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kidsneedscience:

On the nights of January 7/8, 1610, Galileo Galilei noted in his notebooks the discovery of the first 4 Jovian moons, which he named after the powerful Medici family, naming them Medicean I, II and III.  The name Europa (above left) comes from Greek mythology-Europa was abducted by Zeus (the Greek name for Jupiter) in the form of a bull and bore him many children.  Io is also named for a child of Zeus (Jupiter) the daughter of Inachus, who was raped by Jupiter. Jupiter, in an effort to hide his crime from his wife, Juno, transformed Io into a heifer.  Calllisto (on the right) was named for another seduction of Jupiter.  Callisto was the daughter of Lycaon, who was a follower of Artemis, famous as goddess of the hunt and for her chastity.  To punish Callisto for lying with Jupiter, Artemis banished her.  Without protection, Jupiter was forced to change Callisto and her son into bears to hide them from his wife Hera’s fury.  Eventually, Jupiter placed them both in the sky as the Ursa Major and Minor, the Big and Little Bears (known today as the Big and Little Dippers).  Ganymede was the fourth moon discovered by Galileo, named for the shepherd boy known for his incredible beauty and kidnapped by Jupiter.  These names would not become common for several hundred years.  Today, Jupiter has fifty named moons:

1. Io  2. Europa 

3. Ganymede 
4. Callisto 
5. Amalthea 
6. Himalia 
7. Elara 
8. Pasiphae 
9. Sinope 
10. Lysithea 
11. Carme 
12. Ananke 
13. Leda 
14. Thebe 
15. Adrastea 
16. Metis 
17. Callirrhoe 
18. Themisto 
19. Megaclite 
20. Taygete 
21. Chaldene 
22. Harpalyke 
23. Kalyke 
24. Iocaste 
25. Erinome 
26. Isonoe 
27. Praxidike 
28. Autonoe 
29. Thyone 
30. Hermippe 
31. Aitne 
32. Eurydome 
33. Euanthe 
34. Euporie 
35. Orthosie 
36. Sponde 
37. Kale 
38. Pasithee 
39. Hegemone 
40. Mneme 
41. Aoede 
42. Thelxinoe 
43. Arche 
44. Kallichore 
45. Helike 
46. Carpo 
47. Eukelade 
48. Cyllene 
49. Kore 
50. Herse 

and an additional 16 provisional moons:

1. S/2003 J2 
2. S/2003 J3 
3. S/2003 J4 
4. S/2003 J5 
5. S/2003 J9 
6. S/2003 J10 
7. S/2003 J12 
8. S/2003 J15 
9. S/2003 J16 
10. S/2003 J18 
11. S/2003 J19 
12. S/2003 J23 
13. S/2010 J 1 
14. S/2010 J 2 
15. S/2011 J1 
16. S/2011 J2 

All images courtesy NASA.  Thanks also to NASA for additional historical background

wildcat2030:

Researchers in Japan have come up with a storage solution to keep your most important data with a method that seems to be drawn directly from the pages of Superman.

Everyone who has gone through the process of upgrading their computer system knows the inevitable task of transferring data involves a certain amount of acceptance that some data will forever be lost.

Saved on storage devices without drives to retrieve the files, or by the deterioration of the storage substrate, data becomes lost.

Even Ray Kurzweil mentions in The Singularity Is Near, how he resorts to paper printouts to save his most important data for the long term.

Now, Japanese storage and electronics company Hitachi has announced that it has come up with a solution that stores data on slivers of quartz glass, keeping important data safe and sound for perhaps as long as hundreds of millions of years. The company’s main research lab has developed a way to etch digital patterns into robust quartz glass with a laser at a data density that is better than compact discs, then read it using an optical microscope. The data is etched at four different layers in the glass using different focal points of the laser. (via 33rd Square | Superman’s Indestructible Data Crystals May Be Possible)

kateoplis:

NASA - Earth As Art [free ebook/app]

thesciencellama:

Acoustic Levitation

Using sound waves to levitate individual droplets of solutions containing pharmaceutical drugs and drying them in mid-air. Why do this? This is useful because most of the drugs on the market are either amorphous or crystalline and the crystalline form doesn’t get absorbed by the body. So levitating the solution allows the drug to be made into an amorphous state (by evaporation) because if it were to touch any surface it would simply crystallize. They call this “containerless processing”.

The frequencies used are just above the audible range at about 22 kilohertz and when the two speakers are aligned they create two sets of sound waves, perfectly interfering with each other creating a phenomenon known as a standing wave. This allows the objects to levitate in areas within the waves known as nodes as the acoustic pressure is enough to cancel the force of gravity.

Video Source - Argonne National Laboratory

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