BEAUTIFUL PINK BIOCHEMICAL PHENOMENA NOW

Beautiful pink scientific discoveries are happening all over the world. We share three of them today -- from curing cancer to magical skies to a planet that is looking rather pink these days!

PINK AURORAS

Pink auroras are lighting up the skies! Recently, stargazers captured images of the amazing pink Aurora Australis, also known as the Southern Lights, at high southern latitudes in Antarctica, South America, New Zealand, and Australia.

While the Northern Lights are more famous than the Southern Lights, each has its own particular strain of beauty. And for the Southern Lights, that beauty is pink, with some green thrown in for good measure.

And, this year, the pink is particularly intense.

Auroras are formed when gaseous particles in the Earth’s atmosphere collide with electrically charged particles from the sun’s atmosphere. They are most radiant during the spring and fall equinoxes, although they are visible all year.

Depending on the type and number of particles in the atmosphere, and their relative height, auroras can appear in a full range of spectral colors.

Reds appear at the highest altitudes, during the most intense solar activity, when the excited oxygen atoms are made visible to the naked eye. Pinks appear when nitrogen atoms blend in at around 900 km above the earth.

To check on your best chances to see a pink aurora, check out Sun Viewer, which monitors space weather.

PINK BLOBS OF HOPE

The pink blotches appearing in this image of mouse lungs are fluorescent pink dye attached to biodegradable polymer microcapsules which degrade in the body, much like a Tootsie Pop outer candy shell does, to reveal a treasured center. In this case, the core is a load of cancer-fighting drugs.

They are being called “Pink Blobs of Hope.”

The challenge, taken on by MIT immune engineer Gregory Szeto and his team, is to develop longer lasting capsules so that the cancer-fighting drugs can be released to target desired areas of the body.

The image was honored by the 2015 Wellcome Image Awards, an annual contest for scientific and medicinal images.

PINK PLUTO

Pluto is pink! NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft just treated us to a never-before-seen view of its peachy glow, with images taken during the recent flyby.

Pluto’s pink coloration is thought to be caused by tholins, hydrocarbon molecules that form when cosmic rays and solar ultraviolet light interact with the methane in Pluto’s atmosphere and on its surface.

A specific wavelength of UV light, called Lyman-alpha, triggers tholin formation. A Lyman-alpha glow envelops Pluto, coming from all directions of space, from both the Sun and regions of intense star formation in newly formed galaxies. 

NASA gained further information by exaggerating the colors in the Pluto images, as well as those of its moon, Charon, revealing more detail about their geography and composition, including the appearance of a giant pink heart shaped region on Pluto’s beautiful face.

To see the latest from the New Horizons mission, check out its Facebook page.

Read more about Beautiful Pink, as it relates to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact including 10 Beautiful Pink Animals to Marvel at Now.

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IMAGE CREDITS:

1. Image: by Kym Wallis. Milky Way and Aurora Australis.
2. Image: by Ian Griffen. Aurora Australis.
3. Image: Courtesy of Clear Skies TV. Aurora Australis.
4. Image: by  Ben. Aurora Australis.
5. Image: by Ben. Aurora Australis.
6. Image: by koennz. Aurora Australis.
7. Image: by NASA/JSC courtesy of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Aurora Australis (NASA, International Space Station).
8. Image: by G. Szeto, Adelaide Tovar, Jeff Wycoff/MIT, Wellcome Images. The pink blobs in this micrograph are plastic capsules, each filled with cancer-fighting medicine, inside a mouse’s lung.
9. Image: by NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI. Flyby of Pluto.
10. Image: by NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI. Pluto and Charon.
11. Image: by NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI. Flyby of Pluto.
12. Image: by NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI. Pluto.
13. Image: by NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI. Pluto and Charon relative to Earth.
14. Image: by Ben. Aurora "Humiditis."
15. Image: by BN App - Download now!
16. Image: by Cat Burton. Aurora Australis.