Hubba Hubba! Perfect Smile!

Invite someone over, then tell them to go, come again

When you love someone, you share their energy. You are connected.

There is a place for me, with friends who encourage and uplift me, I will find it someday.

I’m a waste. All people do is get mad at me or tell me how much of a burden I am. There’s no place in this world for me

Falling up the stairs 🙃🤦🏼‍♀️

🇬️🇮️🇫️😂  😲💫💥

Neuroscience

Brain Opioids Help Us to Relate with Others

Recent results obtained by researchers from Turku PET Centre and Aalto University have revealed how the human brain’s opioid system modulates responses to other people’s pain.

Seeing others experiencing pain activated brain circuits that are known to support actual first-hand experience of pain. The less opioid receptors the participants had in their brain, the stronger were their emotion and pain circuits’ response to seeing others in distress. Similar association was not found for the dopamine system despite its known importance in pain management.

– Capacity for vicarious experiences is a fundamental aspect of human social behaviour. Our results demonstrate the importance of the endogenous opioid system in helping us to relate with others’ feelings. Interindividual differences in the opioid system could explain why some individuals react more strongly than others to someone else’s distress, says Researcher Tomi Karjalainen from Turku PET Centre.

– The results show that first-hand and vicarious pain experiences are supported by the same neurotransmitter system. This finding could explain why seeing others in pain often feels unpleasant. High opioid-receptor availability may, however, protect against excessive distress resulting from negative social signals, such as other people’s distress. Our findings thus suggest that the brain’s opioid system could constitute an important social resiliency factor, tells Professor Lauri Nummenmaa from Turku PET Centre and Department of Psychology at the University of Turku.

The study was conducted by using positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The participants were injected with radioactive compounds that bind to their brain’s opioid and dopamine receptors. Radioactivity in the brain was measured twice with the PET camera to map the distribution of opioid and dopamine receptors. Subsequently, the participants’ brain activity was measured with fMRI while they viewed videos depicting humans in various painful and painless situations.

Me, a disgraced academic turned farmer, surveying my crops: Finally… I am out standing in my field

Fishy

A fish swims upstream, over waterfalls, and against the resistance, thats what makes life magical, when something defies the laws working against it

Shame

Shame is like having a daughter with red hair, you can't let it become part of your life. -Wilfred

Little Rock

Earth from Afar

“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” - Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11

This week we’re celebrating Earth Day 2018 with some of our favorite images of Earth from afar…

At 7.2 million Miles…and 4 Billion Miles

Voyager famously captured two unique views of our homeworld from afar. One image, taken in 1977 from a distance of 7.3 million miles (11.7 million kilometers) (above), showed the full Earth and full Moon in a single frame for the first time in history. The second (below), taken in 1990 as part of a “family portrait of our solar system from 4 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers), shows Earth as a tiny blue speck in a ray of sunlight.” This is the famous “Pale Blue Dot” image immortalized by Carl Sagan.

“This was our willingness to see the Earth as a one-pixel object in a far greater cosmos,” Sagan’s widow, Ann Druyan said of the image. “It’s that humility that science gives us. That weans us from our childhood need to be the center of things. And Voyager gave us that image of the Earth that is so heart tugging because you can’t look at that image and not think of how fragile, how fragile our world is. How much we have in common with everyone with whom we share it; our relationship, our relatedness, to everyone on this tiny pixel.“

A Bright Flashlight in a Dark Sea of Stars

Our Kepler mission captured Earth’s image as it slipped past at a distance of 94 million miles (151 million kilometers). The reflection was so extraordinarily bright that it created a saber-like saturation bleed across the instrument’s sensors, obscuring the neighboring Moon.

Hello and Goodbye

This beautiful shot of Earth as a dot beneath Saturn’s rings was taken in 2013 as thousands of humans on Earth waved at the exact moment the spacecraft pointed its cameras at our home world. Then, in 2017, Cassini caught this final view of Earth between Saturn’s rings as the spacecraft spiraled in for its Grand Finale at Saturn.

