Astronauts See Mount Etna Volcano's Lava and Steam from Space

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman shared this photo of the volcanoes Mount Etna and Mount Stromboli on Aug. 14, 2014.

Credit: Reid Wiseman/NASA

Two astronauts aboard the International Space Station have captured a one-two punch of incredible views from space of Mount Etna and another active volcano in Italy spewing steam and lava.

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst managed to photograph both Mount Etna and Mount Stromboli from their positions on the space station earlier this month.

Gerst caught sight of the two Italian volcanoes and their lava flows at night, while Wiseman captured the mountains during daylight.

Both photos give viewers a different perspective of the massive volcanoes. The images were taken from the same angle, and thanks to that specific shot alignment, space fans can orient themselves to see the red lava flows in Gerst's photo.

Without the context provided by Wiseman's daytime image, the lava would be much more difficult to spot.

European astronaut Alexander Gerst uploaded this photo of two volcanoes, Mount Etna and Mount Stromboli, by night on Aug. 1, 2014. 

Credit: Alexander Gerst Twitter / ESA

Gerst has quite a bit of experience with volcanoes.

Before flying to space, he was awarded his doctorate for research he did investigating volcanic eruptions and active volcanoes.

While working toward his master's degree, Gerst also developed new techniques that could help scientistsbetter predict when volcanoes might erupt, according to ESA.

Mount Etna was actually the first erupting volcano Gerst climbed, according to a Twitter post sent out in July.

Mount Etna is the largest volcano in Europe, standing at 10,900 feet (3,328 meters) high.

It is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, but it hasn't had a major eruption since 1992.

The active volcano is almost always discharging gas, ash or lava.

This isn't the first time Mount Etna's active phase has been seen from space. NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg caught sight of the volcano from her post aboard the international Space Station in October 2013.

That same year, Canadian astronaut Chris Hatfield also snapped an amazing image of the active volcano's ash floating through clouds and out to sea.

Both Gerst and Wiseman are about halfway through with their first spaceflight. They launched to the space station in May and are expected to return to Earth in November.

Project SOAR: Swiss Space Plane Gaining Steam - Video

Swiss Space Systems is developing a new private space shuttle designed to fly unmanned, and eventually manned, flights to suborbital space. 

See how aerospace veteran Thales Alenia Space will build the habitable section here.

Credit: Swiss Space Systems

Absolute Zero May not Be So "Absolute"

Physicists don’t tend to use universal language freely, so since Lord Kelvin dubbed the base measure of his temperature scale “absolute zero,” that should be a sign that there is reason for the “absolute” nature of the measure to be taken seriously.

Unlike the centigrade scale, where 0 degrees marks the freezing point of fresh water, or the Fahrenheit scale, where 0 is the stable temperature of a mix of water, ice, ammonium chloride and sea salt, 0 Kelvin—absolute zero—is, theoretically, the coldest thing imaginable.

This is the temperature when all motion comes to a crawl, when molecules stop quivering and atoms stop moving.

In Nature, Zeeya Merali reports on the work of Stefan Braun and colleagues, a group of physicists that managed to overthrow Kelvin’s absolutism by creating “an atomic gas with a sub-absolute-zero temperature for the first time.”

Through an elaborate approach—harnessing lasers and rapidly-flipping magnetic fields—the scientists figured out how to push atoms to temporarily take on energies below absolute zero. The scientists manipulated a cloud of potassium atoms trapped by lasers, says Merali:

At positive temperatures, the atoms repel, making the configuration stable. The team then quickly adjusted the magnetic fields, causing the atoms to attract rather than repel each other.

“This suddenly shifts the atoms from their most stable, lowest-energy state to the highest possible energy state, before they can react,” says Schneider. “It’s like walking through a valley, then instantly finding yourself on the mountain peak.”

At positive temperatures, such a reversal would be unstable and the atoms would collapse inwards. But the team also adjusted the trapping laser field to make it more energetically favourable for the atoms to stick in their positions.

This result, described today in Science, marks the gas’s transition from just above absolute zero to a few billionths of a Kelvin below absolute zero.

Researchers imagine that if new materials could somehow be made out of below-freezing atoms, then they would probably act in some mighty strange ways.