Anyway, here’s the latest featurette promoting the film.

“Plot Device”: A young filmmaker obtains a mysterious device that unleashes the full force of cinema on his front lawn.

This film was created using Magic Bullet Suite 11.

the-star-stuff:

Why does this blue stone have yellow light coming out of it?

You’d expect this cloudy blue glass to throw a blue light onto its surroundings. The light it throws, though, is clearly a bright orange-yellow. Can you guess why?

How can a light change from blue to orange? The Tyndall Effect shines through.

Top Image: Optick

goodmanw:

The Avengers … made out of household produces.

Part of an advertising campaign for Target.

wolfnmoon:

Stars of the Carina Nebula

expose-the-light:

Backside of Saturn’s ring composite

Composite image taken by the Cassini spacecraft on May 30, 2010.

This image was made using images in the Planetary Data System. Contrast balance and adjustments were made to get to close to approximate color.

Compare with the black and white version of Planetary Photojournal image PIA12964:
photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA12694

Image credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute / Mike Malaska

quantumaniac:

Here’s Your Chance to Use a Space Shuttle as a Ferry

NASA is tentatively targeting Friday, April 27 as the date of the historic ferryflight of Enterprise from the Washington, DC area to the New York City metropolitan area, if the weather cooperates. “Managers shifted the flight from Wednesday to Friday because of a large region of low pressure dominating the East Coast. The weather is predicted to be more favorable Friday,” NASA said in a statement today.

Enterprise is a full scale prototype space shuttle orbiter that carried out critical approach and landing tests in California in the late 1970’s, setting the stage for the first shuttle blast off in 1981.The orbiter is named after the famed “Starship” in the iconic TV series “Star Trek”.

Space Shuttle Enterprise is already piggybacked atop NASA’s modified Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, DC and awaits the GO command to take off for New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. Visitors to Dulles Airport can get an exquisite view of Enterprise strapped aboard the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) from the upper levels of the Daily Parking garage. Go see it in these few extra days before it departs forever.

Originally the ferry flight had been scheduled for Monday and then switched to Wednesday, April 25. But a powerful storm swept through the US East Coast over the weekend and continuing poor weather has further disrupted the flight plans.

NASA and the FAA are coordinating the flight which is expected to arrive and conduct a series of breathtaking low flyovers over and near various landmarks and historic sites in the New York City between 930 and 1130 a.m, including the Statue of Liberty and the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum – her permanent final home and resting place. The exact route and timing depend on weather and operational constraints.

When the flyover is complete, the SCA will land at John F. Kennedy International Airport and more than 1500 dignitaries are expected to be on hand to welcome Enterprise to the Big Apple.

In the weeks following the arrival, Enterprise will be “demated” from the top of the 747 using a pair of heavy duty cranes and placed on a barge for a dramatic seagoing voyage and will be moved by tugboat up New York’s Hudson River to the Intrepid museum in June. The shuttle will be lifted and placed on the flight deck of the Intrepid, where it will be on exhibit to the public starting this summer in a temporary climate-controlled pavilion.

The Intrepid museum is constructing a permanent exhibit facility nearby to showcase Enterprise and the museum’s space-related exhibits and education curriculum.

sidereusnuncius:

Cosmic Train Wreck

Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/H. Inami

A galactic collision sparked a powerful “explosion” of star formation that until now had been hidden from view by a cloak of dense gases, as seen in a NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope picture released last week.

Known as II Zw 096, the object  was once a merging pair of pinwheel-shaped galaxies, but the act of colliding has ripped one of the spirals to shreds. As the galaxies merge, giant clouds of gas inside them pass through each other, forming dense pockets of matter that collapse into new stars.

The burst of star formation (red blob at center) seen by Spitzer’s infrared eye spans just 700 light-years. Based on its brightness, astronomers think the region is cranking out a hundred times the sun’s mass in new stars each year.

NASA’s Space Launch System…

sidereusnuncius:

Runaway Star

Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team

Like a hot-headed teenager, the star AE Aurigae is racing away from its birthplace after getting into a “fight” with its neighbors, as seen in a new picture from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, released Tuesday.

