What's All This Then?
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What's All This Then?
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Friday Edition
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Science and Numbers
From Hubble's Largest Gallery Portrait.
Grab our blended RSS feed here.
Dark Sky Reflections.
Planet Earth at Twilight.
Pic du Midi Panorama
How to program a computer, before there were computers, or programs: The Computer-free Automation of a Jukebox.
Curiosity's 1.8-Billion-Pixel Panorama of Mars.
Mars occult, by Andrew McCarthy.
Quadrantids over the Great Wall.
"In most time lapse videos you see of the night sky, the stars wheel through the sky as the heavens revolve around the Earth... What's actually happening is that our tiny little speck of dirt is twirling amid a galactic tapestry that is nearly stationary." The Earth Rotating Beneath a Stationary Milky Way.
Moon and Planets at Twilight.
Christian rock band Prodigal hid Commodore 64 BASIC code in the runout groove of their 1984 LP.
Milky Way over Uruguayan Lighthouse.
150 years of Nature, a century and a half of research and discovery.
Congratulations to NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir on their historic first all-female spacewalk. You can watch it live here.
Planet Earth at Blue Hour.
Orion Rising over Brazil.
A Harvest Moon.
"Snails in Hawaii are disappearing faster than any animal on the planet. 'This is happening so fast, it's as if something really catastrophic is happening in the world right now," says scientist Dave Sischo, who is fighting to save Hawaii's snail populations. "
Hubble's new portrait of Jupiter.
Atlas at Dawn.
The Space Station Crosses a Spotless Sun.
CBS currently has the full stream of the Apollo 11 launch up on YouTube.
Strawberry Moon over the Temple of Poseidon.
Apollo 11 in real-time.
A Triangular Shadow of a Large Volcano.
Moons Near Jupiter.
A Circumhorizontal Arc Over Ohio.
Jupiter Marble from Juno
Related to the last, a look at the 29 year-old woman who made it happen. We salute you Dr. Bouman!
Nice going little buddy. Curiousity captured two solar eclipses on Mars.
Space Station Silhouette on the Moon.
Four Towers and the Equinox Moon
US Postal Service reveals stamps for moon landing 50th anniversary.
Meet Q, the first genderless voice.
Red Sprite Lightning over Kununurra.
Mark your location on the Ancient Earth Globe and see how things have changed in the past 750 million years or so.
Plane Crossing a Crescent Moon.
So long little buddy.
Science is cool, y'all.
Matterhorn, Moon, and Meteor.
InSight Lander Takes Selfie on Mars.
"The visitor comes for dinner, goes out into the street and disappears in the dark. It's possible we will never know what it was looking for." The head of Harvard's Astronomy Department says what others are afraid to say about a peculiar object that entered the solar system.
So you know, how maths can give you the perfect roast potato. Trying this out this weekend.
Shipwreck at Moonset.
Gibbous Moon beyond Swedish Mountain
Orionids Meteors over Inner Mongolia.
Light Pillars over Whitefish Bay
"7,500 Light years away and a mind-crushing 300 light years — 3,000 trillion kilometers — across, it's the site of thousands of stars being born. The amount of gas available is something like a million times the mass of the Sun, so it has plenty of raw material to make stars for a long, long time." A massive photo of the Carina Nebula.
An '80s true-crime biology thriller ripped from the pages of Discover magazine: "When Snails Attack."
Asperitas Clouds Over New Zealand.
Moon, Mars, and Milky Way
NASA's 3-D Printed Habitat Challenge. So cool.
Related to the last, NASA has released thousands of hours of Apollo 11 tapes.
Water on Mars.
July 20, 1969: One Giant Leap for Mankind.
Moon and Venus over Cannon Beach.
Deep in the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project rabbit hole. Such a crazy story. Here's "Moonviews" the project's blog and the actual images.
Road to Mars.
So, little buddy, how's the weather?
A Sun Pillar over Norway
Craters and Shadows at the Lunar Terminator.
The awesome beauty of Jupiter captured by Juno, in 13 photos.
The Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code, a great story, dramatically told by Kit Chellel for Bloomberg.
Total Solar Eclipse Corona in HDF.
TESS Launch Close Up .
Space Shuttle Rising.
A magnetic folding moon.
"Nobody will ever know what Mars smells like because the air is too thin to breathe." Facts from SciFri's Your Martian Daily.
Twilight in a Western Sky.
Blue Moon Tree
"I looked through all 14,227 Apollo photos, and made gifs."
Chicagohenge: Equinox in an Aligned City.
"We took a telescope around the streets of Los Angeles to give passersby an up-close look at a familiar object: a new view of the moon." Via Kottke.
Clouds, Birds, Moon, Venus.
Dueling Bands in the Night.
A Partial Solar Eclipse over Buenos Aires.
"Geocolor is a multispectral product composed of True Color (using a simulated green component) during the daytime, and an Infrared product that uses bands 7 and 13 at night." Animation from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite 16.
Car Orbiting Earth.
Moonrise Eclipse.
Moonset Eclipse.
Open Culture on NASA posting of over 400 historic experimental flight videos. Boss.
Hi-res of Jupiter as seen by Juno at a scale of 5.6 miles/pixel.
So you know the real life sci-fi of vertical take-off planes
Fireball in the Arctic.
A Wintry Shower.
In Green Company: Aurora over Norway .
Apollo 17 at Shorty Crater.
Now it can be told: "The Dark Past of Sea Monkeys" (Seriously, super dark.)
Dinosaurs, gods, and marshmallows: A Thanksgiving Science Quiz.
Friday, the Moon Smiled.
Major Fireball Meteor.
Night on a Spooky Planet .
"We have hit the mother lode!" says Laura Cadonati, an astrophysicist at Georgia Institute of Technology and LIGO's deputy spokesperson. "This is really the first time we have multimessenger detection of a single astrophysical event, where gravitational waves are telling us the story of what happened before the cataclysm and the electromagnetic emissions are telling us what happened after."
Ubisoft and Google are using A.I. to unlock the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt.
Eclipsosaurus Rex.
A September Morning Sky
Cassini's Final Image.
So long, buddy.
The Climber and the Eclipse.
A Waterspout in Florida.
A First Glimpse of the Great American Eclipse
Juno's Jupiter.
"You pretty much have two options: You either get a blue whale or you get the biggest dinosaur in the world."
How Siri's voice has changed over the past two years.
Night of the Perseids.
Perseid Meteors over Turkey.
The Milky Way over Monument Valley.
Apollo 11: Catching Some Sun.
Lightning Eclipse from the Planet of the Goats.
Hey, you're in the International Space Station.
The scientific method vs. the mad scientific method.
"On Monday, August 21, 2017, all of North America will be treated to an eclipse of the sun. Anyone within the path of totality can see one of nature's most awe inspiring sights - a total solar eclipse.
The Summer Triangle over the Great Wall.
Manhattan Moonrise.
Solstice Conjunction over Budapest.
You see that study that says french fries will kill you? Don't worry, french fries are not going to kill you.
Firefall by Moonlight.
Tony B. writes, "I thought I'd share a link I found that shows the data transmission activity from spacecraft to receiver on earth. Basically who's receiving what from where." DSN Now. Thanks for that.
So you know, the physics of ramming an Imperial Star Destroyer, explained.
Oliver's Dad is the best Dad ever.
Shadowrise and Sunset.
So you know, here is the August 21st Path of Totality. Also, great band name.
Action Cam Footage from U.S. Spacewalk #40.
Big Dipper Above and Below Chilean Volcanoes.
Cassini dives between Saturn and Its rings, Nice job nerds.
So you know, Perceptions of Probability and Numbers. Almost certainly awesome.
Periodic Stats.
Night Glows
Earth Shadow over Damavand.
NASA invites you to celebrate Earth Day 2017 by virtually adopting a piece of Earth as seen from space.
Man, Dog, Sun
If you've ever wondered what an android thinks about humans and the future, now's your chance to ask one a question.
Castle Eye View.
"...massive and ornate barges that were rumored to be the sites of wild orgies and other excessive indulgences." Archeology can be fun.
"As he was brushing his teeth on the morning of July 17, 2014, Thomas Royen, a little-known retired German statistician, suddenly lit upon the proof of a famous conjecture at the intersection of geometry, probability theory, and statistics that had eluded top experts for decades."
King of Wings Hoodoo under the Milky Way.
A Fictive Flight Above Real Mars. Amazing, check the story of how it was put together too.
"What makes gambling wrong but insurance right?"
Great Migrations, following genes around the world. From Lapham's Quarterly.
A Dark Winter Sky over Monfrague National Park in Spain.
"Pernkopf insisted that his dissections should not be painted like cadavers, but like living tissue. What his artists did, using watercolor and charcoal on specially-prepared rag paper, was in many cases even more living than living tissue." Topographische Anatomie des Menschen, from codex 99.
Nice job LEGO! In development, the Women of NASA set.
A Supercell Thunderstorm Cloud Over Montana.
NASA telescope reveals planets around single star.
"The demotion of the planet is quite simply 'bullshit.'" Via John Dickerson.
WaPo's Drunk Biology in Punxsutawney, PA.
Spy creatures.
Winter Hexagon over Manla Reservoir .
"Meteorologists are drooling." GOES-16 goes live.
Shopping for vintage star finders.
Watching popcorn pop in ultra slow motion.
You don't need MIT research to prove that 2016 wasn't a particularly bad year for celebrity mortality but it helps.
Two autonomous bots contemplating existence @seeBotsChat.
A Full Sky Aurora Over Norway
Frozen soap bubbles. Gorgeous.
The Standardization of Time in America, "It used to be that each town kept its own time, and chaos reigned."
Related to an earlier post, the world's smallest snowman stands less than 3 microns tall.
Unreal, Supermoon over Spanish Castle .
A tediously accurate map of the solar system. If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel, by Josh Worth. Via John Dickerson.
So you know, What is the Polar Vortex (and why is it happening again?). Also, MAJOR props to PopSci for the MacReady GIF.
Applicable in Chicago today with the temperature being ZERO right now, Extreme Weather Clothing.
Totally weird but the type of thing you should know, you can taste garlic with your feet. Look at the big brain on you now.
Hey! This looks like a fool-proof team-building exercise for the team! BRB, going to buy propane, goggles, and a lighter......
Lightning over Colorado.
Soyuz vs Supermoon .
Supermoon and Space Station.
Ghost Aurora over Canada
"Join us for a fly-through of the International Space Station."
I'm not proud to say that this is statistically accurate.
Full Moon in Mountain Shadow.
"Unlike other films that have blended archival footage with interviews or narration from today, our film is unique in that we use only archival material, in other words transmission audio, original still photography and original film captured by the astronauts." Can't wait to see The Last Steps.
"The Kaguya spacecraft also carried cameras, including one with a pair of 2.2 megapixel HDTV sensors that captured the first high-definition video from the moon. Thanks to this clear-eyed video camera, many of Kaguya's images—especially the shots showing the Earth rising and setting at the lunar horizon—are moving in both senses of the word."
Fab new photos of Mars from the Indian Space Research Organization.
Moon, Mercury, and Twilight Radio.
Rosetta's Farewell.
Full Moon over Brno.
Earth Temperature Timeline as only xkcd can. Brilliant.
Freddie Mercury Now Races Around the Sun.
Juno gets the first look ever at Jupiter's North Pole.
Annular Solar Eclipse over New Mexico.
Meet Proxima b, our nearest Earth-like neighbor.
So you know, the nearest stars to Earth.
Fascinating look at Color from the guys at RadioLab. Did you know that this guy see way more colors than you do?
"It's like standing outside and trying to take a photo of a DVD on the moon." The scientist that's taking the world's first ever photo of the Milky Way's Supermassive Black Hole Sagittarius A*.
This Stubby Squid looks like a Pixar character brought to life.
Follow the development of the NASA Mars rocket Space Launch System.
The deep, flooded canyons of Titan.
Perseid Meteors over Mount Shasta.
Private company, Moon Express "intends to launch a small, single-stage spacecraft to land on the Moon by the end of 2017."
Rosetta's five-year journey, flying around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Sweet old sci-fi-ish animation too.
Ripples Through a Dark Sky
Mercury on the Horizon.
You probably didn't know you needed this, but you do. Space Dashboard.
"After an almost five-year journey to the solar system's largest planet, NASA's Juno spacecraft successfully entered Jupiter's orbit during a 35-minute engine burn."
Firefly Trails and the Summer Milky Way.
The Day We Found the Jaguar Shark.
Jupiter's Clouds from New Horizons.
Cirrus over Paris.
Sunrise Solstice over Stonehenge.
Sweet! Totally.
Northern Lights above Lofoten.
Pluto At Night.
Distant Titan, its northern hemisphere drenched in the sunlight of late spring, hangs above Saturn's rings.
Timelapse footage of supercell storm in the sky over Kansas. Thanks Marshall.
Valles Marineris: The Grand Canyon of Mars
"...commit before this decade is out, to landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." 55 years ago today.
"Dear 'Skeptics,'" some worthwhile advice from John Horgan.
360° from Mars. Curiosity at Furnace Flats Sol 647. Yowza.
Milky Way Over Quiver Tree Forest.
Basking in the Cosmic Afterglow, Joe Hanson on how traces of the Big Bang can be found in static.
Mercury's Transit: An Unusual Spot on the Sun.
Aurora Over Sweden.
Crossing Mars.
So you know, every body in the solar system more than 200 miles wide. Via Cliff Pickover.
So you know, MK2 is a moon of Makemake.
I watched this cool Traveling Salesman Problem Visualization and I promised myself that I would not fall into a rabbit hole of links and resources. I broke that promise.
Audubon made up at least 28 fake species to prank a rival.
Milky Way in Moonlight.
"What's incredible is that a particular brood doesn't emerge every 15 years, or 18 years... they only emerge in 13 or 17-year cycles." Joe Hanson on Prime Time for Periodic Cicadas.
Asperatus Clouds Over New Zealand.
Fantastic work here. Relive the Apollo 17 mission in real-time through audio, video etc. You can start at the beginning or join it in progress, or just slide along checking moments in the time-line, which I have been doing for the last 30 minutes.
A Green Flash of Spring.
Take a tour of the International Space Station.
"The EZ setup will function much like McMurdo Station, the United States' research facility in Antarctica." Life on Mars.
Rainbow Airglow over the Azores.
So you know, the Harvard library that protects the world's rarest colors
A Picturesque Equinox Sunset.
Our state fossil is amazing: Solving the Mystery of the Tully Monster.
Here There Be Robots: A new map of the Planet Mars.
Brian loves hunting fish, going swimming, and being a... Gah!
Dark Sun over Ternate.
Kudos Microsoft.
Welcome Back to Earth.
Unusual Clouds over Hong Kong.
A fascinating theory about why life exists on Earth: temperature regulation (though a little more involved than that distillation). "A New Thermodynamics Theory of the Origin of Life"
This delicate flower has been preserved in amber, with each petal and tiny hair intact, for as many as 45 million years.
"Just before dawn the next day, skies all over planet Earth erupted in red, green, and purple auroras so brilliant that newspapers could be read as easily as in daylight. Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set the telegraph paper on fire." The Carrington Event of September 1, 1859.
Alexander Graham Bell's tetrahedral kites.
So you know, elastic spheres can walk on water.
Light Pillars over Alaska.
Our MS has mixed feelings about the newly-discovered Aphonopelma johnnycashi.
Massive Stars in NGC 6357.
Find the Man in the Moon.
An Airglow Fan from Lake to Sky.
A Colorful Solar Corona over the Himalayas .
Popular Science answers a question that goes straight to my heart every single morning; Does it help to hit the snooze bar?
All-Seeing Eyes, an infographic on satellites from the the current issue of Lapham's Quarterly, Spies.
Here is the fastest way to defrost your car windshield.
So you know, four new elements have been added to the Periodic Table.
Earthset from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter .
"In months other than September, the 11th is mentioned substantially less often than any other date. It's been that way since long before 9/11 and I have no idea why." Perhaps David R Hagen has it figured out.
Another force awakening.
Colorful Arcs over Buenos Aires.
Just in case you need a 20 digit prime number in a hurry. Via the always observant Cliff Pickover.
Digital Mathematics by Malin Christersson is a great collection of interactive science and math animations. Check the red ball and shadow in Modelling 3D Illusions.
Ultra-high definition NASA launches.
"We found no evidence of an advanced civilization beaming intentional laser signals toward Earth." Phew.
Icelandic Legends and Aurora.
So you know, the chemistry of Silly Putty.
Apollo.
"They also felt less angry, less lonely, less depressed, more decisive, more enthusiastic, and enjoyed their lives more."
Aurora over Clouds
Leonids Over Monument Valley .
A Quadruple Sky Over Great Salt Lake.
Earth and Milky Way From Space.
Gravity Visualized with Lycra and PVC.
The Milky Way Over Monument Valley.
See also, Enceladus Rev 224 Raw Preview #4.
Related to the last, "Cassini spacecraft has begun transmitting its latest images of Saturn's icy, geologically active moon Enceladus, acquired during the dramatic Oct. 28 flyby in which the probe passed about 30 miles above the moon's south polar region."
The Witch Head Nebula.
"The reason this post took three weeks to finish is that as I dug into research on Artificial Intelligence, I could not believe what I was reading. It hit me pretty quickly that what's happening in the world of AI is not just an important topic, but by far THE most important topic for our future." The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence.
