The full moon has long been associated with unnatural happenings and science has been pushed to prove why these things tend to occur. One such problem that occurs on full moon nights is that signals bounced off reflectors on the lunar surface return surprisingly faint echoes. These suitcases sized reflectors were placed on the moon by the crew of Apollo.

Scientists use them to reflect laser beams and when they return to earth they can calculate the distance of the moon from our planet highly accurately.  This process is known as lunar ranging. However on full moon nights things are different.The laser signals just do not get reflected back to earth the way they should.

At the University of California, San Diego, researchers found an explanation for this during an eclipse on the night of December 21, 2010 as Earth’s shadow passed over each reflector in turn. The scientists feel that this is the result of uneven heating of the reflective lenses.

This uneven heating would alter their refractive index, that in turn would begin dispersing the return beam causing the problem on full moon nights. So this science project study proves that science can explain one more full moon curse. Which is the next one that you would like to study?

Whales live deep in the oceans and satellites are up in space. So what is it that connects the two? A science project conducted by the British Antarctic Survey used satellite technology to count the number of whales and estimate their population in Argentina. This is quite an accomplishment as it is difficult to determine marine animal populations anywhere.

Lead author Peter Fretwell from the British Antarctic Survey, said that marine mammals are extremely difficult to count on a large scale and traditional methods, such as counting from platforms or land, can be costly and inefficient.  This is not the first time that satellites have been used to try and count whales, but previous efforts have not been quite successful due to the limitations of older technology.

Fretwell  added that using Very High Resolution satellite imagery, alongside image processing software, they were able to automatically detect and count whales breeding in part of the Golfo Nuevo, Peninsula Valdes in Argentina. He hopes that in the future it will be an even easier task to count the whales in the oceans around the world. Would you be interested in taking on that science project?

Did you ever see two sets of dots, one white in color and the other black placed near each other? Despite the fact that the dots are exactly the same size the white dots will appear larger to the human eye than the black ones. This is known as the Galileo’s illusion. It is credited to Galileo Galilei, the famous Italian scientist.

Galileo was puzzled by the appearance of the planets and how they seemed different when seen by the naked eye and through the telescope. He knew that the illusion was caused by his eyes but he was unable to explain why it happened. Galileo assumed that the illusion was caused by blur or similar optical effects.

Scientists at the State University of New York College of Optometry finally solved the puzzle of the illusion. This is what their study revealed.  The neuroscientists discovered that dark stimuli resulted in a faithful neural response, light stimuli resulted in non-linear and exaggerated response that make the stimulus look larger.

That is why the black dots seem to be the same size that they actually are while white dots appear larger. This visual illusion occurs because the way our eyes see lightness and darkness in the world is different. Interesting outcome of a long standing science project mystery!

Recurring Slope Lineae are dark flow like features spotted on the surface of the planet Mars in the summer season. The RSL flows are seen to grow during the time period when temperatures rise enough for the salty ice present on the planet to melt. They are also known to disappear in the winter season.

The presence of RSL features on Mars have been seen as indication of water streaks in the planet which sets up the debate for presence of water. The Georgia Institute of Technology has been studying minerals that RSL might leave in their wake so as to determine if there really is any water involved.

After studying 13 RSL sites, out of the 200 that are currently available, using Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars or CRISM the scholars have not yet been able to find any spectral signature tied to water or salts. What they did find instead was signatures of ferric and ferrous minerals at most of the sites.

As per them there is no smoking gun to indicate water even though the flow like features appear to be formed by apparent movement of a fluid that we would like to believe is akin to water. Water or no water, the RSL and Mars as a whole will continue to be the center of many more science experiments and studies in the years to come.

The Hubble Space telescope sent in an interesting photograph to NASA scientists recently. It showed the birth of a young star in a Chameleon cloud. The star is seen in the image throwing off narrow streams of gas from its poles at high speed. This creates a collision with the slower moving gases that surround it.

As a result of the two gas streams colliding the area around the young star is lit up. The birthing of a young star sees it gobble up the resources close to it to form the core that is massive enough to trigger nuclear fission. The process is being demonstrated beautifully in the case of this young celestial body which has been dubbed HH 909A.

A star begins to throw out material in violent bursts just before the fission process begins. It is at this stage that the new star currently is being photographed. The resulting narrow, patchy regions of faintly glowing nebulosity are known as Herbig-Haro objects. They do not last long and are thought of in terms of a blink of the eye in astronomical timescales.

No matter how long the young unruly star throws a tantrum, the scientists who are studying it will have no reason to complain. This is one science project where the scientists will be waiting to watch the next action of the star baby eagerly.