According to NASA, AE Aurigae was likely born in the Trapezium star cluster in the constellation Orion. At the time the star had a partner, making a binary pair with the star Mu Columbae. But about 2.5 million years ago, the pair collided with another set of binary stars, and the tussle sent AE Aurigae and Mu Columbae hurtling in opposite directions.

(Related: “‘Renegade’ Stars Tearing Across Universe, Hubble Shows.”)

AE Aurigae is currently part of a relatively cool nebula that glows with only reflected light. But the star appears to be on fire, because the body’s radiation is stripping electrons from a pocket of surrounding gas and heating nearby dust, causing the cloud to glow with its own emitted light.

A collection of AGC, AGS,…

nevrfail:

Ice prospecting robotic rover books a ticket for the Moon

While the Moon may or may not contain life forms, precious metals or even green cheese, recent satellite missions have indicated that it does nonetheless contain something that could prove quite valuable – water ice. NASA has estimated that at least 650 million tons (600 million tonnes) of the stuff could be deposited in craters near the Moon’s north pole alone. If mined, it could conceivably serve as a source of life support for future lunar bases, or it could be used to produce fuel for spacecraft stopping at a “lunar gas station.” Before any mining can happen, however, we need to learn more about the ice. That’s why NASA has contracted Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology to determine if its Polaris rover robot could be used for ice prospecting. Read More www.neverfail.co

cosascool:

Pongua Falls – Vietnam

thisistheverge:

Google in 2007: ‘a touchscreen cannot completely replace physical buttons’

Touchscreens will be supported. However, the Product was designed with the presence of discrete physical buttons as an assumption, therefore a touchscreen cannot completely replace physical buttons. 

Yeah, looking back on stuff like this is fun. Like when we look back in 2014 at the iPad5, which  will run on OSX instead of iOS, we’ll chuckle at how Apple CEO Tim Cook said:

…the problem is that products are about trade-offs, and you begin to make trade-offs to the point where what you have left at the end of the day doesn’t please anyone.

laboratoryequipment:

Company Plans to Mine Asteroid for Profit

Space-faring robots could be extracting gold and platinum from asteroids within 10 years if a new venture backed by two Silicon Valley titans and filmmaker James Cameron goes as planned.

Outside experts are skeptical about the project, announced at a news conference in Seattle, because it would likely require untold millions or perhaps billions of dollars and huge advances in technology. But the same entrepreneurs pioneered the selling of space rides to tourists — a notion that seemed fanciful not long ago, too.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Company-Plans-to-Mine-Asteroid-for-Profit-042512.aspx

barackobama:

“I’m President Barack Obama. And I too want to slow-jam the news.”

More things that really happened in 2012:

A hip-hop band from Philadelphia were the backing band to The President on a late night  show hosted by Jimmy Fallon. “Black Thought” sang.  

Five years ago,  if I told you this would happen, you’d have slapped me.

theatlantic:

‘Oops, Wrong Cancer’: How Contaminated Cell Lines Produce Bad Research

Retractions of published work are regrettable, but they happen. Ivan Oransky, the executive editor of Reuters Health, highlights one involving a German researcher, Robert Mandic, who’s in the business of studying head and neck cancer. Mandic’s lab results were invalidated last year when he discovered that the cancer cells he’d been working on were actually descended from a cervical tumor — not the rare head and neck cancer he thought he was studying.

The journal that initially published Mandic’s paper wound up dropping the work, but not for the reason you might suspect:

The scope of Oral Oncology covers only head and neck cancers. As the findings of this paper no longer refer to a cell line that is implicated in these tumours, the paper has been retracted from the journal, since it would not have been acceptable for publication during peer-review based on the information now available.

In other words,” Oransky writes, “the real reason the paper is being retracted isn’t because the results were no longer valid, but that they were no longer valid for a head or neck cancer.” […]

Nobody can say for certain how many studies have been affected by misidentified cell cultures, or how much money has gone down the drain because of them. We can only guess at it. Some believe that as much as 20 percent (!) of all published work involving human cells may have used bad cell lines. And it’s not talked about, both because of the strong industry pressure to publish and because of a simple human reluctance to admit failure.