Step 1: Put a bubble in a droplet in zero G. Step 2: Shoot other droplets at it.
Mammatus Clouds Over Saskatchewan .
The science of pumpkin spice and other flavored foods.
Night Hides the World.
"How much more black could this be? And the answer is 'none... none more black.'"
"All. Junk. Not Junk." This real-time, interactive Satellite Map is awesome.
A comprehensive overview of chemical-free consumer products (PDF)
A Blue Blood Moon.
See you in a few hours, I'll be over at the Project Apollo Archive.
Supermoon Total Lunar Eclipse and Lightning Storm .
Take this version of the Harvard Dialect Survey and see how close it gets to your personal dialect map. Spot on for me, thanks Marshall.
The Rich Color Variations of Pluto.
So you know, how to unboil an egg.
The snow fields of Pluto.
Milky Way over Bosque Alegre Station in Argentina.
"They had to hire, basically, really small cavers… who could crawl through this tiny little space." The discovery of Homo naledi in South Africa.
Pluto from above the Cthulhu Regio.
A Partial Solar Eclipse over Texas.
Distorted Green Flash Sunset over Italy.
Noticing Noticing.
Milky Way with Airglow Australis.
So you know, the Periodic Table's Endangered Elements.
Pluto in Enhanced Color.
In 1953 Francis Crick wrote his son to tell him about the discovery of the "beautiful" structure of DNA. "In April of 2013, this letter became the most expensive in history after being sold at auction for $5.3 million."
Meteors and Milky Way Over Mount Rainier
The Beauty of the Heavens, astronomy illustrated in the 1840s.
Nerd alert. Moonjs is an online Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) simulator.
On August 15th, 1977, "an unusually strong radio signal was detected by the Big Ear Radio Observatory at Ohio State University, as part of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project."
Andromeda Rising over the Alps.
A Blue Moon Halo over Antarctica .
"But there is a special spot between the Earth and the Sun where a satellite can stay on a line between the two, seemingly violating the laws of orbital mechanics." Satellite of Love, by Dr. Drang.
NASA Mars Trek.
For the ladies out there. You are not "imagining" it, the office is freezing and there is a scientific reason for it.
A longer read related to the last, The Genesis Engine.
This synthetic biology explainer involves Legos, Mark Ruffalo, and skateboards.
Interplanetary clockwork.
Apollo 17 at Shorty Crater.
Two Hour Lunch y'all. Science.
The ISS and a Colorful Moon
So you know, the Chemistry of Ice Cream.
Milky Way and Aurora over Antarctica.
Comet PanSTARRS, Moon, and Venus .
Following the 102nd Tour de France. The guys in the first picture have the right idea.
Images from Japan's Himawari-8 weather satellite. Wow.
Related to below, a look at the launch of the New Horizons spacecraft. The fastest spacecraft ever put into space, it passed the Moon nine hours after launch and Jupiter just a year later. Science.
After almost ten years of travel, the New Horizons spacecraft will fly past Pluto tomorrow.
Over 400,000 high-resolution images taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope were combined to create Floating Along the Milky Way. Full screen mode, speakers up.
The Milky Way from a Malibu Sea Cave.
What fun is that?
Venus, Jupiter, and Noctilucent Clouds .
Planet Aurora.
Triple Conjunction Over Galician National Park .
Whoa, Google's research into neural networks is freaking me out.
Watch the first HD footage of Earth from the International Space Station.
One of my favorite go-to sites, Astronomy Picture of the Day celebrates 20 years today by putting together over 5000 APOD images to form a collage of Vermeer's Astronomer and Geographer.
1000 Sols.
Pictures from an organic chemistry laboratory.
The Milky Way over the Temple of Poseidon.
Green Flash at Moonrise
"This NASA documentary celebrates 50 years of extravehicular activity (EVA) or spacewalks that began with the first two EVAs conducted by Russian Alexey Leonov in March 1965 and American astronaut Edward White in June 1965. The documentary features interviews with NASA Administrator and astronaut, Charles Bolden, NASA Deputy Administrator and spacesuit designer, Dava Newman, as well as other astronauts, engineers, technicians, managers and luminaries of spacewalk history."
"After 10 years of conservation efforts, the huts that once housed the likes of Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton are ready for a new generation."
Space Shuttle Rising.
This teenager just designed a system that keeps you safe from germs on planes. Bravo Raymond.
Auroras and Star Trails Over Iceland.
Kepler's six years in science (and counting).
Advil or Tylenol? There's useful info in there somewhere, but the disorganization of the story gives me a headache. Infographic plz.
Two Worlds, One Sun.
Shoot asteroids at the Earth or cause a run away greenhouse effect. Rip apart the rings of Saturn or blow up the Sun. Universe Sandbox 2.
Sunset on Mars from rover Curiosity. Amazing.
Summer Triangles Over Japan.
Moonrise Through Mauna Kea's Shadow.
So you know, you owe your daily routine to the World's Fair.
The last photos from Messenger before it crashes into the surface of Mercury.
Dangerous Popsicles are a collection of weird shaped popsicles inspired by cacti and life-threatening bacteria / viruses. Via swissmiss.
Space Station Over Lunar Terminator.
Blue Tears and the Milky Way.
Total Solar Eclipse Over Svalbard.
So you know, what North America would look like if it were on Jupiter.
Milky Way Over Erupting Volcano.
Sentinels of the Arctic.
A Golden Gate Eclipse.
Full Moon in Earth's Shadow.
Saturn, Tethys, Rings, and Shadows.
A potion from the 9th century proves highly effective in combatting this century's virulent bacteria.
So you know, how music hijacks our perception of time
Shadow of a Martian Robot
Orion Spring.
Emotionally Vague: A research project about emotion, sensation and feeling. Via Nicholas Felton.
"The highest-resolution panorama ever taken by a rover illuminates unprecedented detail of the red planet's surface."
Atlas V Launches MMS
A public campaign to name the surface features on Pluto and Charon.
Drones sacrificed for spectacular volcano video. Even more awesome than it sounds.
Would it be possible for two teams in a tug-o-war to overcome the ultimate tensile strength of an iron rod and pull it apart? How big would the teams have to be?
"In addition to the solar eclipse, Friday is set to see a supermoon and a spring equinox. A supermoon refers to the moment the moon orbits at its closest to the Earth, making it look bigger than it normally does. The spring equinox is the time of the year when night and day are of equal length, mid-way between the longest and shortest days of the year." Big doings, celestial-wise tomorrow!
Earth During a Total Eclipse of the Sun.
Return at Sunrise.
The Great Wall by Moonlight.
Oh My God, there is a name for it! Happens every time I'm at a Field Notes press check.
Volcano of Fire Erupts Under the Stars.
A collection of pages from old science journals.
Aurora over Icelandic Glacier.
Explore the solar system.
Pillars and Jets in the Pelican Nebula.
Science, answering your important questions.
Moon-Venus-Mars Skyline.
Slushy waves off the shore of Nantucket.
Love and War By Moonlight.
A Bright Spot on Ceres. "This is truly unexpected and still a mystery to us."
The Milky Way Over the Arizona Toadstools.
On today's date in 1962 John Glenn went three times around.
An Evening Sky Conjunction.
Getting to the Moon Was Only Half the Job, a great Mefi post on Apollo, full of interesting links, by Brandon Blatcher. Incidentally, the original time stamp on this post is "almost exactly when Apollo 11 lifted off from the Moon."
Layered Rocks near Mount Sharp on Mars.
Terraforming: Hypothetical Continents and Oceans on Mars and the Moon.
Several photographs taken in space by NASA's pioneering astronauts, many of them previously unseen, will be on display before going to auction with a larger collection at Bloomsbury Auctions.
Jupiter Triple Moon Conjunction.
Selling the Moon, parts one and two from Terry O'Reilly and Under the Influence. A great listen. Via Dan Wagstaff.
Stars, Sprites, Clouds, Auroras.
"Buona notte dallo spazio!"
Comet C/2014Q2 Lovejoy. 4 panel mosaic LRGB 400, 250, 250, 250 seconds each panel, ASA Astrograph H8 f 2.9, FLI PL 16803.
The Milky Way over the Seven Strong Men Rock formation.
Interior View.
Launch to LoveJoy.
Venus and Mercury at Sunset.
The story of Mars One. All Dressed Up For Mars and Nowhere to Go, by Elmo Keep.
The Windmill's Moon.
'Tis cold and flu season now so as you stock up on tissues, medicines, chicken soup, etc. you should know about the Chemistry of Decongestants.
Important science going on here; If you threw cookie dough at the sun, how long would it take to bake?
"It's almost impossible to overstate how amazing this image is. Andromeda is the nearest big galaxy to our own, our sister galaxy in many ways; a spiral behemoth roughly the same size and mass as the Milky Way." Phil Plait on an image from Hubble.
Observatory, Mountains, Universe.
Unusual Light Pillars Over Latvia.
Season's Greetings from Oxford University, Christmas Through the Microscope. Via Sploid.
The Cliffs of Comet Churyumov Gerasimenko.
Grand Canyon Total Cloud Inversion: December 11, 2014.
Geminid Fireball over Mount Balang.
The Shapes of Snowflakes.
Moondog Night.
250 new hi-res images of the surface of Mars.
Science and Christmas, the 2014 Chemistry Advent Calendar.
"The Orion crew module is in the well deck of the amphibious transport dock ship USS Anchorage (LPD 23) .
You can watch Orion's splashdown live here.
Orion, liftoff at dawn. Beautiful.
Milky Way Over Moon Valley.
Plato and the Lunar Alps.
The scientific papers of Charles Darwin.
Tornado and Rainbow Over Kansas.
Link o' the month. Cymatics: Science vs. Music, a video by Nigel Stanford. All the experiments are real. Check the "making of" too. Impossibly fantastic. Via Joe Hanson.
Leonids Above Torre de la Guaita.
Amazing photos taken from the surface of a comet. A COMET.
Moon and Earth from Chang e 5 T1.
Popular Science has a simulation video that shows how sneeze particles travel inside an airplane. Blech.
Aurora Over Norway.
Milky Way Over Devils Tower.
The ISS Commercial Resupply Services Mission Antares rocket exploded on liftoff yesterday. Yipes.
Plane, Clouds, Moon, Spots, Sun.
Sunspots and Solar Eclipse.
So you know, the chemistry of candy.
"From the eastern U.S. the eclipse will reach maximum around the time of sunset, making for dramatic picture-taking opportunities. Further west, the entire eclipse will occur with the sun up in the afternoon sky. Either way, you can't go wrong."
Keeping Time, clocks, calendars and dating systems. From the current issue of Lapham's Quarterly, in a brand-new, lovely site.
Rosetta's Selfie.
An important reminder: correlation does not equal causation.
Eight types of beautiful chemical reactions are presented in this short video. Via The Awesomer.
Eclipse at Moonset.
Discussed this weekend with Robert McNees, the physicist who helped us out with some of the science side of the "Arts and Sciences" Edition, the Bogdanov Affair, a famous theoretical physics hoax.
Idea for Sunday morning breakfast, Möbius bagel.
Holy cow. Mars Orbiter Mission delivers on promise of global views of Mars. Thanks Andrew!
Maven says hello to Mars.
Aurora Substorm-Real Time.
So you know, the chemicals behind the colours of Autumn Leaves.
Milky Way Above Atacama Salt Lagoon.
Algomation = Animated Algorithms. So cool, via Stacey Mulcahy.
With genetic testing, "George Doe" gave his parents the gift of divorce. Via Kottke.
The answer is that it's simply your brain.
Moonbow Beach.
Dreadnoughtus schrani.
Some pics from the Mount Tavurvur eruption in Papua New Guinea.
"On August 21, 2017, millions of people across the United States will see nature's most wondrous spectacle-- a total eclipse of the Sun. It is a scene of unimaginable beauty; the Moon completely blocks the Sun, daytime becomes a deep twilight, and the Sun's corona shimmers in the darkened sky. This is your guide to understand, prepare for, and view this rare celestial event.
Milky Way Over Yellowstone.
Mercury's Transit: An Unusual Spot on the Sun.
Venus and Jupiter at Dawn.
For BB, the chemistry of a football shirt.
Star Trails Over Indonesia.
Perseid in Moonlight.
A Perseid Below.
Saturn's Swirling Cloudscape.
Researchers have developed an algorithm that can reconstruct an audio signal by analyzing minute vibrations of objects depicted in video. Extracting audio from visual information. Via Adrian Holovaty.
Dark Shuttle Approaching.
Tetons and Snake River, Planet Earth.
A Sky Portal on New Zealand.
Cave with Aurora Skylight.
Here is a MicroCT scan of a hot dog, allowing you to see a cutaway of every section of it.
Alicante Beach Moonrise.
"45 years ago today--on July 16, 1969--astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins launched to the Moon on top of the mightiest spaceship ever built. These amazing photos from NASA's vaults show how they built and launched that spaceship."
So you know, How to Stay Healthy In Flight.
Auroras over Northern Canada.
Noctilucent Clouds Over London.
Makes sense...
Iridescent Clouds over Thamserku.
So you know, this is the actual hack that saved the astronauts of Apollo XIII.
Joe Hanson on Richard Feynman and his amazing 1964 Cornell lecture on why there is a difference between the past and the future. Brilliant and nerdy-funny too.
Martian Anniversary Selfie.
Conjunction by the Sea.
Scientific analysis of "What Causes the Smell of New & Old Books."
Rio at Night.
Nate Silver is more optimistic than Jurgen Klinsmann about the US advancing to the World Cup knockout round.
New York to London Milky Way.
From "Biggest Eaters of Seafood" to "Most Airports Per Capita" here's the WSJ's The World Cup of Everything Else.
Keep your eyes on the heavens tonight, there will be a full "strawberry" or "honey" moon. It will be the first full moon on a Friday the 13th since 1919. Hopefully, you will have clear skies and can see something like this. You can watch the moonrise live here.
Try not to smile. ISS Astronauts playing soccer in zero gravity.
Three Galaxies Over New Zealand.
You ought to follow Reid Wiseman on Twitter. he's living on the ISS in low earth orbit, and posting pics.
The Space Station Captures a Dragon Capsule.
Thanks NASA! Finally, the perfect photo for the cover of the prog-rock record I'm working on, Mimas.
Whoa. A Supercell Storm Cloud Forming Over Wyoming.
So you know, what would happen if the moon was a disco ball? Via Joe Hanson.
Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata bids farwell to an unusual colleague, a robot named Kirobo, on the International Space Station.
Valles Marineris: The Grand Canyon of Mars.
Halley Dust and Milky Way.
Orange Sun Sparking.
That Night Over Half Dome. Wow.
Numbers, static and animated, designed to put a little fun in learning match. Via This Isn't Happiness.
A chart showing all the times science fiction became science fact.
A Partially Eclipsed Setting Sun.
Math based art, via Present & Correct.
A Spacesuit Floats Free.
Arithmetic, Trigonometry, Geometry, Woody, and Buzz.
Ash and Lightning above an Icelandic Volcano.
My fave lunar eclipse photo, from Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta BC, by Yuichi Takasaka. Via Observing Space.
Mammatus Clouds Over Nebraska.
Clouds and Crosses Over Haleakala.
Tracking a measles outbreak in Washington.
Mars Red and Spica Blue.
Space Station Robot Forgets Key Again.
Gorgeous, A Milky Way Dawn.
Star Trails Over El Capitan.
Joe Hanson tackles the difference between a scientific theory, a scientific fact, and a scientific law. Nicely done.
Science meets art, head-on. Momentum is an ongoing project by artist Alejandro Guijarro in which he has photographed blackboards in physics classrooms at Cambridge, Stanford, Berkeley and Oxford, immediately after lectures. Wonderful. Via Colossal.
Related to the last, just look at his face when he gets the good news. Priceless.
Yesterday morning Cosmologists announced the results of the BICEP2 experiment at the south pole. They claim to have observed "primordial B-modes" -- the imprint of quantum gravitational waves on the hiss of microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang. This result, if it is correct, is a Nobel-caliber discovery with important implications for multiple fields of physics.
Curling + Physics + Controversy = Awesome. Via Henry Reich.
Carl Sagan visits The Meat Planet.
A View From the Zone.
Visualization of ball movement throughout an NBA game, by Fathom Information Deisgn. Via Flowing Data.
A tediously accurate scale model of the solar system.
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has sent back some stunning images and video of a volcano erupting on Jupiter's moon Io. The volcano is named "Tvashtar", after the Hindu god of blacksmiths.
A quick primer on Popcorn.
Martian Sunset.
Zulkey interviews Emily Graslie, the Field Museum's Chief Curiosity Correspondent.
Remembered while working on a project and now can't get out of my head: from the greatest show on public television about math, Square One's "Nine Nine Nine."
Daytime Moon Meets Morning Star.
Cassini Spacecraft Crosses Saturns Ring Plane.
A look at robots working in an Amazon warehouse. Thanks Dad.
Comet Lovejoy over The Great Wall.
This time-lapse of images was taken from a geostationary satellite and shows a full year in the earth's orbit around the sun. Robert Simpson on the four seasons and how they got that way.
Crossing Dingo Gap on Mars.
Falling to Earth.
Night Hides the World.
Earth from Mars.
The Terraced Night.
