Algae - Blog Posts

Algal Gatia aka Algatia

In reference to the au design I made of Nematocyt Girlfriend, heres my sona as an algal/algae cell!!

Not much to say other then that I just felt like doodling myself within my oen au I created. Also funfact th at I nickname each of an au/universe version of myself and such.

I still need a cool name for the au damn

Announcement!

With only a few days until Valentines day it is my scientific duty to inform you all that if you don't have a valentine yet, an algal cell will be your valentine. They will be assigned automatically and love you with all their chloroplasts. You may not opt out, but a platonic algae-mate will be assigned to those who are not romantically inclined.

Meet your new alBAE 💚💚.

This past weekend marked the first anniversary of the launch of NASA’s latest ocean color satellite, PACE 🛰️! Happy birthday PACE!

Sharpening Our View of Climate Change with the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem Satellite

As our planet warms, Earth’s ocean and atmosphere are changing.

Climate change has a lot of impact on the ocean, from sea level rise to marine heat waves to a loss of biodiversity. Meanwhile, greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide continue to warm our atmosphere.

NASA’s upcoming satellite, PACE, is soon to be on the case!

Set to launch on Feb. 6, 2024, the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission will help us better understand the complex systems driving the global changes that come with a warming climate.

Earth’s ocean is becoming greener due to climate change. PACE will see the ocean in more hues than ever before.

While a single phytoplankton typically can’t be seen with the naked eye, communities of trillions of phytoplankton, called blooms, can be seen from space. Blooms often take on a greenish tinge due to the pigments that phytoplankton (similar to plants on land) use to make energy through photosynthesis.

In a 2023 study, scientists found that portions of the ocean had turned greener because there were more chlorophyll-carrying phytoplankton. PACE has a hyperspectral sensor, the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), that will be able to discern subtle shifts in hue. This will allow scientists to monitor changes in phytoplankton communities and ocean health overall due to climate change.

Phytoplankton play a key role in helping the ocean absorb carbon from the atmosphere. PACE will identify different phytoplankton species from space.

With PACE, scientists will be able to tell what phytoplankton communities are present – from space! Before, this could only be done by analyzing a sample of seawater.

Telling “who’s who” in a phytoplankton bloom is key because different phytoplankton play vastly different roles in aquatic ecosystems. They can fuel the food chain and draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to photosynthesize. Some phytoplankton populations capture carbon as they die and sink to the deep ocean; others release the gas back into the atmosphere as they decay near the surface.

Studying these teeny tiny critters from space will help scientists learn how and where phytoplankton are affected by climate change, and how changes in these communities may affect other creatures and ocean ecosystems.

Climate models are one of our most powerful tools to understand how Earth is changing. PACE data will improve the data these models rely on.

The PACE mission will offer important insights on airborne particles of sea salt, smoke, human-made pollutants, and dust – collectively called aerosols – by observing how they interact with light.

With two instruments called polarimeters, SPEXone and HARP2, PACE will allow scientists to measure the size, composition, and abundance of these microscopic particles in our atmosphere. This information is crucial to figuring out how climate and air quality are changing.

PACE data will help scientists answer key climate questions, like how aerosols affect cloud formation or how ice clouds and liquid clouds differ.

It will also enable scientists to examine one of the trickiest components of climate change to model: how clouds and aerosols interact. Once PACE is operational, scientists can replace the estimates currently used to fill data gaps in climate models with measurements from the new satellite.

With a view of the whole planet every two days, PACE will track both microscopic organisms in the ocean and microscopic particles in the atmosphere. PACE’s unique view will help us learn more about the ways climate change is impacting our planet’s ocean and atmosphere.

Stay up to date on the NASA PACE blog, and make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of sPACE!

Next month will be the one year anniversary of the PACE launch!

Sharpening Our View of Climate Change with the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem Satellite

As our planet warms, Earth’s ocean and atmosphere are changing.

Climate change has a lot of impact on the ocean, from sea level rise to marine heat waves to a loss of biodiversity. Meanwhile, greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide continue to warm our atmosphere.

NASA’s upcoming satellite, PACE, is soon to be on the case!

Set to launch on Feb. 6, 2024, the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission will help us better understand the complex systems driving the global changes that come with a warming climate.

Earth’s ocean is becoming greener due to climate change. PACE will see the ocean in more hues than ever before.

While a single phytoplankton typically can’t be seen with the naked eye, communities of trillions of phytoplankton, called blooms, can be seen from space. Blooms often take on a greenish tinge due to the pigments that phytoplankton (similar to plants on land) use to make energy through photosynthesis.

In a 2023 study, scientists found that portions of the ocean had turned greener because there were more chlorophyll-carrying phytoplankton. PACE has a hyperspectral sensor, the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), that will be able to discern subtle shifts in hue. This will allow scientists to monitor changes in phytoplankton communities and ocean health overall due to climate change.

Phytoplankton play a key role in helping the ocean absorb carbon from the atmosphere. PACE will identify different phytoplankton species from space.