Read more. [Image: Flickr/Nathan Reading]

approachingsignificance:

Childhood Stress Leaves Genetic Scars

Traumatic experiences in early life can leave emotional scars. But a new study suggests that violence in childhood may leave a genetic mark as well. Researchers have found that children who are physically abused and bullied tend to have shorter telomeres—structures at the tips of chromosomes whose shrinkage has been linked to aging and disease.

“Children who experience physical violence appear to be aging at a faster rate,” says neuroscientist and co-author Avshalom Caspi. As a result, he says, they may face increased risk of disease in adulthood and possibly shortened lifespan.

The more we research and understand stress, the more we learn about its complex nature and implications on our health, both mentally and physically. Expect a lot more of this research in the near future.

mothernaturenetwork:

10 images of Earth that look like art

thesmithian:

…the longer unemployment stays high, the likelier people are to get used to it. Five years ago, an unemployment rate of seven and a half per cent would have seemed outrageous, but it’s possible that five years from now it will seem not so bad. A long-term crisis, after a certain point, no longer seems like a crisis. It seems like the way things are.

more.

+++++

art: painting by Kennith Humphrey

teamepiphany:

You know what’s cool? State-of-the-art outdoor movie theaters. You know what’s really cool? State-of-the-art floating movie theaters in a lagoon in Thailand’s beautiful Yao Noi island. Check out the Archipelago CInema. 

- Jarrett Cobbs

April 16, 2012: A prominence shoots off the left side of the sun in association with an M1 class flare that was not Earth-directed. [x]

Ty featuring Tony Allen (Fela Kuti’s drummer) – THE WILLING.

This is a song from Ty’s “Upward” album. Ty’s one of my  favorites because his ear for fusing interesting sounds is sharp! With this track he brings authentic Afrobeat and classic rhyme styles together for a great session.

quantumaniac:

Physics Clock

myedol:

NYC Spaghetti by Alex Creamer

sammonsizzler:

Basquiat  - “A Prince With a Magic Crown”

expose-the-light:

Ingredients of life

Illustrations of Chemical compounds by Avkari Alon

scinerds:

Chrome Alum Crystals by Paul’s Lab on Flickr

This is a photo of chrome alum crystals in a chrome alum solution, at 20x magnification. Taken with my Canon SX110 IS, through a Novex stereo microscope with lighting from underneath. The crystals are grown from a saturated solution and are no more than 1 mm in diameter. Created myself, Paul, from www.paulslab.com

alchymista:

A diffraction image of a protein crystal, which is created by using a particle accelerator to irradiate the protein with X-rays. This technique enables scientists to see internal structures of complex protein molecules such as enzymes. (via)

listot:

Echo project, NASA Langley Research Center, 1965

jaymug:

Gold Ferrari 599

theartofanimation:

Final Fantasy IX

8bitfuture:

Printable solar cells could turn anything into an energy source.

A team at MIT has developed a process to ‘print’ solar cells onto almost any surface. Using chemical vapour deposition, the process uses “abundant organic molecules” to convert about 2 percent of the available energy into light. Typical solar panels are around 12-17% efficient, but the team thinks 10% efficiency is achievable.

The cost of installing panels keeps many people from adopting solar power, Barr says. By integrating it into ordinary materials, he thinks he can clear that hurdle. “You’re already hanging a curtain in your house,” he says. “Why not add some energy to that?”

revelation2220:

Pictured is the Super-Kamiokande, a giant neutrino detector, buried 1000m underground in Japan. Usually filled with 50,000 tonnes of pure water, the observatory detects neutrinos by watching for interactions with the subatomic particles in the water. These interactions are extremely rare, which is why the detector needed to be built to the scale it is.

ginnysgirl:

Earth From Mars by NASA Goddard Photo and Video on Flickr.