JC: Why are you laughing? MS: I'm watching funny videos. JC: Get to work. MS: It's helping me be more creative, Science says so.
Absorptions is the blog of Oona Räisänen, a self-taught signals and electronics hacker from Helsinki, Finland and it's full of her wonderfully geeky experiments and investigations. Highly recommended. Via Waxy.
Mars and Orion Over Monument Valley
Rocket Streak and Star Trails.
Crazy cool. A match burning in slow motion.
Sunspot Loops in Ultraviolet.
The snowstorm in NYC last night was pretty crazy but really, nothing like the Upper Michigan Blizzard of 1938.
"After a decade of exploring the Martian surface, the scientists overseeing veteran rover Opportunity thought they'd seen it all. That was until a rock mysteriously 'appeared' a few feet in front of the six wheeled rover a few days ago."
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is rebooting Carl Sagan's Cosmos series.
The Scale of the Universe.
"In the U.S., road crews scatter about 137 pounds of salt per person annually to melt ice.
Where does it go after that?"
Robert Simpson visited Tower Hill school near Oxford UK to chat about astronomy, He brought an infrared camera.
Clouds and Crescents.
Geminid Meteors Over Chile.
End of year lists abound this time of year but here is a particularly good one, the most Amazing Science Images of 2013. I humbly suggest adding this to the list.
Light Pillars Over Finland.
Gemini Meteors Over Teide Volcano.
Yutu Rovers Rolls onto the Moon.
Everest Panorama from Mars.
Last night in NYC, there was a Pythagorean Party at the Flatiron Building.
Have you created a world-changing contraption? Now is your chance to show your smarts, enter the Popular Science 8th Annual Invention Awards.
Pretty much every time Jim Hughes publishes something to Codex 99, we dig it. Today is no exception. The story behind and beautiful examples of The Étienne Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings. Wow.
Comet Lovejoy through Morby Castle Ruins.
The First Six Books of The Elements of Euclid in Which Coloured Diagrams and Symbols are Used Instead of Letters for the Greater Ease of Learners, by Oliver Byrne, 1847. See also, paper sculptures based on the book by Helen Friel, Here's Looking at Euclid. Via Joe Hanson.
A Laser Strike at the Galactic Center.
Cap Cloud Over the Sierra Nevadas.
Trail of a Minotaur.
Aurora and Unusual Clouds Over Iceland
Geek alert, totally awesome audibilization and visualization of various sorting algorithms, by Timo Bingmann. Via Jason Kottke.
"Abstract: We investigate the mathematical relationship between the size of a pizza and its ratio of topping to base in a median bite. We show that for a given recipe, it is not only the overall thickness of the pizza that is is affected by its size, but also this topping-to-base ratio." On the Perfect Size for a Pizza, by Eugenia Cheng, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sheffield.
"How does an astronaut return to Earth from the International Space Station?" Now you know. Via io9.
"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music. —Bertrand Russell. Beauty of Mathematics, a short film by Yann Pineill and Nicolas Lefaucheux. Via Joe Hanson.
Comet Between Fireworks and Lightning.
So great. Bill Ingalls' photo for NASA of Expedition 38 Soyuz Launch, overnight at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Here's the video.
The thermal dip mirage, which creates the illusion that "the sea pours downwards into an abyss, as though over a giant waterfall."
"Hough began work on The American Woods in the summer of 1883 and it would occupy him for the rest of his life. He insisted on personally selecting each tree and went to extrodinary lengths to find positively identifiable specimens." Codex 99 on The American Woods.
NASA gifs, including jet packs!
Eclipse Over New York.
"I think it's part of the nature of man to start with romance and build to a reality. There's hardly a scientist or an astronaut I've met who wasn't beholden to some romantic before him who led him to doing something in life." Mars and the Mind of Man, a 1971 conversation between Carl Sagan, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke.
Night on a Spooky Planet.
"A magnetic filament of solar material erupted on the sun in late September, breaking the quiet conditions in a spectacular fashion. The 200,000 mile long filament ripped through the sun's atmosphere, the corona, leaving behind what looks like a canyon of fire.
A wonderfully creepy piece of Soviet propaganda from 1940, Experiments in the Revival of Organisms. Think canine Frankenstein.
"We investigate the mathematical relationship between the size of a pizza and its ratio of topping to base in a median bite. We show that for a given recipe, it is not only the overall thickness of the pizza that is is affected by its size, but also this this topping-to-base ratio." Via DRB.
Brookhaven Lab demonstrates Hydrophobicity, "nanoscale cone structures across the material repel water with extreme prejudice, preventing any absorption and sending the little molecules on their merry way." Via Joe Hanson.
Saturn From Above.
So you know, the size of the part of the earth's surface directly under various space objects.
October Aurora in Prairie Skies.
SpaceX Grasshopper Rocket Launch as filmed by a hexacopter mounted with a high-def camera. As noted on Mefi, it's "a minute and half of pure awesomeness."
Mauna Kea Heavens Timelapse. Full screen, volume up.
"What did you do today in school, Clara?" "Well........"
Japanese Infographic: Doppler Effect. Ryo Kuwabara. 2013.
Just a shot from Hubble, with a total exposure time of 2 million seconds.
Andromeda on the Rocks.
Antares Rocket Launch.
Night at the Drive-In.
Citizen science in action, tracking and triangulating a Perseid meteor.
Moon, Venus, and Planet Earth.
Relink. Selected document covers from the US Space Program, from the listings for an upcoming auction.
Footage from Virgin's SpaceShipTwo's second rocket powered flight. For twenty seconds it was at Mach 1.43. More here.
LADEE Launch Streak.
Reminded once again that I don't know everything, or in this case anything. The Movie Math Quiz. Via Mefi.
Experts say the ideal time to nap is generally between the hours of 1 p.m. and 4 p.m.. Kindergarten had it right all along.
Night in the Andes Forest.
Simon Lewis "took a laser-scanner (LiDAR) to Gabon as new way of measuring trees" and found something else. Via Joe Hanson.
If you release 29,000 rubber duckies into the ocean, where do they end up?
A Retreating Thunderstorm at Sunset.
Exploring the musical rhythm found within 100,000 digits of Pi. #1=Day, #0=Night, #2-9=La Musica. Via Waxy.
Noctilucent Clouds and Aurora Over Scotland .
Moonset From Taiwan.
Two-minute time-lapse video of Curiosity's first year on Mars.
Perseid Over Albrechtsberg Castle.
Meteors and Aurorae Over Iceland.
Leaving Earth.
To the Moon and Back. Life Magazine's coverage of Apollo 11 featured spectacular photography and tasteful, restrained page layouts.
Diagram of "Up Goer Five, the only flying space car that's taken anyone to another world (explained using only the ten hundred words people use the most often." From xkcd, of course.
"Using footage from cameras attached to the solid rocket boosters, hitch a ride on board a space shuttle launch."
NatGeo on Space Suits X-Rayed. Via TMN.
A round up of NASA's planned missions through 2030.
ZeFrank's terrific True Facts About the Owl makes for a good excuse to re-post MC Paul Barman's Owl Pellets.
Saturn, Titan, Rings, and Haze.
A Year of Sky on Earth.
Earth and Moon From Saturn.
Visualizing the Infinite Beauty Of Pi And Other Numbers, by Christian Ilies Vasile and Martin Kryzwinski. Via Joe Hanson.
A Waterspout in Florida
Joe took a trip to one of Austin's famous moontowers so he could put the enormity of our solar system into perspective." How Big Is The Solar System?
Sunspot at Sunset.
Stars and Lightning Over Greece.
Noctilucent Clouds Over Moscow.
Rock Nest Panorama from Curiosity on Mars.
Perigee's Full Moon. Lovely.
The International Space Station silhouetted against the Moon in broad daylight, photographed by Maximilian Teodorescu from Romania.
A Supercell Thunderstorm Over Texas.
Flowing Auroras Over Norway.
Curiosity: Wheels on Mars.
A Roll Cloud Over Uruguay.
"We were interested in making spontaneous, self-assembling structures," says Noorduin. "We wanted to make various shapes in a controllable way, using only very simple physical chemical processes." Gorgeous Nanocrystal Flowers.
Lunar Corona over Cochem Castle .
Footage of Oklahoma tornado forming yesterday. Sheesh.
The Waterfall and the World at Night.
Fibonacci Day, from Leonardo, Le Corbusier, and Nature all the way to way to Donald Duck.
Ring of Fire Over Monument Valley.
Here Is Today. Via Ann 37.
Fantastic. Time-lapse of Cerro Paranal, the European Southern Observatory's large telescope array in the Atacama Desert of Chile.
A Supercell Thunderstorm Cloud Over Montana.
Saturn Hurricane.
IBM Labs made the world's smallest movie by animating individual atoms.
Canada's new space-themed $5 bill.
Milky Way and Stone Tree.
A Year on the Sun.
Spacesuits through the years.
Airglow, Gegenschein, and Milky Way.
"This new Hubble image, captured and released to celebrate the telescope's 23rd year in orbit, shows part of the sky in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter). Rising like a giant seahorse from turbulent waves of dust and gas is the Horsehead Nebula..."
Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f.
Mt. Hood and a Lenticular Cloud.
Space Station Lookout.
The Flow. "These visualisations are not based on actual scientific data, but are visual representations of scientific theory. The aim is to challenge current scientific iconography by presenting a more complete picture of physical processes, based on current theory." By MRK.
Comet of the North.
Ever pondered how hard a hockey puck would have to be shot to knock a goalie backwards into the net? We finally have an answer.
"There's a thing about being alone and there's a thing about being lonely, and they're two different things." Richard Hollingham chat's with Apollo 15 command module pilot Al Worden.
So you know, what would happen if the Sun disappeared.
Moon or Frying Pan ?
Get all science-y learning about Prince Rupert's Drop.
Le *sigh*. A Horizon Rainbow in Paris.
Waterfalls, Auroras, Comet: Iceland.
Relink "The Unsuccessful Treatment of 'Writer's Block'", a study from the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, and a follow up, "A Multisite Cross-Cultural Replication of Upper's (1974) Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of Writer's Block." Brilliant science.
So you know, how to participate in space exploration, Spacehack.
Albert Einstein Reads "The Common Language of Science" from 1941. Too bad we don't have a copy of him reading The Fish Puzzle.
Comet PANSTARRS Just After Sunset.
Someone tell me how I can become afflicted with Pronoia. It sounds awesome!
PanSTARRS from France.
OK, that settles it, #00B2FF.
So you know, How to Get to Mars. Try not to smile. Thanks Jeff.
Clouds, Comet, and Crescent Moon.
"The Dialect Survey uses a series of questions, including rhyming word pairs and vocabulary words, to explore words and sounds in the English language. There are no right or wrong answers; by answering each question with what you really say and not what you think is 'right', you can help contribute to an accurate picture of how English is used in your community." The survey is complete and you can see the results here.
Sakurajima Volcano with Lightning.
Milky Way Panorama From Mauna Kea.
Spectacular basalt formations around the world.
Ridiculously cool, Magnifying the Universe. Via DRB. Full screen is best.
Mapping the stars with Arabic and Persian astronomers in the 14th century.
It's a basic human desire to separate an OREO cookie. Humans love either cookie or creme. And sometimes a man just needs to invent a machine to do the hard work of separating the two.
Grand Canyon Star Trails.
Miass River Sunrise.
Holy wow, Asperatus Clouds Over New Zealand.
Curiosity Self Portrait Panorama.
Dorothy Gambrell's study of the most common locations used in Missed Connections posts on Craigslist by state. Everything seems like it hits a sort of regional stereotype, except for Indiana, which has the really creepy entry: "At Home."
Mercury on the Horizon.
"Endless Amusement, a collection of nearly 400 entertaining experiments in various branches of science, including acoustics, arithmetic, chemistry, electricity, hydraulics, hydrostatics, magnetism, mechanics, optics, wonders of the air pump, all the popular tricks and changes of the cards."
"Visitors are being asked to report findings but warned not to touch it." Britain's mysterious slime is either secreted by amphibians, deposited in the wake of meteor showers, or is simply a horrifying creature waiting to devour humanity.
Apollo 15 Map and Image Library.
Reflected Aurora Over Alaska.
80 years. 8 drips. 0 witnesses. The Pitch Drop Experiment (now featuring a webcam). Via radiolab.
Help name the moons of Pluto.
So you know, 2 multiplied by itself 57,885,161 times.
Things Magazine know that Futurism is Fickle. Lunar bases, Mars outposts, and self-reproducing interstellar probes!
Mars: Shadow at Point Lake.
"In addition to an altimeter, thermometer, satellite tracker and a host of cameras, Rojas added a decorative rocket ship piloted by a Hello Kitty doll her dad got her on a business trip in Tokyo."
Namibian Nights.
Driving on the Moon.
"Sometime last week, while you were at work, or at home, or at school, a little robot built here on Earth shone its lights onto a tiny patch of rocks on a planet about 200 million miles away, and --click -- it took a picture, and sent that picture back home."
Comet McNaught Over Chile.
The European Space Agency's Huygens Probe 2005 descent onto Saturn moon Titan.
Related to an earlier post: The Day-Glo Brothers is required reading for any prepubescent scientists, artists, or designers you know.
Science looks at why our fingers get pruney in water.
Eyewitness to Space, a huge collection of drawings, paintings and prints chronicling the the American space program at The Smithsonian. I. II. III.
Saddest garage sale ever.
Wired picks their Best Space Photos of 2012.
Saturn Rings From the Dark Side.
Yosemite Winter Night.
MS, maybe those aren't terrifying spiders at all, but rather decoys created by an even more clever arachnid.
Related to below: "To Infinity and Beyond!"
So you know: the trash we've left on the moon.
Science proves that Rudolph really did have a red nose.
I've never seen this and I bet you haven't either. The Apollo 16 Lunar Roving Vehicle on the surface of the moon, from a 16mm film transfer that has been stabilized. Nice. Via Things.
1 modified 727 airplane. 30 teachers. 2000 ping pong balls. Zero gravity. So fun.
A Sun Pillar Over Sweden.
"According to researchers at the University of Washington, there are tests that could be done to begin to work out whether we are in fact real, or merely a simulation created by a futuristic android on its lunch break." Does that mean we all took the blue pill?
Milky Way Over Quiver Tree Forest.
Can't resist the title, plus it's lunch time. The Secret Sex of Cheese. Via Mefi.
"When we originally went to the Moon, our total focus was on the Moon, we weren't thinking about looking back at the Earth. But now that we've done it, that may well have been the most important reason we went." Blue Marble.
The Astronaut who Captured a Satellite.
Earth At Night.
"The Unsuccessful Treatment of 'Writer's Block'", a study from the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, and a follow up, "A Multisite Cross-Cultural Replication of Upper's (1974) Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of Writer's Block." Brilliant science.
A Quadruple Lunar Halo Over Spain.
Related to the last, SpaceX founder Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars.
How many people are in space right now?
Flames in space. Via Joe Hanson.
The Voyeur Biologist. NSFW, if you work with animals. Found via a Google search for "Garter Snake Mating Ball."
A guided tour of the ISS.
A halo around the Moon.
There goes the afternoon, 100,000 Stars.
Our Story in One Minute.
Dan tells us why if it looks random, it probably isn't. See also Dilbert. Via Marco.
Meteor and Moonbow over Wallaman Falls.
Looking good, looking good, SNAP.
"Really? Is that the Bbest you can come up with? It just seems so Bboring." Quentin Cooper, writing for the BBC, about Alpha Centauri Bb and asking "Why Are New Planet Names So Boring?"
So you know, Krypton is located 27.1 light-years from Earth, in the southern constellation Corvus.
NASA's Spot the Station service sends you an email or text message a few hours before the space station passes over your house.
Hunter's Moon Over the Alps.
Phobos: Doomed Moon of Mars.
The Known Universe. Full screen is best.
Amazing: Recordings of a beluga whale that imitates human voices.
Mammatus Clouds Over Saskatchewan.
Capturing a Heavenly Halo at Greenland's Summit. "It's easy to see a photo like this, pause for a moment, let out an 'ooh' or an 'ahh' or two, then continue on about your business. But that takes all the fun out of it!" —Joe Hanson.
Aurora Over White Dome Geyser.
"I believe he has ideas about becoming a scientist: on his presents showing this is quite ridiculous..." Perhaps a wee bit quick to judge?
Nauset Light Star Trails.
As part of the upcoming Future of Storytelling conference this weekend, neuroeconomics pioneer Paul Zak created this beautiful short about how storytelling alters our brain chemistry. Via @thebyranchamp
Goat Aurora Over Greenland.
This should be dreary, boring and awful, but instead, it's great. A Mathematician, The Last Supper And The Birth Of Modern Accounting, a radio feature from Planet Money.
MS: Hey, can we put up some pictures of puppies and kittens all over the office? JC: No MS: But, there is science behind it.
A presentation from this year's SIGGRAPH: Motion-Driven Concatenative Synthesis of Cloth Sounds or "Making Foley Work 1,000 Times More Confusing and Complicated, But Also Very Cool."
Apparently I should be doing something physical right now, instead of looking at things on the internet. Though, to be fair, this indicates that I also missed my 2pm nap. "Your Body's Best Time for Everything."
Ridiculously awesome. A Space Shuttle Over Los Angeles.
