlike most spiral galaxies, which saw violent collisions between galaxies six billion years ago, the Milky Way “evolved very quietly for nine billion years,” Hamer says.

Also, the difference between the Milky Way and other spiral galaxies can be justified by the observational method, which relies on stars in the former and gas clouds in the latter.

Meanwhile, Françoise Combe believes the Milky Way galaxy is “not exceptional,” but in terms of dark matter, “it’s like the others.”