Spectacular Moons in Our Solar System

Earth’s moon shines brightly in our sky, but it is not the only satellite in our solar system. Experts estimate there are as many as 170 moons orbiting the eight planets of our section of the galaxy. A moon is defined as a satellite that orbits a planet. Moons are named after Roman and Greek gods and demigods — with colors and mystifying landscapes that match their fanciful namesakes.

unknownconstellation:

The Large and Small Magellanic Cloud 

Above is a few from the southern sky, specifically from New Zealand. The negligible amount of ambient light gives an observer the opportunity to see a vast array of stars, spread out across the sky light a titanic masterpiece painting. To the eyes of a northerner, the stars may look foreign, especially those two large blobs in the center and upper right. 

What are they? They are the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud, and they are two separate galaxies. That’s right, a view from the southern hemisphere allows you to look at two galaxies beyond our own Milky Way.

Both are irregular galaxies, which do not have the lovely shapes of their cousins, such as the spiral, and the elliptical. Some suspect that galaxies of this sort might have had a discernible shape in the distant past, but that gravitational interaction with neighboring galaxies may have distorted them into the chaotic messes that we observe with telescopes, and with the naked eye. Whatever the case, when Ferdinand Magellan was on his voyage around the world, he noticed the formations, and described them in his journals, and they’ve captured the imagination of observers ever since (we should be thankful he saw them prior to his unfortunate run-in with the spear of an unnamed native). 

The Large is located about 157,000 light years away, and the Small about 197,000. For all we know about their structure, we know virtually nothing about what lies within them. At that kind of distance, we must rely on inference and deduction, and a dose of imagination, to figure out what wonders may lie within such places. Consider the amount of exoplanets that we’ve been able to find in our own galaxy. The amount has peaked the thousands, and continues to grow by the day. The Clouds are galaxies unto themselves, and I can only imagine that they hold secrets that would shatter our notions. Maybe some day. Until then, we can enjoy the sight, even if we live in the wrong hemisphere.

-Devin

skeptv:

Researchers Crunch Numbers to Predict Tornadoes

Last April, a historic outburst of 202 tornadoes turned broad swaths of that part of the country into a disaster zone. Researchers have sifted through gigabytes of data to draw some interesting conclusions.

Source: NASA

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Researchers-Crunch-Numbers-to-Predict-Tornadoes-041712.aspx

lypeach:

Grotto in an iceberg, photographed during the British Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1913, 5 Jan 1911 by National Library NZ on The Commons on Flickr.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

on our planet, emcees have serious lyrics that you  must  listen to (or die), and their hypemen are not to be messed with.

journo-geekery:

The World Mapped According to Wikipedia Articles in 7 Different Languages – information aesthetics writing up work by Mapping Wikipedia [tracemedia.co.uk].

As IA says, “There is something strangely mesmerizing about maps with a lot of dots.”

jtotheizzoe:

Happy  22nd Birthday to the Hubble!!

On April 24th, the Hubble Space Telescope marks its 22nd year in orbit. That means its mission has lasted longer than many of your lives, and it’s still churning out amazing work (no pressure though). Sources say that the Hubble promises that it’s not get all crazy like it did last year on its birthday.

To celebrate, the Hubble folks have released this beautiful image of 30 Dor, a star factory in the Large Magellenic Cloud full of high-energy glowing gas. A fine piece of #starporn to decorate your dashboard with.

But why stop there? We can do better than this picture.

How about a super-huge 4,000 x 3,200 pixel version? Is that big enough for ya?

No? Then how about an amazing zoomable version so you can dig deep down into the onion-like layers, a virtual rabbit hole of awesomeness?

Still not enough? If you really must go bigger, I have to warn you … this is a pretty hefty link, and it probably won’t open in your browser. Better to right-click and save. Here is an image that laughs in the face of any adjective I try to place before it. Behold a 267-Mb 20,323 x 16,259 pixel smorgasbord of starry goodness, over 300 million pixels of HOLY CRAP.

BONUS: How these amazing images are created and edited by master star pornagraphers.

(? Bad Astronomy)

the-star-stuff:

NASA Finds Lost Spacecraft on Dark Side of the Moon

Images Credit: NASA

…which then turned into a giant robot and told them to leave it alone.