An interview with Margee Kerr, a sociologist and "Scare Expert" who advises haunted house designers.
Not one of my science classes were ever this fantastic. Via MeFi.
Is this news? The President is on another planet.
Underwater aliens off the coast of Japan?
Mississippi State University grad student awaits the results of a CT scan of his 65+ million year old dinosaur eggs. I wonder if it is a boy or a girl?!
Related to hobbits and space, Tolkien gets a crater on Mercury.
The elements of the periodic table, personified as illustrated heroes.
A Long Way From Home. 35 years ago Voyager took "this image of the Earth and moon in a single frame. Via Mefi.
A Solar Filament Erupts.
Likely the most exciting story you'll read all day about archival weather data: Christopher C. Burt's "World Heat Record Overturned -- A Personal Account," all about the World Meteorological Organization's decision to invalidate a record-setting temperature from 1922.
Milky Way Over the Bungle Bungles.
You and me and everyone.
Hurricane Paths on Planet Earth
On A Blue Moon.
1969 customs declaration: moon rock and moon dust samples. Via This Isn't Happiness.
A list of full moons at least as interesting, if not more interesting, than the "Blue Moon."
Sputnikfest 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of a piece of Sputnik IV crashing to the ground in Manitowoc, WI.
The other Moon-Hoax, from 1835. Via Things.
Moon Meets Morning Star.
"This is a full-resolution version of the NASA Curiosity rover descent to Mars, taken by the MARDI descent imager. As of August 20, all but a dozen 1600x1200 frames have been uploaded from the rover, and those missing were interpolated using thumbnail data. The result was applied a heavy noise reduction, color balance, and sharpening for best visibility. Via MeFi.
A Filament Across the Sun.
Watercolor paintings of animals from The Bestiarium of Aloys Zötl.
Did you know that there is no museum for Nikola Tesla in the U.S.? I didn't either. Thankfully, some people are trying to change that. They just need a little help.
Earth Illuminated.
The First Color Panorama from Mars Curiosity. Ridiculously cool.
Perseid Below.
Curiosity's first color image of the Martian landscape. Glad he didn't use Instagram.
A Short History of Landings on Alien Planets.
A Wheel on Mars.
A music video tribute to Neil deGrasse Tyson: The Phenomenauts' I'm With Neil.
The Milky Way Over Monument Valley.
Wernher von Braun's Martian Chronicles. Via Kosmograd.
The view from the International Space Station at night. Words fail.
Trails in the Morning Sky.
Moon Meets Jupiter.
Apollo 11 Live TV Coverage presented as it aired 43 years ago today. Here's some more information from the guy behind it Jason Kottke, So great.
A compilation of Mr. Wizard being a jerk to some dummy kids who don't know s**t from Shinola about science. Via UnlikelyWords.
Relink. The solar system in one scrollable web page, in scale! Via It's Okay To Be Smart.
A Morning Line of Stars and Planets.
Volcano and Aurora in Iceland.
"...tiny compass needles inside the animal's sensory system." Scientists have begun to unlock what makes migration possible.
How high and how large would something have to go/be to see it on the east coast if it was launched into the sky on the west coast? A good question with a cool answer from Joe.
The One Way Ticket to deep space.
Dark Clouds in Aquila.
Lonesome George, the centenarian Pinta Island tortoise and last of his kind, has passed.
Milky Way Over Piton de lEau.
Milky Way Above Easter Island.
Not sure of the practical, everyday uses of this, but fun to watch none the less: Eulerian Video Magnification for Revealing Subtle Changes in the World.
Note to self: leave scale at home when visiting Jupiter.
So you know: our heads are getting bigger.
Mars One will establish the first human settlement on Mars in 2023.
Eclipse Moon Over Wyoming.
If you missed it, here is one of the first photos from the Transit of Venus yesterday.
If you are going to catch the Transit of Venus later today be sure to check out these tips for observing the sun. And seriously, don't look at the sun directly.
Related to an earlier post: this etching shows William Crabtree in 1639 making what is thought to be one of the very first observations of the Transit of Venus.
Don't miss today's Transit of Venus. You can watch the transit path live online over here.
Digging into the science of why certain people hate the taste of raw tomatoes, a subset I have long been included in.
A Picturesque Venus Transit.
Sentinels of the Arctic.
The Mars Rover sees its own shadow.
For MS, a two hour cure for arachnophobia.
A Partial Solar Eclipse Over Texas.
Cory Poole's video of yesterday's annular solar eclipse. Fab.
A look at yesterday's Ring of Fire eclipse.
Building the USS Enterprise - the real ship - over the next 20 years.
GALEX: The Andromeda Galaxy.
"Elektro-L is a Russian weather satellite currently sitting in geostationary orbit at 36,000 km above the Indian Ocean. This video represents almost one week of images as observed from that satellite, one shot every half hour." —Joe Hanson. It's very high-def and made of single images as opposed to composites stitched together. But more than anything else, it's simply beautiful.
Vladimir Nabokov, John Philip Sousa and Andy Warhol, together at last, on the surface of Mercury.
Corn too beautiful to eat, thanks to good ol' genetics!
Everyone's heard of the big and little dipper, but how about the Bull of Poniatowski?
Green Flash and Super Moon
Richard Feynman on scientific method, video of a 1964 lecture. Aces.
Keep your eyes on the sky tomorrow night, there a SuperMoon coming.
My God, it's full of stars.
In this four part series the first man to walk on the moon, gives a personal commentary on Apollo 11's historic lunar landing, his thoughts on leadership and taking risks to innovate for the future.
Jupiter and the moons of Earth.
Frames of Reference, a Canadian film from 1960 that explains principles of physics by using a highly inventive cinematic methods like a moving set and an active camera. Really terrific, with a sense of humor.
Meteor Over Crater Lake.
Outer Space, a film by Sander van den Berg, created using still and sequential images from NASA's Cassini and Voyager missions. Via It's Okay.
Who Knew Radio Waves Could Look This Good?
Discovery Departs.
Spacecraft Films' Gemini Flight Controller Orientation Instruction.
So you know: what happens inside the Large Hadron Collider.
The flight deck of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
Io over Jupiter.
Io: Moon Over Jupiter.
The Evolution of the Moon from NASA and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Via Rands.
Scientists at the University of Georgia are genetically mapping van Gogh's sunflowers.
Popular Mechanics takes a look at NASA's next Mars Rover.
Noisy Jelly. "This project is a fully working prototype made with Arduino and Max/Msp, there are absolut no sound editing in the video..." Sweet, via Quipsologies.
Why it's probably not a good idea (or the best one ever) to crank up a microwave transmitter next to a plasma television. Via Doobybrain.
The New Moon in the Old Moon's Arms.
So you know: how to tell time on Mars.
Aurora Over Iceland.
The interesting, obnoxious, and unintentionally funny high pitched voice theory of how neanderthals might have sounded.
"Being a cyclops must suck, especially when playing dodgeball." From It's Okay To Be Smart's answer to a question about 3d glasses.
Venus and Jupiter, by Marek Nikodem of Szubin, Poland.
Happy Pi Day. Nerds.
Lick Observatory Moonrise.
Spoiler Alert: quantum foam! Michael Huang's Scale of the Universe 2. Thanks, HP
A look at the thoughts and equations behind Jer Thorp's smart graphic for 138 Years of Popular Science.
Saturday night's great British fireball.
An interesting read I'll have to tell whatshisname about the next time I see him: "Why It Is Easier to Recognize Faces Than Recall Names."
Moon and Planets Over Catalonia.
For years we've been joking that we should start wearing lab coats here at CP for no other reason than it would look funny when we have studio tours come through. Though according to this recent Northwestern study, maybe that isn't such a crazy idea after all.
Come over to the dark side... of creativity. Thanks Marshall.
A frantic science lesson in To Understand is to Perceive Patterns.
Related to the last. The myth of the eight-hour sleep. Thanks Solle.
Anticrepuscular Rays Over Wyoming.
An Unusual Venusian Oval.
Enceladus Backlit by Saturn.
Red Aurora Over Australia.
Was Leonardo da Vinci's famous anatomical chart actually a collaborative effort?
NASA gives us this incredible high definition image of Earth.
January Aurora Over Norway.
Strange forgotten Space Station concepts that never flew.
"To consider the Earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field of millet, only one grain will grow" - Metrodorus of Chios (Fourth Century B.C.)
A former Army weather expert posts this great and bewildering read: A Non-Meteorologist's Guide to Meteorology (For Nerds!). Via Beer or Kid.
The Hunter's Stars.
"Are Orange County and Manhattan actually bastions of hipsterdom? If not, perhaps it's time to reevaluate whether fixie-affinity should be part of the hipster stereotype." The National Fixie Index. Via Waxy.
Trailer for Space Junk 3-D.
Lighthouse and Meteor.
A Full Sky Aurora Over Norway.
To Fly Free in Space.
So you know, the top scientific discoveries of 2011.
Comet Lovejoy over Paranal.
High speed HDR video of the Space Shuttle launch from this past May. Via John Nack.
Mary's "Virgin" Explanation Made Joseph Suspect Upstairs Neighbor, and other handy new science mnemonics, from xkcd.
Walter Lewins teaches Physics I: Classical Mechanics at MIT. Here's a montage of some of his best lines.
Red Moon Rising.
All the better to hear the shoe coming.
A Lunar Eclipse Over and Indian Peace Pagoda.
Eclipsed Moon in the Morning.
Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover Mission Animation. Sweet, make sure to check the landing sequence which is scheduled to happen for real in August of next year.
Young Moon Meets Evening Star.
So you know. How to get to Mars.
The View from Chajnantor.
Leonid Fireball Over Tenerife.
If extraterrestrial civilizations are monitoring our TV broadcasts, then this is what they are currently watching.
An answer to a question that just popped up a second ago after receiving a package: "Silica Gel: What Happens If I Eat It?"
A sneak peak at how you fit Endeavour, the "Jewel of the Fleet," on L.A. streets.
Winning microscopic photos in the Olympus BioScapes Imaging Competition.
Waterfall, Moonbow, and Aurora from Iceland.
No need to panic, it is going to miss us.
Now MS can create her own spider army.
Space crew returns after Mars mission, to nowhere.
A timeline of Mars exploration.
"These are not necessarily major milestones of the mission but are some of the more interesting and clearly recorded conversations the crew members had among themselves as the mission progressed." NASA Apollo 11 onboard recordings.
How much does the internet weigh?
A Letter of Benjamin Franklin, Esq; to Mr. Peter Collinson, F. R. S. concerning an Electrical Kite. (pdf)
Hammer versus Feather on the Moon.
Coolest. Science. Teacher. Ever.
"This will happen once, " Zink said, "and then never again for many, many years." The Iceman Autopsy.
In Through and Beyond Saturns Rings.
Star Trek is just around the corner.
Draconid Meteors Over Spain.
This amazing demonstration of functional Quantum Levitation can mean only one thing: hover cars will be available soon. Via Doobybrain.
A Picturesque Venus Transit.
On returning from the Moon, the Apollo 11 astronauts had to go through customs. Who knew? Via Boing Boing.
MAGIC Star Trails.
NASA's Theoretical Space Colonies.
A Strange Sunrise Over Argentina.
The Preservation of Favoured Traces, an amazing project by Ben Fry, showing the evolution of the text of Darwin's Theory of Evolution over time.
Carolyn Bol, of Helensburgh, Scotland found a planet. Via Orbiting Frog.
In a World Science Festival video, Simon Singh demonstrates the German enigma machine from the Second World War. Nerdy fun. Via It's Okay To Be Smart.
Dry Ice Pits on Mars.
September's Aurora.
Heads Up!
14 second time-lapse of the earth and Aurora Borealis as seen from the International Space Station, tweeted yesterday by astronaut Clayton Anderson.
What does it feel like to fly over planet Earth?
Just like Tatooine, for real.
September Harvest Moon.
A great animated explanation of the aurora borealis.
"The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the sharpest images ever taken from space of the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 landing sites."
Which Super Soaker works best? Popular Mechanics finds out.
"Green means the restaurant is serving a full menu, a signal that damage in an area is limited and the lights are on." FEMA's Waffle House Index, used to quickly judge how badly an area was affected by a hurricane.
On its way to Jupiter, Juno looks back.
Roll Cloud Over Wisconsin.
Cornell's Creative Machines Lab hooked up two chatbots to one another to see what would happen. Via Doobybrain.
The Weather Channel livestream, Tracking Irene.
Headphones on, please. WBEZ's fun report this morning on binaural audio. Related: the cool visual-less, binaural-only iPhone/Pad game, Papa Sangre.
Aurora Over Greenland.
Sun Pillar Over Ontario.
A list of inventors killed by their own inventions.
Castle and Meteor by Moonlight.
"The 6dF Galaxy Survey has collected more than 120,000 redshifts over the southern sky over a 5 year period from 2001 to 2005." Fly right through it. Via Andrew Sullivan.
Perseid images from around and above the world.
From two Swedish universities' physics departments, The Radioactive Orchestra allows you to make songs from a selection of 3175 isotopes.
The Snows of Paranal.
Juno Rockets Towards Jupiter.
Translucent ants eating colored sugar water.
A Summer Night's Dream.
Pendulum Waves (starring Allen).
A detailed computer analysis of a fiddler's bowing gestures. Via J-Walk.
Decommissioning Discovery.
A random post from Paul Prudence.
The secret of creation lies in the wave. "Diagrams and paintings by 'outsider scientific-mystic' Walter Russell." Fab, from BDIF.
Cassini captures a menagerie of moons.
A bit of cold and a huge portion of awesome for a hot summer day, Time-Lapse Aurora Borealis. Via Orbiting Frog.
Metal on the Plains of Mars.
The Brown Owl: Nature's Steadicam. Via Cynical-C.
"HKUST's study reaffirms Einstein's theory that nothing travels faster than light and closes a decade-long debate about the speed of a single photon."
Specks on the sun at Iconic Photos.
Atlantis makes the Space Shuttle program's last landing.
Noctilucent Clouds Over Edmonton.
Swell 1970's NASA video on space colonization. Via It's OK To Be Smart.
A Busy Space Walk at the Space Station.
Nice job ladies. The winners of Google's first Science Fair have been announced.
Atlantis' Last Approach.
An interesting article you'll be hooked on as soon as the Netflix queue example begins: "Why Our Monkey Brains Are Prone to Procrastination."
A 360 degree look at the Space Shuttle Discovery's Flight Deck. So. Cool.
Finally, an affordable Bludgeon Head. What's more: "Order multiple shells and your head can be used again and again."
A storm wraps around Saturn.
Atlantis Reflection.
Say hello to ununquadium and ununhexium.
A Triangular Shadow of a Large Volcano.
Using 10 cameras to capture bullet time lightning. Via John Nack.
Last Rollout of a NASA Space Shuttle.
View From Cassini at Saturn
Epic. Space Shuttle and Space Station Together.
What is Everything?
What is Nothing?
Dawn's Grand Finale.
Comet Between Fireworks and Lightning.
I never get tired of this. Full screen.
An infographic showing how NASA's Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle stacks up.
Three Arches Above Utah.
Planets, Endeavour at Dawn.
"Hi guys. What do you eat? Can you come to Earth? Can we visit Gliese? How do you live? How long have you lived in Gliese? Do you have FB? My name is Sarah." A collection of messages sent to the first confirmed habitable exoplanet. Messages are scheduled to arrive at Gliese 581d in 2030.
The last launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour.
"Tibetans live at altitudes of 13,000 feet, breathing air that has 40 percent less oxygen than is available at sea level, yet suffer very little mountain sickness." The Sherpa Phenomenon, or "human evolution at work," explained. Via One Good Move.
Space suit evolution since the first NASA flight.
Ben Greenman loves charts. And really, in this infographic age, who doesn't? Look out Tufte.
Ridiculously cool panoramas of the European Southern Observatory. Via Things.
Shadow of a Martian Robot.
The science of toilet paper orientation. Thanks, Heather!
Dark Matters, the science of everything as told through the drawing of comics. Fun. Via Orbiting Frog.
Dawn of the Planets.
Celestial Trails Over Greece.
"The Orion (aka Merlin or Celestron) telescope head allows for an ultra slow pan and tilt of the camera while it moves slowly along the dolly." Randy Halverson took full advantage of that in South Dakota.
So you know, how the whole iPhone GPS and Wifi thing works. Via Daring Fireball.
Tweets from @Voyager2 which will soon enter interstellar space.
Collected videos of yesterday's tornado in Tuscaloosa.
Someone needs to bring his sexy back.
From Scientific American, ten random songs inspired by science.
For MS, the biggest spider fossil.
The View From Everest.
A gorgeous film looking at the Milky Way from the Tiede Observatories on El Tiede mountain in Spain, The Mountain. Best at full screen mode.
Local note, crossing fingers!
Lunar Farside.
Endeavor Looking Up.
The Aurora. Terje Sorgjerd "shot in and around Kirkenes and Pas National Park bordering Russia, at 70 degree north and 30 degrees east." Watch HD full screen, it's spectacular.
If scientists could control the production of Higgs singlets, they might be able to send messages to the past or future.
Mercury and Jupiter at Sunset.
Info on tomorrow night's Supermoon, which "may appear 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than lesser full moons."
HDR image of the moon. Via Orbiting Frog.
A Mars Panorama from the Phoenix Lander.