‘Simply Stunning’

”The image is simply stunning. The image of the Earth evokes the famous ‘Blue Marble’ image taken by astronaut Harrison Schmitt during Apollo 17…which also showed Africa prominently in the picture.“ -Noah Petro, Deputy Project Scientist for our Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission.

Goodbye—for now—at 19,000 mph

As part of an engineering test, our OSIRIS-REx spacecraft captured this image of Earth and the Moon in January 2018 from a distance of 39.5 million miles (63.6 million kilometers). When the camera acquired the image, the spacecraft was moving away from our home planet at a speed of 19,000 miles per hour (8.5 kilometers per second). Earth is the largest, brightest spot in the center of the image, with the smaller, dimmer Moon appearing to the right. Several constellations are also visible in the surrounding space.

The View from Mars

A human observer with normal vision, standing on Mars, could easily see Earth and the Moon as two distinct, bright "evening stars.”

Moon Photobomb

“This image from the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured a unique view of the Moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth in 2015. It provides a view of the far side of the Moon, which is never directly visible to us here on Earth. “I found this perspective profoundly moving and only through our satellite views could this have been shared.” - Michael Freilich, Director of our Earth Science Division.

Eight Days Out

Eight days after its final encounter with Earth—the second of two gravitational assists from Earth that helped boost the spacecraft to Jupiter—the Galileo spacecraft looked back and captured this remarkable view of our planet and its Moon. The image was taken from a distance of about 3.9 million miles (6.2 million kilometers).

A Slice of Life

Earth from about 393,000 miles (633,000 kilometers) away, as seen by the European Space Agency’s comet-bound Rosetta spacecraft during its third and final swingby of our home planet in 2009.

So Long Earth

The Mercury-bound MESSENGER spacecraft captured several stunning images of Earth during a gravity assist swingby of our home planet on Aug. 2, 2005.

Earth Science: Taking a Closer Look

Our home planet is a beautiful, dynamic place. Our view from Earth orbit sees a planet at change. Check out more images of our beautiful Earth here.

Join Our Earth Day Celebration!

We pioneer and supports an amazing range of advanced technologies and tools to help scientists and environmental specialists better understand and protect our home planet - from space lasers to virtual reality, small satellites and smartphone apps. 

To celebrate Earth Day 2018, April 22, we are highlighting many of these innovative technologies and the amazing applications behind them.

Learn more about our Earth Day plans HERE. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

How I Understand the 2016 Presidential Debates By : Malcum Moonsun The voting populace is the world child trying to decide whether to sit beside mommy or daddy. We, the children, are choosing our teacher, and we have been given all the lessons and are now made to choose the path that leads to best growth. The father demands great strength. He speaks his mind to the most isolated and deeply superficial thought. Moral implications aside, the thoughts are deep ceded in our mammalian reptilian imaginative brains. In this instance spoken from the perspective of the white man towards women and people of color, it is ignominious to think colored women do not have those reciprocated thoughts about Caucasian men. To stand by his words, or to lay down the ego and apologize for how it was spoken are both paths that require tremendous emotional fortitude. He has used his words to inspire understanding, understanding which evades the proud elite who cower in fear of what may be found illuminating the dark recesses of human existence. The enemies in the silence are more fearsome than the words we dare not mutter.  If you have ever spoken what you truly think and feel you know that path always leads to truth. The mother teaches us of our ability to change; her viewpoint on topics like gay marriage has swayed over the years. She presents us with the challenge of asking ourselves if we have never been swayed by others’ attitudes and persuasions through the course of experience. If one reads five books and maintains the same mindset afterwards, then someone is plainly stubborn. If your intuitions feel no guilt with a journal full of secrets then she is the best choice for you. The choice will shape our future world child, and requires discussion and deliberation. While speeches will be given on our television screens, we still have the power to think for ourselves and share our thoughts and feelings about the topics presented to us within our communities. Be that as it may, understand that advisors limit their power. The decision you are making is whether you want a trustworthy brute or a silver-tongued devil whispering into your ear.

Malcum Moonsun