A preliminary study finds certain…

Peter Webber opines on the discrepancy between talent and…

Aiming to make the most of…

laboratoryequipment:

Nanotubes Can Replace Platinum in Solar Cells

Forests of carbon nanotubes are an efficient alternative for platinum electrodes in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSC), according to new research by collaborators at Rice Univ. and Tsinghua Univ.

The single-wall nanotube arrays, grown in a process invented at Rice, are both much more electroactive and potentially cheaper than platinum, a common catalyst in DSCs, says Jun Lou, a materials scientist at Rice. In combination with newly developed sulfide electrolytes synthesized at Tsinghua, they could lead to more efficient and robust solar cells at a fraction of the current cost for traditional silicon-based solar cells.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Nanotubes-Can-Replace-Platinum-in-Solar-Cells-041712.aspx

romeitoiumono:

…don’t ever forget that!

And don’t say “I’ll never be good”. You can become better! and one day you’ll wake up and you’ll find out how good you actually became.

?Neil deGrasse Tyson?

justinalcon:

Comin’ back after all these years, rat-ta-tat-tat-tat, that’s the way it is.

superpunch2:

How the Tupac hologram worked.

Okay, last one,  I promise!

Space Shuttle Discovery Fly-Over (201204170018HQ) (di nasa hq photo)

psydoctor8:

Notes on Neurobiological Substrates of Punishment

•  Impulsive punishment may relate to amygdala-based circuitry (AM/PAG, yellow), where there is associative learning between cues and outcomes.

• Instrumental punishment may be connected to striatal-mediated reinforcement for goal oriented actions. This type of punishment may lead to appetitive retributive goals (fascinating), possibly coming from the MFOC (medial orbitofrontal cortex), or from forward-planning areas of the prefrontal cortex which also plays a role in theory of mind (blue areas).

• These appetitive/instinctual actions may reinforce further action through the dorsomedial striatum (DMS,green) which if becoming “habit-based”, we’re then looking at reinforced action through dorsolateral striatum (DLS, red), which would likely indicate dopamine-dependent circuits. 

[via: The Neurobiology of Punishment]

blamoscience:

Researchers have cleverly devised a way to make paper that is waterproof, bacterial resistant, and magnetic. By wrapping certain nanoparticles around the fibers of the paper, it’s properties can be changed. The researchers point to using iron oxide nanoparticles to make the paper magnetic, and using silver nanoparticles to repel bacteria. The implications this technology has on the future of food packaging and medical applications are astounding. 

Full story here.

unknownskywalker:

Some stars capture rogue planets

New research suggests that billions of stars in our galaxy have captured rogue planets that once roamed interstellar space. The nomad worlds, which were kicked out of the star systems in which they formed, occasionally find a new home with a different sun. This finding could explain the existence of some planets that orbit surprisingly far from their stars.

To reach their conclusion, astronomers simulated young star clusters containing free-floating planets. They found that if the number of rogue planets equaled the number of stars, then 3-6% of the stars would grab a planet over time. The more massive a star, the more likely it is to snag a planet drifting by. Over time, the clusters disperse due to close interactions between their stars, so any planet-star encounters have to happen early in the cluster’s history.

Rogue planets are a natural consequence of star formation. Newborn star systems often contain multiple planets. If two planets interact, one can be ejected and become an interstellar traveler. If it later encounters a different star moving in the same direction at the same speed, it can hitch a ride. A captured planet tends to end up hundreds or thousands of times farther from its star than Earth is from the Sun. It’s also likely to have a orbit that’s tilted relative to any native planets, and may even revolve around its star backward.

Above: In this artist’s conception, a captured world drifts at the outer edge of a distant star system, so far from its Sun-like host that the star’s disk is barely resolvable at upper right. New research shows that one in 20 stars within our galaxy might have captured a free-floating planet.

intoxicatedspirit:

Prince – Everywhere

From the album “Rainbow Children” released in 2001.