With PACE, scientists will be able to tell what phytoplankton communities are present – from space! Before, this could only be done by analyzing a sample of seawater.

Telling “who’s who” in a phytoplankton bloom is key because different phytoplankton play vastly different roles in aquatic ecosystems. They can fuel the food chain and draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to photosynthesize. Some phytoplankton populations capture carbon as they die and sink to the deep ocean; others release the gas back into the atmosphere as they decay near the surface.

Studying these teeny tiny critters from space will help scientists learn how and where phytoplankton are affected by climate change, and how changes in these communities may affect other creatures and ocean ecosystems.

Climate models are one of our most powerful tools to understand how Earth is changing. PACE data will improve the data these models rely on.

The PACE mission will offer important insights on airborne particles of sea salt, smoke, human-made pollutants, and dust – collectively called aerosols – by observing how they interact with light.

With two instruments called polarimeters, SPEXone and HARP2, PACE will allow scientists to measure the size, composition, and abundance of these microscopic particles in our atmosphere. This information is crucial to figuring out how climate and air quality are changing.

PACE data will help scientists answer key climate questions, like how aerosols affect cloud formation or how ice clouds and liquid clouds differ.

It will also enable scientists to examine one of the trickiest components of climate change to model: how clouds and aerosols interact. Once PACE is operational, scientists can replace the estimates currently used to fill data gaps in climate models with measurements from the new satellite.

With a view of the whole planet every two days, PACE will track both microscopic organisms in the ocean and microscopic particles in the atmosphere. PACE’s unique view will help us learn more about the ways climate change is impacting our planet’s ocean and atmosphere.

Stay up to date on the NASA PACE blog, and make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of sPACE!

Diatoms: Algae in glass houses

Check out my new post! 

http://becausephytoplankton.blogspot.com/2018/09/diatoms-algae-in-glass-houses.html

so the current main character of twitter are the algae tanks that are meant to function as "liquid trees" if u wanna call it that and people are very mad at them despite them being a cool and potentially useful concept. before anyone gets mad on this post in case it gets Literally Any Notes, notes:

algae is really really good at producing oxygen. more efficient than trees actually. it already produces like, grain of salt bc im getting a few diff numbers here from google, 50ish percent of the oxygen on earth. dw shes good at this.

no the scientists dont want to REPLACE trees thats just a shitty headline. the actual potential uses of these are plopping them down in places where you cant put another tree for whatever reason (including "theres a tree right there and it needs space"), in addition to trees bc as stated its Even Better at oxygen making, or when youre waiting for the trees to grow bc. they take a while.

if the tanks are as efficient as the scientists claim, one tank=two 10 year old trees. thats good! nice supplement to trees while youre waiting for them to grow and shit.

the one pictured also is a bench with solar lights and ports to charge your phone. thats nice!

apparently no maintenance isnt hard u just remove some of the algae once a month (which can then be used as fertilizer!) add some water and boom ur good 👍

stop saying "trees are free and require no maintenance" thats just false. the cost and maintenance are worth it!! but they do in fact have Cost And Maintenance. many good things in society are like this! please appreciate the work that goes into trees actually ty

again. not replacing trees. In Addition To. Alongside. Friends. <3.

ANYWAY, with those common things no one on twitter seems to understand out of the way, honestly im frustrated but (mostly) not ANGRY at the ppl not understanding that stuff. like, if u read past the headline u would know it, and i really wish yall would, but hey at least i understand being mislead by that awful fucking headline. i get it!!

what i am fucking pissed about is the people calling it ugly and saying no one wants slime tanks fuck you i DO want a slime tank

"but ohhh it looks like SLIME and DYSTOPIAN and blah blah blah" fuck YOU that slime is my BOYFRIENDS and i LOVE THEM. look at that gastly green color! it looks straight out of a mad scientists lab! its BEAUTIFUL!

i love algae and they are my friend and my lover and i will not stand for this fucking slander. you are all just too fucking weak to see the beauty in their hard work. you are blinded by tree propaganda, and just like bee propaganda you forget that there are OTHERS working day in and day out too. i love trees and (i LOOOOOVE bees btw) but do NOT forget the hard work done by algae.

if these things are as efficient as they claim then YES AMAZING LOVE IT, throw the cool slime benches hither and thither! mayhaps decorate them with a lil cool etched art (without compromising the efficiency) or some Fun Facts about how cool algae is and how NO THEY ARENT TREE REPLACEMENTS THEYRE TREE FRIENDS!!! THEY ARE FRIENDS!!!!!!!!! i would love nothing more than sitting at a bus stop under the green glow of my algae friends and i have been on this fucking train since i first saw cool concept art of this shit like a decade ago on tumblr. you CANNOT convince me giant green tanks of slop are anything BUT perfection.

and if anything i think they should fucking lean in to the slime thing. make some that look like giant test tubes. get nickelodeon to sponser a couple. teenage mutant ninja turtles crossover. stop listening to the fucking normies trying to convince you that Slime Bad and think of the fucking posslimbilities. EMBRACE THE SLIME.

Biology trips with class? Everyone should take biology, if not for the biological then to get some cool shots