They Actually Eat That: Space Food.

Hey, speaking of space, ever wonder what they eat in space? Wonder no more! "They Actually Eat That" will cover what they eat, how they do it, and where you can find some here on Earth. Disclaimer: no aliens were harmed in the making of this cuisine.

First off, imagine how difficult it must be to eat in space. We take gravity for granted. It is very difficult to assemble, say, a salad or hamburger without gravity helping you. In space, there is no gravity; that means food needs to be very, very different. Luckily, since swallowing is all muscle movement, gravity is no issue once the food is actually in your body. It's just assembling the food making sure it's, well, food that's the hard part.

The logic that goes into space food is much the same as that of TV dinners: quick, tasty, most likely dehydrated food that keeps well. There are several foods that meet these criteria by themselves - nuts, cookies, and nutrition bars are fine examples. Even a Chewy bar is a welcome replacement for, well, this:

When the space race first started, space food sucked. One Russian journal described it as "toothpaste." The U.S, and other nations had similar reactions. Everybody agreed that it tasted awful and could barely be called food.

Recent efforts and a lot of money have gone into making delectable dishes space-worthy. By no means are we talking actual gourmet banquets; Russian space flights have over 300 options when it comes to food, but fresh food needs to be eaten almost immediately. Anything that leaves crumbs is also right out (careful, they're ruffled!). I don't know how granola bars work with that, but they must have gotten better about crumbs over the years.

Specifically, something called the "retort process" makes many things more viable in space. The idea is similar to canning in that the food inside is cooked at a temperature so high that almost all microbes are eliminated. Camping and military rations use this process as well. We use retort pouches in things like Capri Sun and easy-cook rice. They are not hard to find if you know what to look for.

So what about things like "astronaut ice cream?" Yes, in theory, that is space food. Only Apollo 7 actually took ice cream into space. It's still worth a try if you want a taste of what dehydrated food is like. That is part of the astronaut diet, after all. 

Science Art: A Real-Life Space Jam + Opening a Soda Can On the Ocean Floor.

Space. The final frontier. Nearly every sci-fi thing involves space in some way, shape, or form, in part because aliens are cool and One day, after our planet is destroyed, we may have colonies on the moon. For now, we have one guy playing a guitar. 



Yes, that video was edited. Commander Chris Hadfield still went up in space, filmed himself playing the guitar, and probably lipsynched just to get the song absolutely right. He had a glider scholarship since 15 years of age. In short, he is a solid badass who does more awesome things than you...and puts them on YouTube for your convenience.

Or how about crying in space?



Basically, anything mundane that you have ever thought of doing in space? This guy's done it. Then he put it up on YouTube to sate your nerdy curiosity.  Who would ask about nail clipping in outer space? I don't know, but you're probably looking it up on YouTube right now. You're welcome.

The fun does not stop in space. Commander Hadfield has also been to the bottom of the ocean, where he opened a soda can.



Yeah, you'll never see soda the same way again. Or Atlantis, for that matter.

Newsflash: Milky Way Bubbles.

Our news is so preoccupied with local and global disasters that one domain often goes forgotten: Outer space. Yeah, we're so worried about things like hurricanes, global warming, and saving the rainforest that it scarcely crosses our minds that a giant meteor might come along and wreck it all. Or, umm, a black hole, which is basically an exploded star that became a pit of void. (It's a lot more complex than that, but off the top of my head.)

Make that two black holes. Yes, millions of years ago, there was a black hole collision in our galaxy. NewScientist has the scoop:

"A tiny galaxy that collided with the Milky Way spawned two huge bubbles of high-energy particles that now tower over the centre of our galaxy. This new model for the birth of the mysterious bubbles also explains discrepancies in the ages of stars at the galactic middle.

In 2010, sky maps made by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope revealed two lobes of particles billowing out from the heart of the Milky Way, each one stretching 25,000 light years beyond the galactic plane.

Astronomers suspected the bubbles were inflated by a period of violence in the galactic centre about 10 million years ago, but no one could say what had triggered the outburst.

Earlier this year, Kelly Holley-Bockelmann from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, was discussing the problem with Tamara Bogdanović from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

"We pieced together all the evidence and realised they could be explained by a single catastrophic event – the collision between two black holes," recalls Holley-Bockelmann.

...

We know that a supermassive black hole weighing as much as 4 million suns lurks at the core of the Milky Way. We also have an array of dwarf galaxies orbiting our much larger spiral galaxy, as well as hints that past satellite dwarfs have collided with us.

According to the new theory, a small galaxy with its own central black hole dove into the Milky Way and began spiralling through our galaxy. After billions of years, the stripped-down dwarf's black hole made it to the galactic centre.

The two black holes then performed a tight gravitational tango before finally merging. This final act produced violent forces that flung out many of the stars that were born in the Milky Way's middle, explaining why astronomers now find far fewer old stars there than they have every right to expect.

The whirling black holes also disrupted giant clouds of gas, some of which got squeezed so much that they collapsed to form clusters of bright new stars. Much of the rest of the gas swirled into the merged black holes, getting so hot from compression that it radiated huge amounts of energy.

"We think it's both the energy from this 'burp' near the black hole and the winds of gas from the starburst that inflated the Fermi bubbles," says Holley-Bockelmann." - Source. 

So, to recap: There is a massive black hole at the center of our galaxy. At one point, it collided with another black hole, causing a giant energy burst. The article says this needs more evidence, but it's still pretty scary if it's true. If it can happen once, it can happen again. It may even happen near our planet - who knows?