It was the first album to be released under the name Prince again after going under the stage name of the love symbol. I found it to be one of his most experimental albums, not necessarily “organic” or a “new” sound for Prince but rather doing something very different with every other song. Tracks going from “Digital Garden” with strange electronic noises to “The Work Pt. 1” with a stripped-down James Brown-type funk tune, I haven’t heard Prince do anything like this though. You can definitely hear rhythmic influences from Latin music.

sunrec:

The First Images and Video Footage from Outer Space, 1946-1959

In October 1946, American scientists, working in White Sands, New Mexico, shot a V-2 missile 65 miles into the air. The missile (originally designed by the Nazis during World War II) carried a 35-millimeter camera aloft that snapped an image every second and a half. When the missile returned to Earth, the camera itself was demolished by the impact. But the film, protected by a steel casing, remained unscathed, according to Air & Space Magazine. And when the scientists recovered the film, they witnessed something never seen by humans before — the first images of our planet taken from outer space. As one scientist put it, we got to see (above) “how our Earth would look to visitors from another planet coming in on a space ship.”

In October 1946, American scientists, working in White Sands, New Mexico, shot a V-2 missile 65 miles into the air. The missile (originally designed by the Nazis during World War II) carried a 35-millimeter camera aloft that snapped an image every second and a half. When the missile returned to Earth, the camera itself was demolished by the impact. But the film, protected by a steel casing, remained unscathed, according to Air & Space Magazine. And when the scientists recovered the film, they witnessed something never seen by humans before — the first images of our planet taken from outer space. As one scientist put it, we got to see (above) “how our Earth would look to visitors from another planet coming in on a space ship.”

By the 1950s, the U.S. Air Force started working with a new line of missile, the Thor missile. And it made history in May, 1959. Launched from Cape Canaveral, the Thor Missile Number 187 carried a General Electric-manufactured “data capsule” and 16-millimeter camera in its nose cone. The flight lasted 15 minutes, covered 1500 miles, and ended in the Atlantic Ocean. According to the GE Film Catalog, when the data capsule was recovered:

General Electric scientists began the careful processing of the capsule’s contents. They were not long in finding the results they had hoped for—in the subdued light of a photographic dark room, on a still-dripping strip of developed motion picture film, the eyes of man beheld for the first time the image of the earth as it appears from beyond the atmosphere.

You can watch the historic video immediately above.

npr:

fromageetalpinisme:

Space shuttle flying over DC this morning.

The Space Shuttle taken from the roof of the NPR headquarters. -Savy

ikenbot:

The Tale Continues..

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

The brightly reflective moon Enceladus appears before Saturn’s rings while the larger moon Titan looms in the distance.

Jets of water ice and vapor emanating from the south pole of Enceladus (hinting at subsurface sea rich in organics), and liquid hydrocarbons ponding on the surface on the surface of Titan make these two of the most fascinating moons in the Saturnian system. See A Tale of Two Moons to learn more about these fascinating moons.

astrocrash:

Core of a partially disrupted solar-mass star by a black hole weighing 1,000,000 solar masses.

This gimballing rig was designed to test astronauts’ ability to right a tumbling aircraft. It’s formally called MASTIF or Multiple Axis Space Test Inertia Facility and it’s pictured operating in the Altitude Wind Tunnel at the (then) Lewis Research Center.

It was designed as part of the Mercury program.

scinerds:

A map of where lightning strikes most across the globe

In this map, created using NASA satellite data, you can see in lurid detail where lightning struck Earth the most between 1995-2002. This historical information can give scientists clues about where it’s likely to strike again. And with tornado, monsoon, and hurricane seasons getting underway, you too might want to know where these ultra-hot bolts of electricity will slam out of the clouds. Here are some of the most up-to-date lightning maps.

NASA also has a map of lightning strikes that’s regularly updated, showing lightning strikes from 1998 to the present. The more up-to-date map is very similar to what you see above, except that it shows more intense activity in Argentina and South Africa.

Also, according to NASA, the greatest amount of lightning strikes are near the Catatumbo River in Venezuela (where there are 40,000 strikes every night, for most of the year), and a mountain town called Kifuka in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. You can see the dark regions signaling thousands of lightning strikes over these areas in the map above.

Over at the University of Washington in Seattle, Earth scientist Robert Holzworth is running an ongoing project to collect lighting strike data all over the globe. Using sensors all over the world, Holzworth and his colleagues analyze very low frequency (VLF) waves in the radio spectrum emitted by lightning. He creates maps and animated gifs showing the distribution of lightning in various areas, revealing where lightning is striking the most over time.