So you know, what an average ancient Greek looked like.
Titan, Rings, and Saturn from Cassini.
Solar Prominence Eruption from SDO.
Beautiful time lapse of the ALMA Array Antennas in Chile.
Discovery Visits the Space Station.
More exciting than any flight I have been on, footage of Space Shuttle Discovery's launch from a commercial airplane.
Red Snow Moon over Edmonton.
"A gorgeous, waving mass of erupting plasma that swirled and twisted over a 90-minute period." Yesterday's M 3.6 class solar flare.
Discovery's last flight is today.
Milky Way Over Switzerland.
Mammatus Clouds over Olympic Valley.
The Sagan Series: Part I and Part II. Recommended at full screen mode.
Ice Fishing for Cosmic Neutrinos.
Iridescent Clouds from the Top of the World Highway.
Fake astronauts near landing on fake Mars, for real.
Apollo 14: A View from Antares.
We miss sharing an office with 37signals, especially the nerdiness, RPN EVER 4.
NASA has posted a short video showing the massive snowstorm that just hit the country.
Moon and Venus over Switzerland.
The Wikipedia entry on Thundersnow, which we got a lot of last night. It's simultaneously the eeriest and the coolest weather phenomenon ever.
Super-Kamiokande (Super-K for short) is a huge beautiful neutrino observatory located under Mount Kamioka near the city of Hida, Japan. Via Pruned.
Japan's Kounotori2 supply ship approaches the Space Station.
Worst "get well soon' gifts ever, but still pretty awesome.
European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli's photo stream from the International Space Station including the lights of the UK and Ireland on Christmas Eve. Via Orbiting Frog.
So you know, can a giraffe float?
Why can't we walk straight?
So you know, eight Sci-Fi technologies that are no longer just fiction.
Energy and Dynamic Braking, a wonderful demonstration video, part of a series from GE called "The Rebirth of Rails." It's the sort of corporate communication that usually comes across as boring and academic. It's neither. Bravo. Via Andy Baio.
Get a piece of history from NASA and the Apollo, Mercury, and Gemini programs if you've got the cash, check out the Space Auction.
Sunset, Moonset.
Yesterday's eclipse featuring the ISS.
Making the case for backing up information on microfilm.
Snowflakes under the microscope. Via Make.
Skylights over Libya.
Star trails in the North.
Space hair!
Maybe it won't be cloudy in Chicago on December 21, 2094.
Launch of a Delta IV Heavy.
The Best NASA Photographs of 2010, by Caroline Hirsch.
The other day at lunch, we were talking about Clive Cussler's 1976 novel Raise the Titanic, but couldn't remember why exactly it was needing to be raised. Now that scientists have discovered that iron eating bacteria are devouring the ship, maybe that's an even better reason. Where's Dirk Pitt when you need him?
Meteor in the Desert Sky.
Moonrise Through Mauna Keas Shadow.
Using physics to explain Santa Claus.
Sunset at the Spiral Jetty.
More fun with setting things on fire, ostensibly for science.
Spacelog, Apollo 13 and Mercury 6 NASA transcripts. Beautifully designed and searchable with more to come. Via Tom Muller.
A Supercell thunderstorm cloud over Montana.
Flowing Auroras over Norway.
Every man in America requests pumpkin pie for dessert this Thanksgiving.
Discover magazine looks at the real risk of radiation from the TSA's full body X-ray scans.
Popular Science gives us their 100 Innovations of the Year.
Earth as Art.
Home from Above.
Two Views, Two Crescents.
So you know, the science of Godzilla.
"In this image a small drop of ferrofluid is placed within a magnetic field created by a neodymium iron-boron rare-earth magnet. The peaks and troughs result as the magnet tries to pull the liquid along its field lines." Lovely.
The Nile as seen from the International Space Station.
Close photos of the Comet Hartley, taken earlier today as NASA's EPOXI did a flyby.
Life aboard the International Space Station. Via Kitsune Noir.
Milky Way over the peak of the Furnace.
The ten strangest (real) things in space, from Rob at Orbiting Frog, who ought to know since he's responsible for the Over Twiiter feeds that update you about what's passing overhead in your city. And for Satellites on Google Earth too.
Ultraviolet Andromeda.
The science of optical illusions.
Did you know you can watch the next Mars Rover being built live?
Venus After Sunset.
Yes, I know I am late with this but in case you are too, you better watch a homemade spacecraft, from Brooklyn to the stratosphere.
After 18 years as a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair, Amanda went for a walk. Inspiring.
Some photos of the 200 new species discovered in Papua New Guinea.
For the hungry mathematician who likes to play with food, Mathematical food.
September 2010 is the 50th Anniversary of the coining of the term "cyborg." Over a month, this site will update 50 times with links to material – most of it new – celebrating 50 years of one of the 20th Century's more enduring concepts. Then it'll go dark.
"Having a computer console in your house has become something of a status symbol in some circles." A scan of an article from the May 1967 issue of Popular Science about time share computing.
Details on Gliese 581g, the first potentially habitable planet outside of our solar system.
An airplane in front of the moon.
Equinox and Harvest Moon.
Hello! I am a tree and this is my feed. Via Ads of the World.
Tonight, for the first time in almost 20 years, northern autumn is beginning on the night of a full Moon. The coincidence sets the stage for a "Super Harvest Moon" and a must-see sky show to mark the change of seasons. The two sources of light will mix together to create a kind of 360-degree, summer-autumn twilight glow that is only seen on rare occasions.
My science class was never this cool.
Aurora over Norway.
The Canadian Space Agency is broadcasting the Northern Lights live online after dusk. Thanks Michael!
Around the solar system.
Clouds, Birds, Moon, Venus.
The folks at Popular Mechanics show you how to make the perfect french fry.
Star Streams and the Sunflower Galaxy
Jonathan Puckey creates portraits using delaunay triangulation and scriptographer. Sounds complicated, looks cool.
University of Arizona, Department of Planetary Science, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Mars! Thanks Tony.
Earth and Moon from Messenger.
Go below the surface of the Gulf oil disaster. Via GOOD.
Selected images taken by NASA's Cassini probe which blasted off towards Saturn in 1997. Here's the official resource.
Crescent Moon and Planets Over Portugal.
Tips on viewing the Perseid meteor showers tonight and tomorrow. Via Gapers.
The harmful effects of soda on your body.
Crepuscular Rays over Lake Michigan.
Secrets of the first Moon landing: all nighters, lost footage and a ten-year-old to the rescue.
"You can take this test anonymously. Please try and keep in mind the time and place of the events unfolding: the Japanese resistance to the unconditional surrender ultimatum developing at Potsdam; the resistance to massive air raids; the tenacious fighting in the islands at the outreaches of the Empire; the thousands of American POWs; the circulating estimates of the coming Japanese invasion casualties (hundreds of thousands of Americans, far more so Japanese), and so on."
Sunset, Shadowrise.
Should you leave your car windows cracked open
during a quick errand on a hot day? Thanks, Science!
Insurance covers for Apollo astronauts.
Follow at least one astronaut on Twitter or you'll miss stuff like this. Douglas H. Wheelock writes "Another breathtaking sunset... we get 16 of these each day in Earth orbit."
Lightening over Athens.
This sounds like the coolest thing ever, do you have what it takes to live in the Museum of Science and Industry here in Chicago for 30 days, 24/7?
One of the world's most perplexing mysteries has been solved.
Top 10 party science stunts. Via PZ.
Easter Island Eclipse.
Moons Beyond the Rings of Saturn.
Back in the summer of 1962, the U.S. blew up a hydrogen bomb in outer space. This is what it looked like.
Transparent animals with colorful bones. Via Core77.
10 great racetracks as seen from space.
What, if anything, is Big Bird?
Globe of Science and Innovation, an installation by Atelier Bruckner for the new Visitor Center at CERN's Particle Accelerator.
Sunset from the International Space Station.
A full report on the recent discovery of the steamship L.R. Doty, which sank in Lake Michigan on Oct. 25, 1898 and hadn't been seen again until last week.
Sunrise Solstice at Stonehenge.
Solar Power Back in the Day. Via Archinect.
Orange Sun Simmering.
Apparently something banged into Jupiter this morning. Here are NASA's reporting and images. Is that you Dave?
The Meteor of 1860 is a painting by Frederic Church. "The Year of Meteors" is a section from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Forensic astronomer Donald Olson takes them both on describing an excellent intersection of science and art.
Moon and Rings before Saturn.
Looking back across Mars.
The Mars lander is not available to take your call right now.
Alissa Walker's piece for FC on biomimicry and how strategies for water conservation can be found in natural ecosystems answers the question "What would you ask nature?" Oh, and also, check the dude in the second photo. Nice notebook!
The Fixed Gear Calculator. Via Doobybrain.
Iguacu Starry Night.
Stare off into space with this 360° panorama of the Milky Way.
The laser turns 50.
"Did you know the Sun is 25% helium? It's because all the balloons from Earth float into it."
Late to the table on this but awesome footage of the Apollo 11 launch in 1969.
Related to Today's Eye, Ron Knott's web pages on Mathematics. Geeky greatness.
Sunset on a Golden Sea.
"And now that the images are readily available for anyone to see, who knows what you can find on the Moon?'
Images, goals and technology of NASA's recently launched SDO, Sun Dynamics Observatory.
Boobquake. Totally safe for work, unless you work for Hojatoleslam Kazim Sadeghi.
Saturn's moon Dione and Titan from Cassini.
"The ultimate goal of the RoboCup project is by 2050, develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world champion team in soccer." Until that day, we'll settle for the smaller-scale (and less ominous) RoboCup German Open 2010.
A robot built from parts of an old television. Beyond that, inspiration that couldn't possibly fit in this space, and a reminder to try to leave this world better than you found it.
A large space station over Earth
Mercury and Venus over Paris.
MS: Can I build a skylight in my office? JC: No. MS: But, I have science on my side.
"On April 13 in New York City, Bonhams will auction off pages from the Apollo 13 mission manual, with handwritten notes by flight commander Jim Lovell. You remember Apollo 13, right?" - Jennifer Ouellette. More from Gizmodo.
Venus and Mercury in the West.
8 Wonders of the Solar System.
Serene Paraselene.
The Rip perfectly lays out an argument I've been rallying behind for years: the stupidity of overpriced HDMI cables.
So you know, the 10 worst jobs in Science.
Do you feel weird? I feel weird. What is that horn growing out of your head?
RandomWalk Triangles, a trippy, Processing experiment by Guido Corallo. Via Netdiver.
Footage from LSD tests in the 1960s by the British military.
What happens when you decide Pluto is no longer a planet? You start getting hate mail from third graders.
Saturn's moon Helene from Cassini.
Very cool, vinyl record grooves under an electron microscope.
"Enter a number and I'll tell you everything you wanted to know about it but were afraid to ask." Number Gossip.
International Space Station from above.
Amazing, hi res satellite images of the world's largest airplane graveyard.
Astronaut installs panoramic space window.
Me: Can I build a napping loft in the corner of my office? JC: No. Me: But I have science on my side.
The real life Spiderman.
Dark Shuttle approaching.
Related to the last, the world's smallest Valentine is just 8 nanometers in size.
Sakurajima Volcano with Lightning.
Night launch of the space shuttle Endeavor
Awesome, Scale of the Universe. Music plays at starting, but it fits.
Related to an earlier Eye, Big Brothers, Michael Paukner's visualization of satellites orbiting Earth.
Related to the last, here's the original four page pdf of Peter's theory on The Drake Equation and Love in the UK.
Drinking tea with chopsticks in microgravity. Nuff said.
Eclipse over the temple of Poseidon.
Lovely, the U.S. Geologic survey atlas of the moon.
An animation that shows just how close the asteroid Apophis will come to Earth in April 2029.
A free map of the entire known universe from the Hayden Planetarium: the Digital Universe.
"This page shows a scale model of the solar system, shrunken down to the point where the Sun, normally more than eight hundred thousand miles across, is the size you see it here. The planets are shown in corresponding scale. Unlike most models, which are compressed for viewing convenience, the planets here are also shown at their true-to-scale average distances from the Sun."
"So, with the pizza theorem proved, will all kinds of important practical problems now be easier to deal with? In fact there don't seem to be any such applications."
Ladies, there is now a scientific hypothesis on why he really doesn't like to shop with you.
Ice Moon Tethys from Saturn orbiting Cassini.
"The snowman was made from two tin beads used to calibrate electron microscope astigmatism. The eyes and smile were milled using a focused ion beam, and the nose, which is under 1 µm wide (or 0.001 mm), is ion beam deposited platinum." The world's smallest snowman. Via Surfstation.
Interesting, everyday technologies that came from NASA. Via Look at This.
Related to today's Eye: Google Mars.
The world's largest Milky Way image has been unveiled here in Chicago, "made from stitching together 800,000 individual pictures, for a total of 2.5 billion infrared pixels."
So you know: "Because female reindeer still have antlers at Christmas and males shed theirs before mid-December," Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is actually female.
Ancient layered hills on Mars.
A collection of the best of Hubble's shots.
Well, humanity, we had a good run, but it had to come to an end sometime, right? "Computing rivaling human brain may be ready by 2019." Hopefully our new overlords will remember at least the first of the three laws.
MS: All of GOOD magazine's infographics in one Flickr set. IMHO, they've become exceedingly overdesigned and confusing lately. Someone needs to re-read some Tufte.
Calculate the meteor shower activity near you with the handy dandy Fluximator.
"The basic idea is that instead of rotating around a circle, as in the normal 2D Mandelbrot, we rotate around phi and theta in 3 dimensional spherical coordinates." Creating 3D Mandelbrot Fractals.
Why did the Large Hadron Collider overheat last week? Don't believe what you'd read about it being just a freak accident. The truth is that it was most likely due to the actions of a time-traveling bird.
ESPN's brand new Soccer Power Index was developed in conjunction with Nate Silver of 538. Here's how it works for the statsinistas. (Note, Nate, if you're free I'd like to take you to the race track someday.)
Saturn after Equinox.
Martian landscapes.
Jackie, check. Next on the CP list, a speedy germ detector.
The Large Hadron Collider has hit yet another snag, apparently in the form of a bird, carrying a sandwich. Hope he ordered it with hots.
From October 2007 to August 2009 Alex Mellinger imaged 70 fields (each covering 40° x 27°) from dark-sky locations in South Africa, Texas and Michigan. Explore the All-Sky Milky Way Panorama 2.0.
So you know: a gigantic asteroid hit the earth earlier this month with a force that was reportedly "three times more powerful than the atomic bomb."
Little Albert, Lost and Found, an interesting story about tracking down the baby involved in one of psychology's most famous experiments.
NASA test launches the Ares I-X Rocket today. Video stream. (Scrubbed for today.)
An incredible take on the yogurt parfait. Via Grow a Brain.
Great short bit of Richard Feynman talking about science, chess and "the things you don't expect."
Moon and Planets in the morning.
Saturn at equinox and while we're out in space, a solar prominence erupts in stereo. Thanks Marshall.
Tonight and tomorrow night, check the skies for Orionids meteor showers.
A life size blue whale on your monitor.
Fireball meteor over Groningen.
The Vatican's secret storehouse of space knowledge is on display.
This video from the "research piece Immaterials is quite lovely, exploring the spatial qualities of RFID in terms of its readable volume, captured with a simple LED/sensor and camera." Fascinating by itself but especially in the context that Dan Hill provides in his post at cityofsound.
Morphologically disturbed insects found in the nuclear fallout areas from Chernobyl and recorded by Cornelia Hesse-Honegger. Via BDIF.
Wow. Great graphic showing the past 50 years of space exploration.
Tomorrow morning at 6:31am CST NASA bombs the moon, here's how you can watch.
Top Secret CP Memo: maybe the reason all the subliminal messages we have on our site haven't been working very well is because they haven't been negative enough. Let's make sure we get on that today. Via Murketing.
Equinox Sunset.
"The Harry Potter theme park is either the most brilliant undertaking we've ever seen, or a classic case of shooting for the moon and landing in Griffin poop." Sketches and a nice little video tour here.
Star trails over Oregon.
Interesting article about OLED, the future of lighting.
Hubble: The man, the telescope.
Jupiter over the Mediterranean.
So you know, 496,905 square kilometers will power the world.
ECCCEROBOT, the world's first anthropomimetic robot.
Failure to launch: abandoned NASA projects.
For MS, an explaination to your spider problem.
For MS, turn that brick of an old cell phone you have into a PC.
The push to develop room-temperature ice cream. Even if it's possible, can Dots share the title of "Ice Cream of the Future"?
Morpho Towers: Two Standing Spirals "is an installation that consists of two ferrofluid sculptures that move synthetically to music." Via Johnny Chung Lee's Procrastineering.
When I was talking about weather sticks and weather rocks a couple weeks ago, everyone was making fun of me, but I guess a weather spider is just fine.
For MS, spider barometers.
Galileo's instruments of discovery.
Some long exposure shots of last night's Perseids meteor shower. Early this morning was the peak, there should still be lots out there tonight, if you can escape the clouds and city light.
The title of today's APOD should be a sc-fi movie, Betelgeuse Resolved. Stay tuned for excitement "almost anytime in the next few thousand years."
Discovering the lost city of Altinum, the predecessor of Venice that sunk into a lagoon 1,500 years ago.
