Triton is believed to be a captured Kuiper Belt object, and is the coldest-known body in the Solar System. The surface temperature of Triton was recorded by Voyager 2 as -235 °C (-391 °F). Triton has its own magnetic field and has a faint trace of an atmosphere.
Drag and tidal interaction cause Triton to fall slowly into lowered orbits. This process is immensely slow. 3.6 billion years from now, Triton will pass within Neptune's Roche limit. It will either collide with Neptune's atmosphere or break up, forming a ring system similar to that found around the planet Saturn.
The reason why Triton is thought to be a captured object is its orbit, which is unique in the Solar System. It is both retrograde (see diagram) and highly tilted. Although there are other satellites with retrograde orbits, they are much smaller than Titan, and much more distant from their host planets (their "primaries"). Triton, like our Moon, shows only one face to the planet: it rotates in synchrony to Neptune.
All we know about the surface of Triton comes from one fly-by of Voyager 2 in 1989. There are few impact craters. This suggests the surface is quite young in astronomical terms: estimates are six to 50 million years.
Despite its very cold temperature, the surface of Triton is geologically active. There are events which look like geysers, volcanos and earthquakes. All the materials involved are quite different from those on Earth. Most of the gases are frozen most of the time. Gases like nitrogen are frozen until something occurs to melt them, then it turns back into a gas. A temperature increase of just 4 K () is enough to make this happen.
Kulykol
Kulykol is a lake in northeastern Kazakhstan. Lake Aike is about south. The Russian border is to the west.
Pierre Curie
Pierre Curie (15 May 1859 in Paris – 19 April 1906 in Paris) was a French physicist. He shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with his wife, Marie Curie and Henri Becquerel, for the work on 'spontaneous radioactivity' which Becquerel discovered.
Pierre Curie is not as well known as Marie Curie, although Pierre and his brother had done a lot of work before Pierre's marriage and work with Marie. They were the first to use the term 'radioactivity', and were pioneers in its study. Pierre and his brother, Jacques Curie, built a special meter for measuring small amounts of electricity, piezoelectricity and ferromagnetism which Pierre and Marie used in their other discoveries.
Pierre died after a carriage accident in Paris on 19 April 1906. His head was crushed under the wheels. If he had lived he would probably have died by radiation poisoning, as Marie did. As they were the first to study radioactivity, they did not know how dangerous it was.
After Pierre's death, a group of scientists at the Radiology Congress decided to honour him by naming the unit of radioactivity a curie.
Pierre and Marie Curie's daughter Irène Joliot-Curie and their son-in-law Frédéric Joliot-Curie were also physicists involved in the study of radioactivity, and were also given the Nobel prize for their work. Their other daughter Ève wrote her mother's biography. His granddaughter Hélène Langevin-Joliot is a professor of nuclear physics at the University of Paris and his grandson, Pierre Joliot, who was named after him, is a noted biochemist.
Hindustani language
Hindustani is a language. It is made up of the common parts of Hindi and Urdu. Hindi and Urdu have similar grammar, but somewhat different vocabulary and different scripts.
It was born in Punjab during the Ghaznavid Empire with Lahore as it's capital in the early decades of the eleventh century AD.
Masala
Masala or Massala or Masalo (, , , ) is a word used in South Asia mainly in India. When Indian people talk about cooking and they say "masala", they mean a mixture of ground spices used in Indian cooking.
There are many different, popular spice mixtures that have been given their own name because they taste really good with one special ingredient. The dish will often use "masala" in its name. Some popular dishes are:
The blend of spices or "masala" for these dishes is often sold in markets or packed by companies to be sold in shops. Some spice blends, like Garam Masala, are so popular it is often used in many different recipes, not just one.
Also India is one of the only countries to have the highest variety in masalas. Around 70% of the world's spice business and exports are handled by India.
Mayan languages
The Mayan languages ares a group of languages spoken in Central America and Mesoamerica.
Mayan languages are spoken by at least 6 million native Maya. Most of them are in Guatemala, Mexico or Belize. In 1996, Guatemala formally recognized 21 Mayan languages by name, and Mexico recognises eight others.
The Mayan languages are some of the best documented and most studied in the Americas. Modern Mayan languages come from Proto-Mayan, a language that was probably spoken at least 5000 years ago. It has been partly reconstructed.
Soconusco
Soconusco is a region of the Mexican state of Chiapas. It is in the most southern part of the state. It borders the Republic of Guatemala on the southeast, the regions Costa, Sierra and Fraylesca of Chiapas on the east and north, and the shore of the Pacific Ocean on the southwest. It is a region of rich lowlands and foothills. The economic center of Soconusco is Tapachula.
The name comes from the Nahuatl word "xoconostle", meaning the fruit of the prickly pear cactus. It was, under the Mexican culture, the farthest region of trade. The area provided jaguar pelts, cacao, and quetzal feathers for the ruling classes in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan.
The Soconusco region is the main coffee-producing region in Chiapas. It has many plantations farther inland in the foothills of the Sierra Madre del Sur.
Chiapas
Chiapas is the southernmost state of Mexico. It is towards the southeast of the country. Chiapas is bordered by the states of Tabasco to the north, Veracruz to the northwest, and Oaxaca to the west. To the east Chiapas borders Guatemala, and to the south the Pacific Ocean.
Chiapas has an area of . The 2005 census population was 4,293,459 people.
In general Chiapas has a humid, tropical weather. In the north, in the area bordering Tabasco, near Teapa, rainfall can be more than 3,000 mm (118 in) per year . In the past, natural vegetation at this region was lowland, tall perennial rainforest, but this vegetation has been destroyed almost completely to give way to agriculture and ranching. Rainfall decreases moving towards the Pacific Ocean, but it is still abundant enough to allow the farming of bananas and many other tropical crops near Tapachula. On the several parallel "sierras" or mountain ranges running along the center of Chiapas, climate can be quite temperate and foggy. This allows the development of cloud forests like those of the Reserva de la Biosfera el Triunfo, home to a handful of quetzals and horned guans.
The state capital is Tuxtla Gutiérrez. Other cities and towns in Chiapas include San Cristóbal de las Casas, Comitán, and Tapachula. Chiapas is also home to the ancient Maya ruins of Palenque, Yaxchilan, Bonampak, Chinkultic, and Tonina.
Most people in Chiapas are poor, rural small farmers. About one quarter of the population are of full or predominant Maya descent, and in rural areas many do not speak Spanish. The state suffers from the highest rate of malnutrition in Mexico. This rate is estimated to affect over 40% of the population.
Other social issues involve the increasing presence of the Central American gangs known as Maras, and illegal immigration from Central America in general. This migration is mostly directed towards the United States, but it makes local poverty even worse. Many times, there are abuse and Human Rights violations that touch these migrants.