The upshot? Warmer areas over land tend to attract the most lightning. And the patterns seem to be quite predictable, so it’s fairly easy to plan trips to avoid areas where you might incur the wrath of Zeus. Of course, as the climate warms up over the next century, these maps may reveal a very different set of patterns.

quantumaniac:

Einstein’s Office

NEW HORIZONS: SLEEPING AT 34,000 MILES PER HOUR

It’s sleeping, and only about the size of a piano. Yet it’s careening to the edge of our Solar System at an awesome 34,000 miles per hour. It’s the New Horizons spacecraft, covering nearly a million kilometers a day, on a historic voyage to Pluto — ‘asleep’ in a state of hibernation to conserve energy.

In fact — besides setting the record for the fastest launch speed of a man-made object (36,373 mph) — New Horizons is breaking a new record every second. Since December 2nd, 2011, it’s been the closest spacecraft to approach Pluto (when it passed a previous mark set by Voyager 1 in January 1986). So every moment it travels, it sets a new mark for nearest approach.

<full article>

Climate change will not be…

thechanelmuse:

BEY-INSPIRED - Beyoncé on Jean-Michel Basquiat

rayax:

Above is an image of the magnificent Carina Nebula, a colossal vivid remnant of a dead star that surrounds several star clusters. It is the home to two of the most massive and radiant stars in our Milky way galaxy; The Eta Carinae and the HD 93129A. Located about 7500 light years away from us, the nebula itself stretches out to some 260 light years across- Seven times the size of the Orion nebula. 

cosmos-sagan:

From Earth Quarterly Issue Two: Vernal Equinox

occupyallstreets:

An Unhackable Baby Quantum Internet Was Born Yesterday

Years from now it may be said that the quantum Internet was born today. When the baby system matures, it will be able to process unfathomable amounts of data and never be hacked.

The system only has two nodes, but the Internet’s birth started in a similar way back in the late 1960s. The developers — physicists led by Stephan Ritter and Gerhard Rempe of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany — published their work in this week’s issue of the journal “Nature.”

The quantum network was built using two atoms of rubidium that exchange photons, or particles of light. Each atom is placed inside a cavity with highly reflecting mirrors on each side, and at a very short distance from each other. The two so-called optical cavities are connected by an optical fiber.

Scientists aim a laser at the first atom, causing the atom to emit a single photon. That photon zooms along the optical fiber to other optical cavity containing the other atom. That’s where the mirrors come in — ordinarily it’s difficult to get an atom and a photon to interact reliably. But by bouncing the photon off the mirrors in the cavity thousands of times, it’s more likley to hit the atom and be absorbed by it. That absorbtion is what transmits the information about the first atom’s quantum state to the second atom.

Besides sending information, the two atoms were entangled, meaning that the atoms were linked. If the first node is in quantum state A, for example, the second node will also be in quantum state A. In this experiment, the atoms were entangled for 100 microseconds — a long time in quantum physics.

This entanglement is what makes hacking into a quantum computer and eavesdropping on impossible. As as soon as a hacker tapped into a quantum network, the states of the atoms wouldn’t match up — a big red flag that something was awary.

It’s a long way yet to a truly large-scale quantum network, but this is a first step.

Source

ikenbot:

Artificial Intelligence Could Be on Brink of Passing Turing Test

One hundred years after Alan Turing was born, his eponymous test remains an elusive benchmark for artificial intelligence. Now, for the first time in decades, it’s possible to imagine a machine making the grade.

Turing was one of the 20th century’s great mathematicians, a conceptual architect of modern computing whose codebreaking played a decisive part in World War II. His test, described in a seminal dawn-of-the-computer-age paper, was deceptively simple: If a machine could pass for human in conversation, the machine could be considered intelligent.

Artificial intelligences are now ubiquitous, from GPS navigation systems and Google algorithms to automated customer service and Apple’s Siri, to say nothing of Deep Blue and Watson — but no machine has met Turing’s standard. The quest to do so, however, and the lines of research inspired by the general challenge of modeling human thought, have profoundly influenced both computer and cognitive science.