So you know. How to send your own stuff into orbit for just $8000.
Diana Eng's instructions on listening to satellites on ham radio using a simple VHF/UHF FM radio.
Eclipse over Chongqing, China.
A brief robot update, now they run.
The Voyager golden record online, including mp3s. Yowza. Thanks Whet.
Fill in your information and your name will be included with others on a microchip on the Mars Science Laboratory rover heading to Mars in 2011.
Related to the last. PDF catalog of ILC Space Suits and Related Products and tons of other awesome docs can be found at the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal.
Super Colossal on attaching things to your vehicle with Velcro and appropriate parking angles on the surface of the moon.
5Wgraphics created this helpful infographic to answer the question How Come Cheap Airlines Are So Cheap?
An ant. Via DF
The University of Nottingham's Sixty Symbols, "videos about the symbols of physics and astronomy."
Related to the earlier moon post, Nature is updating the ApolloPlus40 Twitter account as the Apollo 11 mission happened 40 years ago. Via kottke.
Win a piece of moon rock.
Watch the earth set in HD as it drops under the horizon of the moon. Yowza.
A very deliberate and British animated exhortation for real open-mindedness.
What does randomness look like? Via Infosthetics.
So you know, nine games computers are ruining for humanity.
PZ Meyers reviews the book How to Build a Dinosaur.
Computers are supposed to be pretty good at this math stuff. What gives?
A Space Shuttle Before Dawn.
The Universe in 2009.
"It's not so much trying to solve a problem, it's trying to figure out which problem you're going to solve." Episode 4 of Colliding Particles, a series of films by Mike Paterson following research in particle physics at the LHC. Geeky and great.
Digging The Skeptical Hypochondriac, it's a nice source for open-minded medical and health news.
"A near-perfect frozen mammoth resurfaces after 40,000 years, bearing clues to a great vanished species."
So you know, Ruppy is the world's first transgenic dog. She and four other beagles all produce a fluorescent protein that glows red under ultraviolet light.
Joseph writes to introduce us to "the woman who was responsible for saving the pictures from NASA'a Lunar Orbiter." More here.
Using False Photographs to Create False Childhood Memories, a fascinating academic study with all sorts of implications. Via Things Mag.
Around the World in 80 Telescopes.
"In honor of the Shuttle Discovery undocking from the ISS today I present to you Ralf Vandebergh, who is a very skilled astrophotographer. How skilled? Yeah, this skilled."
"The Wave is a red-rock stunner on the border of Arizona and Utah, made of 190-million-year-old sand dunes that have turned to rock."
Sunspots at solar maximum and minimum.
"The purpose of this analysis is to determine the evolution of gravity in the Mario video game series as video game hardware increases."
Researchers at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago used a CT scanner on a 2800 year old mummy and found some interesting results.
So you know, 10 uses for RFID tags.
Pluto is now a planet again in Illinois. Seriously?
A one-eyed filmaker gets a camera eye, The Eyeborg Project.
Pretty much the perfect blog link, big pictures of robots.
Nice little graphic that shows just how close an asteroid came to hitting Earth yesterday.
Arsenal can't beat Spurs in mathematical hyperspace, either. Maybe Germany vs. Greece will cheer me up.
Ninety 1/8" round magnets are arranged in a matrix. When a larger magnet is brought close beautiful self-assembly occurs.
Moon, Mercury, Jupiter, Mars.
Who says mermaids aren't real?
So you know, how to find comet Lulin.
Whew, Magenta is a color, after all.
Something I always wondered about, as a design major/science minor: Where is magenta in the spectrum of visual light? Thanks, p+p.
The Royal Mail's Darwin stamps.
A call to restore NASA's original mission statement, which used to include "understand and protect our home planet."
Start planning those apocalypse parties now, 2012 is the new Y2K.
Pros and cons of molecular gastronomy, the culinary technique that produces questionable delicacies like "spherified croquettes made from ham broth." Via Eater.
Michael Oliveri's "Innerspace." "Using current photographic technology and a scanning electron microscope (SEM) I have created grand scale micrograph interpretations..." Yowza.
Biology posters.
During the late 19th century, the Dresden studio of Leopold Blaschka and his son Rudolf produced beautifully detailed glass models of exotic plants and bizarre sea creatures for natural history museums and aquaria all over the world.
Awesome: Gruber rips apart John Cox for being a math dunce, then overcomplicates the simple ratio problem by dragging Pythagoras into it. Related: anyone remember these?
Tonight's full moon will be the largest of 2009.
If you're into this sort of thing, the Auckland Museum performed a live public dissection this morning of a great white shark. Video here.
Fly through the remnants of a star that exploded 330 years ago.
I hope the allegations of Bill Richardson's corruption don't screw up the awesomeness that is Spaceport America.
A mission for the Coudal Scuba Team: Is there a Stonehenge on the floor of Lake Michigan?
Scientist action figures.
Custom Creature Taxidermy Arts. Too late for this Christmas, but there's always next year!
MRIs read simple images and type directly from the brain's visual cortex. It must be the future!
Nuclear slide rules.
So you know, tonight's full moon will be the biggest it's been in 15 years.
If you have clear skies tonight, look up.
So you know, 10 amazing biology videos.
Nice image of Saturn's infrared aurora.
Hello world, Phoenix Lander here...
The true face of Leonardo da Vinci.
Zombie animals and the parasites that control them. Warning for MS, the first one's a spider.
Introducing Chan's megastick, the record-breaking insect as long as your arm.
"Eugene Goostman is a 13-year-old boy from Odessa, Ukraine, the son of a talk-show host and a gynecologist, who keeps a guinea pig called Bill in his bedroom and likes the science fiction novels of Sergei Lukyanenko and Kurt Vonnegut."
Some stunning photos of the sun.
What do the polls say? Find out at Five Thirty Eight. Thanks Andrew!
Speaking of space, wicked cool slow motion Saturn rocket launch.
NASA's Messenger spacecraft sent back the first ever photos of Mercury.
130 stunning space images created over the last ten years by the Hubble Heritage Project.
The secret lives of invisible magnetic fields are made visible and captured on video. Breathtaking footage and the science behind it. Go.
The colors of the moon.
Carl Sagan explains Einstein's theories of time and space with Vespas!
"Each white dot represents an individual piece of tracked orbital debris. Tracking the solar system's largest junkyard.
"...visual representations of mathematical theory known as dynamical systems." The Art of Mathematics. Via Transbuddha.
A contest to rename the LHC.
Well, it will either be the shortest broadcast ever or pretty interesting. Either way, tune in to watch the very first test of the Large Hadron Collider in a live broadcast on September 10th here.
Weather geek? Better get one of these.
This is old school, I mean way old school. There is something amazing about counting numbers the way people did thousands of years ago. No calculator, no cell phone or iPhone. Just wood, beads, and wire. Via Design Milk.
Weekend project, build a solar system.
A really weird video about cell phone bar code technology
The secret lives of numbers.
The Nonist on The Spectre of Brocken, "the result of multiple, comparatively rare, optical phenomena acting in tandem to produce a sort of 'perfect storm' of visual trickery."
Presenting the world's smallest snake.
Speaking of moons, here are some new images Phobos.
Today China will see a total eclipse of the sun. Not in China? Not to worry, you can watch it live online. How cool is that?
Details emerge on what the Antikythera Mechanism was used for.
Fantastic, great way to spend a few hours, NASA's huge collection of images from space are online.
Former astronaut Edgar Mitchell says aliens and UFOs are real. Perhaps, but doesn't this open today?
Sweet, The University of Nottingham's Periodic table of videos. Via DRB.
"NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft has created a video of the moon transiting (passing in front of) Earth as seen from the spacecraft's point of view 31 million miles away." Too cool.
Rock Port, Missouri, the first 100% wind-powered town in the US.
A look at Nova 2, the UK's new space rocket prototype.
'Whatever we're doing when we remember the past, the same things happen when we envision the future." Thanks For The Future Memories by Susan Gaidos.
Send your name to the moon. Deadline is Friday.
The world's nine largest science projects.
Tweets from Mars, We have ICE!.
Awesome, a 360 tour of the International Space Station.
"Doritos had a contest for the public to make and vote on the best ad for the chips. A good idea, and a clever one. But then someone had the idea to take the commercial, encode it into a radio signal, and then use a radio telescope to send it to a nearby star."
Slightly faster than the new iPhone: IBM's 'Roadrunner' Smashes the Petaflop Barrier. Housed in Los Alamos, of course.
Lovely, Saturn 's rings from the other side.
One step closer to our dreams of owning a Landspeeder: Physicists have 'solved' mystery of levitation. Via Andrew Sullivan.
Being as money-conscious as I am, I thought I'd give Budget Hero a whirl. Hmmm. Turns out, balancing the budget for the country is more than just giving up Tivo.
The sun setting on May 19th, 2005 on Mars.
Headline of the moment. Zombie caterpillars controlled by voodoo wasps.
A map linking different diseases to the genes they have in common.
Jason Landry writes that you can also follow Phoenix on Twitter. Sweet.
Phoenix is on schedule for a Sunday 6:53pm (CDT) toucHDown on Mars. Bookmark the Landing Blog for updates. NASA TV will cover it live too. Yay.
Lovely, Cities At Night; an orbital tour around the world. Via Neatorama.
So you know. All the junk in orbit, tracked. Thanks Marshall.
NASA says they found something they've been searching 50 years for. Find out what it is today at 1pm EDT.
Chicago at night, as photographed from space. Browse lots more at the excellent Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.
Nice robot roundup over at The Morning News.
Nice chart comparing poll accuracy.
In attempt to jump start growth where natural reefs are dying, old MTA subway cars are being dropped into the ocean to serve as the foundation for artificial reefs.
And then the blind could see.
Astronaut Gene Cernan works a roll of duct tape while repairing the Apollo 17 Moonbuggy on December 11, 1972 on the edge of the Sea of Serenity, on the surface of the Moon. So cool. Via Boing.
Building a universal translator to help us communicate with aliens.
At first he couldn't see the Moon.
Browse the beautifully curated and assembled image galleries at SpaceCollective.
Who knew there was so much stuff orbiting Earth?
"The mathematical interest in these packaging illustrations is their implied infinity." The Droste Effect. Via Torrez.
We Made This' big batch of everything about QR Codes.
Origami paper is made of sugar cane fibers that are resistant to heat, wind and water. Spray on a special coating, fold into eight inch space shuttles and toss them into the wake of the international space station. Will they survive the trip back to Earth?
The Earth and Moon as seen from Mars.
A much more in-depth account of the last post. (Read that one first.)
Biologist P.Z. Meyers tells a very funny story about the premiere of a "creationist propaganda movie." via DF.
"Using a Reeves analog computer, Grumman compiled test data using models and simulations to program the computer and 'flight-test' imaginary aircraft's data against actual flight information." The Invisible Jet Fighter, a very early flight simulator. Via Dark Roasted.
This initiative of X Prize is staying a bit closer to home: A cool $10 mil for a car that can get 100 mpg. More about the foundation here.
Great illustrated post at Pruned about the Northern Lights and the vernal equinox.
Sweet hi-res photo of last night's Endeavour liftoff.
What happens when you throw a boomerang in space?
Cambridge researchers use cyclists' cell phones to monitor pollution levels.
Martian Avalanches.
Kent's Chemical Demonstrations Movies, including "what would happen to a marshmallow man in space." Oh yeah.
The Encyclopedia of Life.
A very strange use for an interesting technology. Roadside cameras that detect blood and other bodily fluids.
Everyone had their eye on the spy satellite. Meanwhile...
Last night's lunar eclipse was amazing, hope you had clear skies and were able to see it. If not, check out some photos here.
41 Hilarious Science Fair Experiments.
Aww, how cute. Mini-pterodactyls.
NASA needs help naming their new satellite.
Advancement in holographic displays. We're now so much closer to "Help me, Obi-Wan, you're my only hope!"
Putting everything in perspective from nano to light year.
Today's APoD, Asteroid 2007 TU24 looking fab in pixels.
Asteroid 2007 TU24 Hurtles Past Earth. "Despite the outlandish predictions of some internet pundits, the future of humanity was never at risk today." Sure, that's easy to say now.
Two scary astronomy stories to get your morning started off right: "Time is Running Out - Literally" and "Death Star Could Be Wiping Out Alien Life."
"That cylindrical object you see pictured above is a roughly school-bus sized structure which was deployed into space in 1984. It orbited the Earth for five and a half years with nothing expected of it other than to float there, getting battered about by whatever the great black yonder saw fit to throw at it."
The 5 most horrifying bugs in the world.
It's cold here again, but I always feel warmer when I check in with the Antarctic Journal.
Now everyone can explore space.
Messenger's Mercury approach.
Ever wonder what it looks like when the sound barrier is broken? Wonder no more. Wicked cool.
Dan Hill flips through an AJ feature on the super-cool Halley research station in the Antarctic. More from the British Antarctic Survey, including a live webcam.
MS' clock post addresses (but does not answer) a question I've had since visiting the Musée d'Orsay: "What's up with IIII instead of IV?"
Jupiter's rings revealed.
Chris Glass' writeup and photos from our Creation Museum jaunt. Needless to say, his photos are way better than mine.
I predict a big comeback for Nixie Tubes in 2008.
BB, Chris Glass, and friends visit the Creation Museum, a glorious multimillion-dollar repudiation of common sense in Northern Kentucky.
Elementary Lessons in Astronomy. Beautiful, especially this illustration of radiation and absorbtion spectra.
Lovely, NASA's got video of a Solar Flare.
So you know, the Top Ten Scientific Discoveries of 2007.
A five minute Overview of the Universe. Lots of million millions and billion billions.
APoD from last week. Analemma Over New Jersey.
Evel's myriad injuries, illustrated. RIP, you maniac.
Interesting study from Ohio State and Carnegie Mellon: Kids' Misconceptions About Numbers. Via Defective Yeti.
"These are four scanned pictures of hardcopies I possess of the French nuclear test codenamed Licorne, which was fired on August 24, 1970." Make sure to check the hi-res versions. Wow.
These bugs aren't so scary. Via BB.
A Tesla inspired Xmas tree. Via Fun Forever.
Unearthing a mummified dinosaur.
"These rocks can be found on the floor of the playa with long trails behind them. Somehow these rocks slide across the playa, cutting a furrow in the sediment as they move." The Sliding Rocks of Racetrack Playa. Via Dark Roasted.
Wow, imagine this thing crawling up next to you on the beach.
"You have just inhaled oxygen atoms that have already been breathed by every person who ever lived." The Nonist explains Particle Portraits.
Wow, this is great, "Part comic strip and part science experiment, Howtoons shows children how to find imaginative new uses for common household items like soda bottles, duct tape, mop buckets, and more." I. II. III.
The sky is looking pretty clear, so if you're in Chicagoland between 6:43 and 6:49pm tonight look up. Via GB.
Roots is a world with a fluid atmosphere in a glass tank. Dark crystals grow trying to make connections. Constellations develop. They generate sound. And after some time they dissolve into clouds.
The surface of Mars, the north polar region as photographed by NASA's Reconnaissance Orbiter. Via Pruned.
How The Wright Brothers Tested Wind Drag. Great story. Via Urban Velo.
Ten years ago Monday the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft was launched towards Saturn and it's still going strong.
Awesome 1000fps footage of combustion inside an engine.
"This is not a trivial matter, as the transformation of numbers into visuals is a tricky thing." Studies for American Varietal: Data visualization installation commission for the US Census Bureau. Via information aesthetics.
If the world's population were reduced to 100, it would look something like this. Via TH.
"The first artificial satellite in space was a spur-of-the-moment gamble driven by the dream of one scientist, whose team scrounged a rocket, slapped together a satellite and persuaded a dubious Kremlin to open the space age." Secrets of the 1957 Sputnik launch.
Tungurahua volcano erupts. Thanks David.
All (known) bodies in the Solar System larger than 200 miles in diameter. 88 objects total; 1 star, 4 gas giant planets, 4 terrestrial planets, 3 dwarf planets, 21 moons, 4 asteroids and 51 trans-Neptunian objects.
The top 20 most bizarre experiments of all time.
A formulaic approach to the physics of Hollywood movies. Note slide #8, says Marshall.
Land on the moon, wander around a bit, send a Mooncast back to Earth then collect your $20M prize. Sounds simple enough.
The sounds and music of Earth recorded to Voyager's Golden Record.
"With high explosives, they terraformed a lunar surrogate right here on the surface of the earth."
Pruned on a NASA testing ground outside of Flagstaff.
"The image is a color composite I created combining 6 hand drawn black and white images, each by a different astronomer, of a total solar eclipse which occurred on July 18th 1860." Pencils and Stars, from The Nonist.
Rene Daalder interviewed by Jeffrey Inaba. Daalder is the mind behind the incredibly ambitious Space Collective project. Hmm. Thanks to Chris Kinsman for the link.
Scientific implications be damned, water bubbles in zero-gravity are amazing to watch.
Companion to JC's post about the Voyager "mix tape," a beautiful Radio Lab interview with Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's widow and one of the co-creators of the Golden Album. A Philip Glass remix to boot.
Way before Google's Sky there was Celestia. Thanks Andreas.
"I will be marking the 10-feet above sea level line by drawing a blue chalk line and installing illuminated beacons in parks. This line marks the extent of increased flooding brought on by stronger and more frequent storms as a result of climate change."
