Excessive heat watch in effect through Sunday

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This week: Water unifies the solar system this week: Rivers and ice geysers reveal some of the secrets of Saturn's moon Enceladus.  


Back on Earth, American eels use the vast Atlantic Ocean to hide their spawning routes. And, finally: The high water composition of pumpkins protects them from the amazing heat of a thermite reaction. 

NASA spacecraft to dive into icy geyser on distant world

 has dropped a probe on Titan, the planet's largest moon. It has studied Saturn's rings and moons and is now set to race through the spray of the geysers of Enceladus, Saturn's sixth-largest moon, to find out about the ocean lurking below. 

, erupt from groundwater flowing down to heated rocks. The icy geysers of of Enceladus, though, emerge from great fissures, the "tiger stripes," in the moon's icy crust that allow the global ocean below to escape. 


Rivers of melt-water racing across the surface of the ice sheet are the vanguard of a climate change in Greenland. A group of scientists set up on the frozen plain to study the impact of these glacial rivers on the ice, on the melting rate and gather previously unknown data about the state of the ice sheet. 

Flying a drone above Greenland's ice sheet

Epic eel migration mapped for the first time


For the first time, scientists have tracked the migration of American eels to their open ocean spawning grounds. Swimming along a secret watery superhighway, American eels travel more than 1,500 miles from the eastern Canadian coast to the middle of the North Atlantic according to the GPS tag data. 

The Apollo archives hit Flickr, total awesomeness ensues


With more than 14,000 images uploaded to Flickr, the Project Apollo Archive opened the hidden photo albums to the public that provide a sometimes candid look into the more mundane activities of the moon program. By making the images available online the they invited the public to make them their own, and the results have been thrilling.  


Find out what happens when you mix pumpkins with a bit of thermite (hint: molten iron and fire). 

Exploding Thermite Pumpkins! Halloween Science

Bonus Edgar Allen Poe: The Raven, performed by 

QMx Presents: The Raven read by John De Lancie

Science

William Lager

Author

Fly above a melting Greenland; pass through the icy geysers of Saturn's moon and have a little fiery Halloween fun with pumpkins and thermite.

NASA | JPL | SSI

NASA | JPL-Caltech | Space Science Institute

Robert F. Bukaty | AP file

I was looking through the Project Apollo Archive (https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/) and at one point, I began clicking through a series of pics quickly and it looked like stop motion animation.  So, I decided to see what that would look like without me having to click through it.  Enjoy!


Music:

Lift Motif by Kevin MacLeod found at Free Music Archive (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kevin_MacLeod/Classical_Sampler/Lift_Motif).  CC license:  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Start Start by Built By Snow.  You can find the song feature in this video here (free!):  http://www.builtbysnow.com/ and be sure to check out JP's page here:  http://velcrowolf.com/

Greenland melting, ice geysers in space, thermite pumpkins: Your weekend reading list

Go Deeper.

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