There is reason to believe that code kernels for the first Turing-intelligent machine have already been written.

“Two revolutionary advances in information technology may bring the Turing test out of retirement,” wrote Robert French, a cognitive scientist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, in an Apr. 12 Science essay. “The first is the ready availability of vast amounts of raw data — from video feeds to complete sound environments, and from casual conversations to technical documents on every conceivable subject. The second is the advent of sophisticated techniques for collecting, organizing, and processing this rich collection of data.”

Read on..

infinity-imagined:

The Calyx Institute is a non-profit, crowd-funded ISP which puts the privacy of it’s users before everything else.  Instead of happily handing over customer information like other major ISPs, the Calyx institute will have end-to-end encryption over its network, making it unable to comply with government requests for information.  Calyx will operate over a 4G wireless network in cities across the United States, and will provide broadband for about $20/month.  It will eventually include an encrypted file storage and email service.  This project is just beginning, the institute needs at least a million dollars to set up a datacenter in New York and develop the infrastructure required to make this a reality.  You can read more about the Calyx institue at CNet, and you can donate to the institute at indegogo.

hypna:

Clouds, Smoke and Portals Torn into Photographs

Raleigh-based artist and landscape architect Scott Hazard uses carefully layered photographs to create delicately torn concentric shapes symbolizing plumes of smoke, clouds, and mysterious portals in walls. Hazard has also used adaptations of the same technique to create a number of fantastic typographic works he calls Text Constructs.

Researchers at Purdue and…

In case you missed it:

On Tuesday, March 20, 2012, over 5,000 people tuned in to the live stream of the 2012 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate from the LeFrak Theater at the American Museum of Natural History.

Hosted by Hayden Planetarium Director Neil deGrasse Tyson, this year’s debate pitted some of the experimentalists who claimed to have discovered faster-than-light neutrinos against their strongest critics, as well as other teams who are racing to test Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity with unprecedented precision.

moderation:

Is This Proof of Life on Mars?

—

The Curiosity rover is currently on its way to Mars, scheduled to make a dramatic landing within Gale Crater in mid-August and begin its hunt for the geologic signatures of a watery, life-friendly past. Solid evidence that large volumes of water existed on Mars at some point would be a major step forward in the search for life on the Red Planet.

But… has it already been found? Some scientists say yes.

Researchers from universities in Los Angeles, California, Tempe, Arizona and Siena, Italy have published a paper in the International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences (IJASS) citing the results of their work with data obtained by NASA’s Viking mission.

The team’s paper can be found here.

(via universetoday)

christinetheastrophysicist:

UCSD Physicist Uses Math to Beat Traffic Ticket

A physicist at the Univeristy of California San Diego used his knowledge of measuring bodies in motion to show in court why he couldn’t be guilty of a ticket for failing to halt at a stop sign. The argument, a four-page paper delving into the differences between angular and linear motion, got the physicist out of a $400 ticket. 

Read More.

Read his paper titled “The Proof of Innocence.”

Isn’t there a “Big Bang Theory” episode based on this?

quantumaniac:

First Zero-G Wedding

Noah Fulmor and Erin Finnegan (above and below) became the first couple to get married in weightless conditions on June 20, 2009.

Only way to top this is a bachelor party aboard the ISS. Hmmm. Be right  back.

putitneta:

E-paper watch on Kickstarter gets $1M in 2 hours. This is a customizable by download from iPhone or smartphone. You can  get sports and fitness apps, notifications like sns and even music controllers to your phone. This device is now at
$1,279,939 and 9,429 backers !

?????????????????????????????????????????apple?????????????????????

putitneta:

E-paper watch on Kickstarter gets $1M in 2 hours. This is a customizable by download from iPhone or smartphone. You can  get sports and fitness apps, notifications like sns and even music controllers to your phone. This device is now at
$1,279,939 and 9,429 backers !

?????????????????????????????????????????apple?????????????????????

Beautiful Compounds

Some common chemicals, illustrated.

Beautiful Compounds

Some common chemicals, illustrated.