"Unlike past ideas for time machines, this new concept does not require exotic, theoretical forms of matter." Time machine design made simpler.
There goes the morning. Sky in Google Earth.
"I plan to build a back-lit display in my office, or alternately take a few prized samples, scan them at ultra-high res, and reproduce them huge... Viola! perfectly modern art for the discerning, science lovin, design dork." The Nonist's Beautiful Specimens.
Cool. "Speeding bullet" star leaves enormous streak across sky.
Well, the ratio of albino to regular squirrels on flickr is only 238:1, which, if my math is right, means you're 84x more likely to take a photo of a squirrel if it's white.
Raining Perseids, yesterday's Astronomy Picture of the Day.
So you know: tonight is the peak of the Perseid meteor shower.
GREYCstoration, an open-source GIMP plugin to clean up images. Check out the "In-painting" samples, Amazing.
Science Tattoos. Idea: get these people together with the typography tattoo people and you've got yourself the first ever Nerd Tattoo Fest.
"Daniel Kunkle, a computer scientist at Northeastern University in Boston, has proved that 26 moves are enough to solve any Rubik's Cube, no matter how scrambled. That's one move below the previous record." Cracking the Cube. Via One Good Move.
To Catch A Web, Parts One and Two.
Several interesting theories on traffic jams, and what individual drivers can do to improve traffic flow.
Via DF: Anil Dash looks at the "pixel" pie-chart. It seems to me that the threat of obfuscation, complication, and editorialization in such a chart is too high.
Titan, A Place Like Home?, BBC doc about the Huygens mission to Titan, which landed in January 2005. Via Cpluv.
With her 40GB fiber-optic connection, 75-Year-old Sigbritt Lothberg can download a full-length movie in just 2 seconds.
What's That Bug?
Get just a taste of the "Eliza Effect," discussed in Rise of Roboethics, by watching these videos of relational artifacts.
So you know: How to Make Instant Hot Ice.
First exploded view of Steorn's Orbo, the perpetual motion machine that works all the time, except during press conferences.
A bona fide space odyssey. Well, sorta.
All the Colors of the Sun.
"This is an exciting time to be studying crowds in downtown environments." Paul M. Torrens and his computer modeling of crowd behavior. Via Pruned.
I did not know you could boil water in a balloon over a candle.
"The Dunning-Kruger Effect is the phenomenon whereby people who have little knowledge systematically think that they know more than others who have much more knowledge." But of course you probably knew that already. Via Cynical-C.
Mars in Pop Culture, from a 1957 Disney animated space series. This is the second of six parts online. Via Infosthetics.
Time travel has been a staple in Science Fiction since H.G. Wells. Unfortunately, much of what passes for intelligence in this area is poorly considered. Here's a list of temporal anomalies in time travel movies.
The ESA is taking applications for a simulated trip to Mars.
The largest living thing on the planet: the honey mushroom. A single organism "estimated to cover over 2,200 acres and be at least 2,400 years old." Via Dark Roasted.
Tons of hi-res images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, presented for study by Arizona Dept. of Planetary Sciences. Five bucks to the first person who finds something that would fit in this.
Weekend project, create a hurricane in the backyard.
Goof Gallery, misguided attempts to understand living and extinct organisms. Via Dark Roasted.
Leaping Shampoo. "I can offer no explanation for this behavior," A. Kaye, 1963. Via Kircher.
Artwork from NASA 1970's space colony studies. Keen. Via Netdiver.
APOD: Jupiter, Vesta, and the Milky Way.
Wikipedia's list of fictional medicines and drugs.
Ray Kurzweil's next big idea.
The world's most powerful computer at Columbia University's Watson Lab in 1954. Super sweet photo gallery. Found among other things.
From Rehan: The Sun Path Chart Program. "You know, so you guys can build your own Indiana Jones style Holy Grail revealer or Stonehenge or something."
Jupiter rotating, as photographed by New Horizons, NASA's robotic spacecraft.
Stunning shot of Saturn with Earth in the distance.
Gliese 581 C is an Earth-like planet 50 percent larger than our own located a mere 20.5 light-years away.
The Web Design Survey, 2007 from A List Apart. Take a few minutes to tick some boxes please.
First 3D images of the sun from NASA.
Sweet technical illustrations by Poyet, from the French magazine "The Nature," 1870-1905.
Netcosm shows you what network traffic looks like using a video game-like metaphor. Via Infosthetics.
How Much Is a Street Tree Really Worth? A really fascinating rundown of the numbers. Via Archinect.
Like Moon River we don't have a clue about hyperbolic planar tesselations but we're in full agreement that they're beautiful. Remember, "A tiling is not uniquely determined by its vertex configuration!"
Universcale. Sweet interactive size comparisons of just about everything. Via Mefi.
Life-size whale.
All (known) bodies in the solar system larger than 200 miles in diameter.
Phlab didn't sleep for 126 hours. Via Mefi.
"Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end."
Every few hundred thousand years or so, the Earth's north and south magnetic poles switch places. No one knows what triggers these geomagnetic field reversals, but a team in France has now reproduced them in the lab.
Just in time for summer, scientists discover the p53 gene.
Great photos of last Saturday's brick-red lunar eclipse.
So you know. The shape traced out by the Sun over the course of a year is called an analemma.
NASA has released stunning new photos of Saturn. Lovely.
Enhanced Stereo Viewer."Two pairs of lightweight plastic mirrors are mounted to a pair of safety goggles. Notice how you can see that his eyes can be seen just beyond the sides of his head, roughly tripling his intra-ocular distance." Stylish too.
Several new and strange creatures are discovered off Antarctica including this stunning octopus.
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Donald Davis on color in the solar system. Davis was commissioned by NASA in the '70s to do a series of paintings and he's now made them public domain. After all, "You paid for them and they're yours." Via FF.
Oh yeah. QTVRs of the Apollo Moon Landings.
Dive into the idiosyncratic and hypnotic Diagram Magazine, especially the "Schematica" in each of the past issues. Greatness. Via Mr. Dash.
When a vertical water jet strikes a circular horizontal impactor, the water is deflected into a horizontal sheet.
Jupiter and Beyond. Surprisingly, not a SK link.
The world's first entertainer robot, EveR-2 Muse.
A four week quest to become smarter.
Larger than Stonehenge, Aluna's forty metre wide, five story high structure is made up of three concentric translucent glass rings. By looking at how each ring is illuminated, you can follow the Moon's movements, its current phase and the ebb and flow of the tides. Via Inhabitat.
Special NASA historic space movies compilation. Lots to watch and explore here, including Apollo 15 Astronaut David Scott performing Galileo's 'feather-drop' experiment on the Moon.
Today's APotD, Massive Stars in Open Cluster Pismis 24.
Some stars and planets in scale. Whoa Antares.
Found, like many other smart links, at the now two year old Information Aesthetics, "A set of data visualizations that represent the 'network-analytical quality' of a soccer game."
A panoramic photograph of the main control room at the Fermilab particle accelerator in Batavia Illinois.
Andrew Miller writes, "I was looking around for some calculus equations when I came across this site which has an interesting collection of quadric surfaces, conics, which you can click and drag to see the different graphic representations of the equations used to create these shapes." Sweet and geeky.
NASA is chatting about flowing water on Mars. Watch it online.
Apparently NASA's intent to build a moonbase by 2024 wasn't enough. Tomorrow afternoon they'll announce a "significant find" on the red planet.
A return to the moon? I hope the proposed base looks like this.
The world's largest superconducting magnet has been successfully powered up on its first try.
NASA's nice shots of the storm on Saturn, as well as a "Relativistic Pinball Machine". Via LAist.
"A UFO, and time-travel, government weapon conspiracy, theorist's wet dream." The (relatively unknown) Tunguska Explosion of 1908.
The Mysterious Gravity Hill. Via Secret Fun Blog.
"Earthly sphere of attractions = realm of darkness." Peacay on Brain Maps. Drawings from 1912's The Book of Life: The Spiritual and Physical Constitution of Man.
Dawn of the Apollo program, NASA slides found at a flea market.
The Neptune program will deploy a regional cabled ocean observatory on the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate off the coasts of Washington, Oregon and British Columbia.
"A couple of space colony summer studies were conducted at NASA Ames in the 1970s. Colonies housing about 10,000 people were designed. A number of artistic renderings of the concepts were made." Via Pruned.
Perhaps a bit much for a busy Monday morning, but nicely illustrated, animated and explained, Imagining the Tenth Dimension.
"We are investigating techniques that will enable the execution of continuous mission operations using multiple autonomous vehicles (i.e., vehicle SWARMS) in a dynamic environment." Cool toys in development at MIT.
Sweet Ruben's tube (below), but Julius Sumner Miller is my physics "go-to" guy.
"Moonlight steals color from whatever it touches." All about the Harvest Moon. Via aWLN.
So you know. How to put something in outerspace for less than $2000 and how to take pictures while doing it.
APotD Eclipsed Moon Rising Over England.
640 minute exposure of star trails around the Southern Pole made in Nambia in June by Josch Hambsch.
The world's first store dedicated entirely to the sale of robots will be opening in Nagoya in October.
Multi-Touch Interface. Via One Digital Life.
"The number of planets in our Solar System is expected to increase from nine to 12 next week and could rise further after scientists redefined their terms."
Designing Movement: An Aesthetic Investigation of Motion in Product Design.
A huge collection of Amateur Observatories, like the ones in Cedar Glen and Frog Hollow. Via Cynical-C.
Aww. Rainbow Gallery and rainbow science. Via Clicked.
Roger Davey is building a 1,600-foot tall solar tower in Australia's outback.
WolframTones, an experiment in music. Based on the theories behind the book, A New Kind of Science, in which Stephen Wolfram showed "how remarkably simple programs in his 'computational universe' capture the essence of the complexity and beauty."
If 600 million people in the western hemisphere jump at the same time, will it change Earth's orbit? Via TH.
The Top 10 Star Mysteries.
Now where is that Intelsat 602? I know I saw it somewhere. J-Track 3D from NASA.
Radio signals from various satellites recorded near Stockholm, Sweden.
So you know. "With a little bit of physics and a little bit of math, we can determine just how much power you would need in order to blow up a planet." Via New Scientist.
Got a little time on your hands and feel like dabbling in astrophysics? Consider auditing Kip Thornes's Gravitational Waves lectures from '02. Caltech's Physics 237.
"The music generated from these mathematical proofs stands in sharp contrast to certain other experimental music based on such mathematics as the digits of pi." Duh.
The Antikythera Mechanism is possibly the world's oldest computer.
And now the weather... on Jupiter.
In 1977, Charles and Ray Eames made a nine-minute film called Powers of Ten - a film about scale and perspective. Always good to revisit. Via Drew
Two brothers in a temperature-controlled Manhattan apartment have built a supercomputer. They never turn it off; it's computing pi. One of the brothers has an autoimmune disorder; the same A/C that keeps the computer running keeps him alive. The machine is humming away, calculating. Link via callmeoblomov.
If you sit on it too long, it will biodegrade - and shoots of grass will poke through your pants. What is it? It's a biodegradable bench made from long brown tubes.
Can one of London's Tube stations be transformed into a kind of cylindrical power plant, generating electricity from the vibrations of trains and stair-climbing commuters? One architect thinks so: BBC. Via Archinect.
"24 Sony digital projectors, an eight-channel audio system and ultrasonic motion tracking technology": it's the future of the border, the future of war, and the future of simulation. It's The War Room.
A new data-organization system was directly inspired by the moving structures of bird flocks.
Apparently, early humans continued to mate with chimpanzees long after the two species diverged. "Early humans and chimps may even have hybridised completely before diverging a second time."
An old warship has been sunk in the Gulf of Mexico to form the backbone of an artificial reef - even while "a broken chain of tankers, tugs, barges, and patrol boats" now pollutes the territorial waters of Iraq. It's undersea architecture, or the residues of war.
Do "extraterrestrial artefacts" exist on the moon? One would think that anything lunar was, by definition, extraterrestrial; but a British astronomer thinks we should start scanning the moon for alien objects, anyway: New Scientist.
So you know. What's an Iridium Flare?
"Freethinking bartenders" are using "the techniques of avant-garde cooking" to make their drinks taste better. It's the tipsy science of molecular mixology.
Using an "indestructible mix of ice and wood pulp," could the British military have made "a massive floating island" suitable for going to war? Kircher Society
The Mars Citizenship Program is now underway: "robots could set up the first Martian habitats - including a nuclear reactor - in about 10 years, for an initial $2 billion investment. That amount could be raised if 90,000 Earthlings parted with $10,000 each; 10,000 handed over $100,000 apiece and 100 tycoons each donated $1 million." New Scientist.
Now we know which way the wind blows: our planet's "future climate" will include "flash floods in the Mediterranean, more snow for north-eastern Europe and irregular weather patterns across eastern North America." New Scientist.
Freaky images of new deep sea species collected from the Sargasso Sea... Wired. Or see these four pages of photos.
Perpetual Ocean's Eros ex Mathematica "The images in this room are created entirely from mathematical algorithms. If you find them offensive in any way, all I can say is that beauty (or obscenity) is in this case most certainly in the eye of the beholder." Via Laputan Logic.
Scientists studying the Galapagos Islands now "believe that the arrival of people on the islands may be causing evolution to run in reverse," genetically regressing Darwin's famous finches. Independent.
The FBI's very infrequently updated Unusual Phenomena Listing, complete with UFOs and cattle mutilations.
"A scientific report commissioned by the US government has concluded there is 'clear evidence' of climate change caused by human activities." Really? BBC.
Using unexpected chemical combinations to create better cuisine: it's molecular gastronomy.
Looking for solar-powered plastic flowers that grow, storing up sunlight during the day "to illuminate your garden or patio at night"? Then look no further: it's the glowing lawn of the future at Inhabitat.
A (supposedly) non-lethal "riot slimer" gun has won a patent; it produces "a slimy mixture that covers the ground and causes everyone in the area to fall down." New Scientist.
"In a rush to flee the solar system? Scientists have an interstellar travel plan, but it entails a brief stint outside the known universe." Found at the nicely and newly new Nonist.
Hubble's super sweet 16.
Related: a little light reading from the guy who made the zip code locater, Ben Fry.
The tongue of the Malaspina Glacier, the largest glacier in Alaska. Check the full-res link.
A slice of the Ice Age is found, a 20 foot sloth.
What's cooler than cool? Ice Cold! Athropolis.com's Links to Cold Places.
Old German zoological wall charts. Via AKS.
"Ever wanted to catch a snowflake and keep it forever? You can. This is a photograph of a snowflake that fell in January 1979." Via Chris Glass.
Hubble's largest galaxy portrait.
Ant writes, "Nature rocks, Gardens-in-a-Petri."
Too cold to snow?
Gorgeous Soviet Moon Images. Via Things.
Tried out Solio over the weekend. Works great!
"The IMAGE satellite captured this view of the aurora australis on September 11, 2005, four days after a record-setting solar flare sent plasma - an ionized gas of protons and electrons - flying towards the Earth."
Dunno how this slipped past dw, our science correspondent: Giant Jellyfish!
"The pigs are transgenic, created by adding genetic material from jellyfish into a normal pig embryo." They glow.
The history of the Doomsday Clock, currently set at seven minutes to midnight.
"File Download Warning. You are attempting to access an image with an extremely high resolution. Please read this before you continue." Hubble snapped its sharpest view of the Orion Nebula. It might be a while for the 385MB TIFF version.
"A cauldron of stars at the galaxy's center." Information.
Fairy Tale Physics: Myths and Legends Explained.
Audubon's Dream Realized: Selections from The Birds of America at the National Gallery of Art.
ASIMO can now run 6km/h. I wonder how difficult it would be to teach it to pack Jewelboxing.
Falling to earth at the speed of sound. Skydiving from the Edge of the Space.
Forget what I said last week about the internet making UFOs uncool, I was mistaken. Via The Cartoonist.
Researchers have unearthed fossil evidence of a 135-million-year-old "sea monster" they're calling Godzilla.
The Ariane 5 is the ESA rocket used for launches into geostationary orbit, medium and low-Earth orbits and sun-synchronous orbits. Here's the Owners Manual. Via Spitting Image.
I'm sure there is something important going on here, maybe even earth-shattering. I don't know everything, but I do know when I'm out of my league. The Phaistos disc alias the Minoan Calendar.
"A fearful black cloud was rent by forked and quivering bursts of flame, and parted to reveal great tongues of fire... Darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a dark room." Pompeii: Stories From an Eruption.
Wendy writes, "This is stuff you gotta have." No kidding, How many places have a category for 'Robot Parts'?
Calendars, by George Widener. Idiosyncratic, beautiful pieces, mostly on stained napkins. Via gmt+9.
Solar Death Ray.
Salt and Pepper.
First ever photo of Architeuthis in the wild. The largest known invertebrate in the world.
Molecule of the Month.
To the moon Alice.
Watch up to the minute lightning strikes around the UK and northwest Europe.
Helpful statistics about the employees of the incomparable Art. Lebedev Studio. Once you're up to speed, read "Multiplying by two as easy as beeping the horn," from their long-running Mandership project.
"The Wollemi Pine is one of the world's oldest and rarest plants dating back to the time of the dinosaurs."
Hopefully I'm not the only one who's geeked about nanotube sheets.
