Enceladus

enceladus, one of saturn's 56 known (!) moons, is, in my opinion, one the solar system's most beautiful moons. (though, star wars fans might opt for mimas, which bears a striking resemblance to the death star.) since the nasa/esa/isa cassini-huygens spacecraft - whose objective is the study of saturn and its moons - began observing the moon, it has made a number of interesting discoveries. one of these is that the moon has geysers that are spewing ice (water ice, that is) into space. now, scientists are proposing that the decay of radioactive isotopes of aluminum and iron is producing a large amount of heat within the moon's core. this heat is then released through cracks in the moon's surface, thereby spewing out water from pockets of liquid water near the surface. very cool. plus, now i have another bubble picture on my blog.

Sonofusion

an interesting article from the nytimes describing the process of sonofusion, or bubble fusion. in this process, sound waves are used to expand and collapse small bubbles, raising their temperatures drastically and thereby making fusion possible within them. the image above explains the process quite nicely. apparently quite a bit of research is going on in this field, though no energetically efficient systems seem to have been created. (image credit: nytimes)

as an endnote to this post, i am compelled to point out that the idea of bubble fusion clearly fascinates me since i am, indeed, a woman: women and bubbles.