Facebook unveils reaction emoji
When Facebook announced plans to release a dislike button on Sept. 15, 2015, the social networking giant was met with tempered optimism. However, there may be reason to further modulate excitement. On Oct. 8, 2015, Facebook revealed plans to incorporate six distinct reaction emoji into their desktop and mobile apps.
“As you can see, it’s not a dislike button, though we hope it addresses the spirit of this request more broadly,” said Chris Cox, Facebook’s chief product officer, in a post on Oct. 8.
The six reactions—Love, Haha, Yay, Wow, Sad, and Angry—appear in a pop-up box when hovered over, in both the desktop and mobile apps. Spain and Ireland will be the first to receive the reaction emoji, while the rest of the world can expect them soon.
Blue skies and water ice on Pluto
On Oct. 8, 2015, NASA reported that colour images from the New Horizons spacecraft revealed blue atmospheric haze on Pluto. Investigators from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado suggested that the blue tint provides insight into Pluto’s atmosphere.
“That striking blue tint tells us about the size and composition of the haze particles,” said Carley Howett, a researcher from SwRI, in a NASA news release.
According to Howett, a blue atmosphere is often the result of sunlight scattered by small particles.
“On Earth, those particles are very tiny nitrogen molecules,” said Howett, in the same news release. “On Pluto, they appear to be larger —but still relatively small—soot-like particles we call tholins.”
Researchers also reported that New Horizons detected the presence of small, exposed regions of water ice on the dwarf planet.
“Large expanses of Pluto don’t show exposed water ice, because it’s apparently masked by other, more volatile ices across most of the planet,” explained Jason Cook, a researcher at the SwRI. “Understanding why water appears exactly where it does, and not in other places, is a challenge that we are digging into.”
Interesting is that the water ice appears to be red. Researchers explained that there isn’t a complete understanding of the relationship between water ice and reddish tholin colorants on Pluto’s surface.