Awe-inspiring twister photos from last summer.
Why Tristan will never have a girlfriend. Via TSR.
Science and the Artist's Book at the Smithsonian "is an exhibition which explores links between scientific and artistic creativity through the book format."
"DNA determines who we are and how we look. We think it also makes great art."
"The Spidron is a planar figure consisting of two alternating sequences of isosceles triangles which, once it is folded along the edges, exhibits extraordinary spatial properties." Via
The Fixed Stars, "Discover the traditional astrological influences of 290 fixed stars and 88 constellations. Explore the 6500 specific influences categorized under 40 subject titles." Choose your own guiding star, we'll take Aldebaran. Via
Live stream of the Shuttle's return to flight.
Awesome photos of the Prandtl-Glauert condensation clouds. I. II. Not sure how the Bible verses fit in, but cool anyway. Video plus more here and formulas and stuff here.
Data storage keeps getting smaller and smaller. Forget that thumb drive; try a new thumbnail drive. Via /..
When the tech puts his hand on 'her' shoulder and she is startled, now that's freaky. From the Intelligent Robots Lab in Osaka. Another demo and 'idling motions'. Via Newstoday.
I always wondered, but never thought to ask. How do Space pictures get so pretty? Photoshop, of course.
Light is not light. "What we see depends on the illuminant, and iluminants vary considerably." Found among other things.
This piece of performance art belongs in the movie version of Visual Display of Quantitive Information.
APotD: A Martian Dust Devil Passes.
Mandatory include for your geek files. United States Frequency Allocation Chart: The Radio Spectrum. Oooh. Via TSR.
The Night Sky Live. Via Plep.
This page on Sound Mirrors and Acoustic Location is pretty interesting but you'll be excused if all you do is look at the photos. Via The Presurfer.
Next time I have an extra $99.95 I'm going to spend it on The Genographic Project.
Don't forget to set your clocks ahead tonight. And then read Michael Downing's new book, Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time.
The Apollo Image Gallery at NASA. Click on the thumbnails for big, beautiful scans. Via NT.
13 things that do not make sense.
Stories of the Development of Large Scale Scientific Computing at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. I. II. III.
"My first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think this will be easy."
If a 175-pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water. Warning: Turkey offal photo!
Whimsical Units Of Measurement.
The end is nigh!
Just bought a warehouse and ready to step into the future? Your first step: this catalog. Via Things.
Maybe I'm an idiot but my Apple calculator thinks that 7249.20 + 102.73 = 7351.9299999999 and I can't get it to make a similar mistake any other way. Anybody know what's going on? Update: OK, I'm not an idiot, but not up to speed on Mac OS bugs either, thanks Brendan, Doug and JY for the info. More from Mike Davidson and tuaw.
Whenever I am overwhelmed by numbers that are too large to comprehend, I turn back to Brian Fawcett's entertaining but disturbing Cambodia: a Book for People who find Television Too Slow. Written before the w3, it is a reminder that we were once fearful of what the information society could become. Has it? Are we still?
The Most Beautiful Periodic Table Displays in the World. "...we have gone to some lengths to include, along with the samples themselves, interesting examples of each element's application in the world. If you click on any of the element cubes in the large photo-mosiac below, you can explore the range of exhibits we have included." Via the Presurfer.
Mark your calendar. World Water Day is coming March 22. To get in the mood, immerse yourself in Houston's Fotofest 2004 which, in case you missed it, was all about --surprise-- water.
One of the better compilations I've seen about fresh water is from Canada, whose vast water supply we surely plan to tap (take, steal) once we run out. Notice in the section on Properties of Water they conveniently point out that Brazil has two and a half times more freshwater than Canada.
Fresh Water generation through simulation of natures hurricanes. Read this short page on a new idea to save the planet and let me know if you would be willing to send him money. Not as an investment mind you, but for the common heritage...
I don't understand a darn thing, but as objects, the pages from physicist Linus Pauling's lifetime of notebooks are mesmerizing. Thanks Cait.
I could make a joke about the similarity between the names of Coudal's own Jewelboxing, and JewelEye, but I don't think it's positive to make that association in any way. What won't those zany fellas at the Netherlands Institute for Innovative Ocular Surgery think of next?
The North Pole gets more than its fair share of attention this time of year, but don't neglect this time-lapse of lunar passes from The South Pole from the NOAA. Via Newstoday.
"Hello from the children of Planet Earth" said 55 ways, just in case other life in the universe speaks Sumerian or something. Via Anil.
Maybe not quite 1001 things to do with liquid nitrogen, but enough to keep you busy for a while.
From a project at the Royal College of Art & Design, "Equator's central goal is to investigate the integration of the physical and digital worlds by developing innovative systems." Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what's cool is the idea of 'Domestic Probes' and what they return.
I love the thought of small comets sprinkling the Earth.
Thanks Plep.
Disclaimer stickers for science textbooks. A subtle rebuttal.
Very waxy.org.
My mind knows what time it is but my body doesn't? Check out Chromo,ô the "patent-pending colour clock that helps your body understand what time it is. Conceived by William Rowe in March 2000, Chromoô was inspired by on-going research into future systems that transcend cultural, technological and geographical domains." Via Josh Rubin.
Site for PBS documentary on Nikola Tesla, "Master of Lightning."
"Turning through the brain-molesting material on the cards made me grateful that Iíve never had to undergo much in the way of psychological testing myself." From Mister Aitch's entry on Psychobox.
I'll be the child left behind. What about you? Take the Illinois 8th grade math quiz.
Make a Saturn V Rocket out of paper. "Your miniature moonshot vehicles will give you a better ide of the immensity of this lunar exploration and its 'hardware'." Via, as lots of good things are, The Cartoonist.
...and in a shocker, 1+1=2 edges the Principle of Least Action for seventh place! The Twenty Greatest Equations of All-Time.
Oh boy, Oh boy, Oh boy. Roy Welch's historical audio recordings of several "first" satellites as monitored at his station. Check the Vanguard 1. "...you can tell the satellite is turning very slowly. By this time the batteries had failed and the satellite was powered only by the few solar cells on the surface of the satellite. The satellite was very small, not much larger than a large grapefruit, so there wasn't room for many solar cells." Greatness.
Memories of the Space Age. "The following images were scanned from 'Peter Fairley's Space Annual' and the Brooke Bond picture card album 'The Race into Space', both published in 1970." Via Sugar-n-Spicy.
"Between July 1945 and November 1962 the United States is known to have conducted 216 atmospheric and underwater nuclear tests." Michael Light's 100 Suns documents this era of visible nuclear testing with photography and notes. Found among things.
Honorable Friend of the Agency, Steven Green has added a fabulous weekly feature. Bookmark Plep's Puzzles now so you don't forget.
Design your own Planet Rangers Rocketship. "It is assumed that the reader has enough knowledge to know the difference between a star and a planet, and enough skill to use a pocket calculator." Via Exclamation Mark.
Sleepybrain interview with holographer Martina Mrongovius. "A hologram is a recording of the whole (from the Greek root). However, recording everything from everywhere is pointless."
"Remember however that the only way to tell for sure that a signature is an Autopen is to compare with a sample known to be an Autopen. Don't be fooled by minor variations between the pattern and your signature, since these variations may be produced by moving the paper while the machine is moving.. If any part of the signature matches precisely, it is an Autopen signature." A long, but fairly interesting trip to Richard Nixon's Automated Signatures, thirty years after he resigned. Itinerary provided by Growabrain.
It seems like I may have linked this article before.
Ken's report on our homemade Laser Light Show. He left a lot of details out, I'm going to do a better one with stereo and post it on my blog.
An interesting story about the connections between hip-hop and science. Now I need to find an article about scientists and "bling-bling" and I'll be able to complete the circle.
All our friend Mabes was trying to do was verify the launch date of Apollo 11. That led to him finding this motherlode of cool stuff about space exploration and the establishment of human communities beyond Earth. Sweet. Oh and the launch was July 16, 1969.
"One day I decided to scan in the notes from all the courses I took at MIT, in my four years there 1995-1999." Yowza. Via Waxy.
A Paper Folding Project, Paper and Plotter: A 3D Surface and Synthetic Lighting for Photography.Three reasons why we feel horrible that we've never linked Grafica Obscura til now. Via Witold Riedel.
"Colorcell wants to find the most beautiful color combinations. Please participate in the Colorcell project." A really well-thought-out and interesting experiment. Via Blurbism.
Pretty much everything you could ever possibly want to know about ancient Egypt, and then some. All in a well-crafted and organzed site from IBM called Eternal Egypt.
Much more interesting than it sounds. Historical vs. Recent Moth Illustrations. Really. "Our intention is to highlight the work of some 18th, 19th and early 20th century biologists who produced descriptions and illustrations of moths of the genus Catocala that depict, in some instances, for the first time, species for which we have modern photographic images." Via Ramage.
Man Conquers Space. In 1952 Colliers Magazine launched a series in which a "team of experts, scientists and space-advocates used the magazine to vividly illustrate their dramatic vision of the near future, and how humans could exploit the seemingly endless possibilities found in space." Beautiful, optimistic stuff, and lots of it. Found, not surprisingly, among other things.
The X Prize will be awarded to the first team that privately builds & launches a spaceship able to carry three people to 100 kilometers altitude and returns safely to Earth and repeat the launch with the same ship within two weeks. Get busy.
Perhaps some of our CP moms lucked into this one during their recent pregnancies.
Photographic Atlas of Plant Anatomy. "Nels Lersten has retired from teaching and is cutting down on his research schedule. John Curtis plans to do the same very soon. Between the two of us we have over 60 years of plant anatomy teaching and research experience. We felt it would be a shame if the thousands of plant anatomy images we have taken for teaching and research were to retire with us." It's appreciated Nels and John.
Maybe preschool is on to something with nap time.
The 2003 Vaporware Awards, Wired's annual list of gadgets we were promised last year but never received.
Martian Chronicles. Animation from Cornell and the JPL.
A Sense of Scale displays the relative size of a number of geeky and non-geeky things. Funny, I always thought that the distance between bonded iron atoms was larger than the diameter of a water molecule. Live and learn. Via JK.
Full-screen panoramic of Mars from the rover. Via G's nicely reconfigured Airbag.
Stormgasm. Weather photography .
Floral radiographs.
Watch the Nova program Mars, Dead or Alive , a "behind-the-scenes look at the construction of Spirit and its twin, Opportunity" and try not to catch Mars fever. Absolutely riveting.
Great Images in Nasa. Like this and especially this.
The Strouhal Number in Cruising Flight, by Jonathan Corum. "Animals swimming or flying at cruising speed use similar ratios of stroke frequency and amplitude to forward speed." Deliciously displayed and explained at Style.org. Via Delta Tango Bravo.
A fascinating look at the work (1586) of Neapolitan philosopher Giovanni Battista della Porta at Giornale Nuovo. "Comparing the faces of a sheep and a sheeplike man, della Porta observes that the wide strongly defined mouth common to both indicates stupidity and impiety [...] He agrees with Aristotle that fleshy faces denote laziness, and illustrates the point with parallel figures of a man and a cow who look like brother and sister"
Watching the World Go By. "Whenever I get a chance, I spend time just observing the planet below." Thanks Andrew.
Earth As Art. "These images are actual pictures of the Earth, created by printing visible and infrared data in colors visible to the human eye. Band combinations and colors were chosen to optimize their dramatic appearance." Via Scene 360.
A roundabout search for a spacesuit reference comes up empty except for the joyful and wasted hour spent revisiting the NASA site. A spectacular example of professional web design and information architecture.
Gallery of Fluid Mechanics. "One of the most attractive features of fluid mechanics
is the beauty of the flows one encounters. Whether one is observing vortex streets, the potential
flow around an airfoil or body, shock refraction or
diffraction, or waves breaking on a beach
the aesthetic appeal of fluid mechanics is impossible to deny." Amen. Via Idle Words.
"The Robot Zoo is a traveling exhibit that reveals the biomechanics of giant robot animals to illustrate how real animals work."
Powers of Ten.
Michael Everson, "alphabetician to all the peoples of the world." Thanks Andrew.
I guess I shouldn't be amazed when Sony comes out with something like this but I dare you not to be.
Hybrid Medical Animations. Eerie.
The Man Who Mistook His Girlfriend for a Robot.
"This spectacular Blue Marble image is the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date." Close-ups available where one pixel equals just one kilometer. Check the video too.
SexChart 9.34. Each name represents a person. The connections represent, er, connections. This thing gets more and more interesting the more you look into it, but it is a bit confusing right off the bat. It's also aesthetically pleasing in a geeky data sort of way. Via Alek Tarkowski who called it "a mixture of art, folklore science and sex." A pretty powerful combo. Thanks for the translation Mike.
"In those languages that only have two words for colours, they are always white and black. Of those that have more names for colours, the third is always red." Via xBlog.
Mirages in Finland. Pekka Parviainen's pictures of the sun in different shapes.
Now that her site is on hiatus, Jennifer has moved to a happening Space Colony.
"Welcome to the new NASA".
If a story is called Science: Swimming Cockroach Robot Developed, I guess it goes without saying that the link was cribbed from SlasHDot.
Does your collection just need a Ornithoptera Priamus Euphorion to be complete? Or, perhaps there's a nice spot on your kitchen wall for a matching pair of Chrysophora Chrysochlora? In either case the Insect Company will be of interest to you.
Hybrid Medical Animation. 3D fun with skeletons and platelets. Via Geisha Asobi.
Bill Rugen writes, "Here's an image database you might be
interested in. It is from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It covers a broad range of subjects from weather to sanctuaries to historical documents all with quite high resolution. Of special interest are the fisheries catalog and the historical image collection which has hundreds of illustrations of early exploration and natural history, including the 'Natural History of Useful Aquatic Animals.'" Aye. Aye.
The Cube Robot Project.
"This collection contains digitized drawings, graphics and line art of many of the unique research aircraft flown at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards, California from the 1940s to the present." Via K10k.
As long as we're talking bar codes, it might be time to revisit the personal home page of George J. Laurer, inventor of the Uniform Product Code. Discover the uncelebrated role Juicy Fruit Gum played in grocery history.
The Sound of Things To Come. NY Times Magazine on the future of HyperSonic Sound. Very cool.
Doug Klein from Union College in NY writes us about A Dictionary of Units of Measurement. "The dictionary covers the gamut, from land measurements to grit sizes to intervals of time. Visitors can discern the meaning of a salmanazar, 'a large wine bottle holding about
9 liters, 12 times the volume of a regular bottle,' or learn why a bridge in Boston is measured in smoots."
Now here's a site title that's hard to resist. Molecular Expressions: Science, Optics and You.
"Mix 28 pounds of sulphur and 28 pounds of iron-fillings together, and add as much water as will form the whole into a paste..." So begins "The Artificial Volcano," one of several disfiguring accidents waiting to happen in 1854's Young Man's Book of Amusement. Courtesy of Memepool.
Shameless promotion of insect appreciation. Bugbios
The first mouse. "On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962."
The most highly resolved images of the sun ever captured, from the Swedish 1-Meter Solar Telescope. Via /.
Send your name to Mars.
Marshall Sokoloff writes, "The Fragonard Museum is an exibit of the genius of one Frenchman who discovered a way to embalm the dead while keeping intact their entire bodies for eternity. These corpses, both man and animal, are displayed in their entirety with the exception of their skins. One can see all manner of artery, muscle and bone. One frightful display is a man on horseback."
Plankton: A large collection of microscopic organisms, including algae and protozoans, that float or drift in fresh or salt water, and serve as food for fish and other larger organisms." Or, a wicked flash experiment from glaznost.
M. Sokoloff writes, "The Venus Project. Very Fireball XL5. Very utopian. The guy behind it reminds me of many characters I knew living in the New Mexico desert. Also, look for a book called Yesterday's Tomorrows for more like this."
Nasa's site for the study of Ocean Surface Topography from Space contains some remarkable images. Start with the Jason-1-TOPEX-Poseiden-Tandem Mission animation for a quick overview. Note: If the Jet Propulsion Lab has a button labeled "Cool Stuff" on their site, you might want to click it.
M. Sokoloff zeroes in on electron microscopy of nature and familiar objects.
Sounds like the universe is roughly Pantone 324 U.
Seven thousand five hundred and fifty nine.
When you travel over distance with a GPS device, it plots your position and path on its display. If you carefully travel 36km across Brighton and Hove in the UK on an mountain bike you can spell the word "Information." See this amazing project and others at GPS Drawing. Ò11.8.01.jc
300 miles high.
Remember that "Face on Mars" rock formation that was on the cover of every tabloid 25 years ago. NASA has a nice history of it, including some cool new photos of the mesa. Be sure to check out the hiking map.
Jeff Pazen writes: "If you look real hard you can see the United Center."
Thanx to everyone who participated in our Friday Feature about space and space exploration, Here are the extracted linx:Space MonkeysSpaceflightHubble Space TelescopeShuttle ItinerariesThe new space stationHawkingSpace Channel 5SkyCorp Inc.Xplane Space LogThis New OceanSpace Flight NowSpaceViewsHobbySpacePhases of the MoonDeepColdLaunch YourselfReal Phaser Gun.Nasa Pic of the Day
"The Greater Lunar Authority and the Arago Hotel Corporation have completed the construction of the first ever lunar resort for the people of Earth."