Space 1999 – Season 1, Episode 1 – Breakaway

trinsghost:

Exactly two years ago, NASA launched an $850 million spacecraft, called the Solar Dynamics Observatory, on a five-year long mission to record high-definition videos of the sun, which should help astronomers better understand its weather cycle and how it might effect life on earth. To celebrate SDO’s 2nd anniversary, NASA has released a stunning video featuring tornado-like formations swirling across the surface.

laboratoryequipment:

Cuttlefish Boast Most Accurate Vision of Any Animal

Cuttlefish have the most acute polarization vision yet found in any animal, researchers at the Univ. of Bristol have discovered by showing them movies on a modified LCD computer screen to test their eyesight. Cuttlefish and their colorblind cousins, squid and octopus, see aspects of light – including polarized light – that are invisible to humans, giving them a covert communication channel. The Bristol study, published in Current Biology found that cuttlefish were much more sensitive to polarization than previously thought.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Researchers-Use-LCD-Screens-to-Test-Cuttlefish-Vision-022112.aspx

laughingsquid:

Science Nation Army, White Stripes Cover Song Created Using Science Lab Sounds

Sheep in Wolf-Rayet’s Clothing: New Image of Planetary Nebula Hen 3-1333

A new image from the NASA Hubble Space Telescope shows planetary nebula Hen 3-1333. Planetary nebulae have nothing to do with planets — they actually represent the death throes of mid-sized stars like the sun. As they puff out their outer layers, large, irregular globes of glowing gas expand around them, which appeared planet-like through the small telescopes that were used by their first discoverers. The star at the heart of Hen 3-1333 is thought to have a mass of around 60% that of the sun, but unlike the sun, its apparent brightness varies substantially over time. Astronomers believe this variability is caused by a disc of dust which lies almost edge-on when viewed from Earth, which periodically obscures the star… [Read the full article here]

scienceisbeauty:

This is the first-ever map of the surface of an exoplanet, or a planet beyond our solar system. The map, which shows temperature variations across the cloudy tops of a gas giant called HD 189733b, is made from infrared data taken by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Hotter temperatures are represented in brighter colors.

Source: First Map of an Exoplanet Atmosphere, Spitzer Space Telescope

ulaulaman:

The Amazon basin in transition
Nature realized an on-line special about Amazon: The changing Amazon. In the special there are some interesting papers and articles. For example Citizen scientists’ climate-impact survey wraps up by Priya Shetty about a great project about the affection of climate change on forests; or Break down boundaries in climate research about Paolo Artaxo and collegues review work, The Amazon basin in transition:

Agricultural expansion and climate variability have become important agents of disturbance in the Amazon basin. Recent studies have demonstrated considerable resilience of Amazonian forests to moderate annual drought, but they also show that interactions between deforestation, fire and drought potentially lead to losses of carbon storage and changes in regional precipitation patterns and river discharge. Although the basin-wide impacts of land use and drought may not yet surpass the magnitude of natural variability of hydrologic and biogeochemical cycles, there are some signs of a transition to a disturbance-dominated regime. These signs include changing energy and water cycles in the southern and eastern portions of the Amazon basin.

In particular I’m interested about two particular maps. The first is about the climate gradient across Amazon

Main figure, the hydrologic Amazon basin is demarcated by a thick blue line; isopleths of mean daily precipitation during the three driest months of the year (in mm; white lines) are overlain onto four land-cover classes (key at bottom left). These isopleths are presented only for areas within Brazil, because of lack of adequate data elsewhere. The arrow emphasizes the trend from continuously wet conditions in the northwest to long and pronounced dry seasons in the southeast, which includes Cerrado (savannah/woodland) vegetation. National boundaries are demarcated by broken black lines. Inset, map showing area of main figure (boxed).

and the second (that I attach at the end of the post) is about the future fire risk of Amazon by 2050.
The review it seems very complete (researchers examin all possible causes of climate change), and it concludes with the following words:

The emerging evidence of a system in biophysical transition highlights the need for improved understanding of the trade-offs between land cover, carbon stocks, water resources, habitat conservation, human health and economic development in future scenarios of climate and land-use change. Brazil is poised to become one of the few countries to achieve the transition to a major economic power without destroying most of its forests. However, continued improvements in scientific and technological capacity and human resources will be required in the Amazon region to guide and manage both biophysical and socio-economic transitions.

runningtofindhappiness:

A Trip to the Moon, Georges Melies, 1902

scifigeneration:

Live Long, Pharrell.

quickhits:

As Science is Politicized, One Scientist Thinks Politically

As shocking revelations go, it wasn’t much of one; leaked documents showed that a rightwing thinktank had a detailed PR strategy to get everyone to believe that global warming is a hoax. Among other things, the Heartland Institute would produce “modules for Grades 7-9 on environmental impact,” with the goal of teaching the controversy, not the science.

“The scientific debate remains open,” one memo reads. “Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate, and defer to scientists and other experts in the field.”

It’s a strategy pioneered by creationists, which really ought to tell you all you need to know about its educational and scientific value. At first, the climate deniers claimed that the documents were forgeries. But then environmental scientist and writer Peter Gleick came out as the leaker and put that lie to bed. Gleick says he first received a document in the mail from an anonymous source, then requested more documents from Heartland using a fake name. He got them.

Given the potential impact however, I attempted to confirm the accuracy of the information in this document. In an effort to do so, and in a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics, I solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else’s name. The materials the Heartland Institute sent to me confirmed many of the facts in the original document, including especially their 2012 fundraising strategy and budget. I forwarded, anonymously, the documents I had received to a set of journalists and experts working on climate issues. I can explicitly confirm, as can the Heartland Institute, that the documents they emailed to me are identical to the documents that have been made public. I made no changes or alterations of any kind to any of the Heartland Institute documents or to the original anonymous communication.

I will not comment on the substance or implications of the materials; others have and are doing so. I only note that the scientific understanding of the reality and risks of climate change is strong, compelling, and increasingly disturbing, and a rational public debate is desperately needed. My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts — often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated — to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate, and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved. Nevertheless I deeply regret my own actions in this case. I offer my personal apologies to all those affected.

This is obviously the worst thing ever!

Of course, informed readers will remember the ginned up “Climategate,” where hackers illegally broke into servers at the University of East Anglia, and stole a bunch of emails — emails they then released them piecemeal and out of context. Science writer PZ Myers does.

I don’t get it. First there was Climategate, in which hackers illegally broke into a server at the University of East Anglia and stole a pile of emails from climate researchers. The denialists seemed to be fine with that, and quote-mined the heck out of the documents to find damning statements, lying and claiming that they showed that the scientists faked their data (they did no such thing, of course). All the sturm and drang at that time was over the contents of the emails, not the illegal method of their acquisition.

Now the shoe is on the other foot…

But then he gets perplexed. “And [here’s] Peter Gleick beating himself up for exposing the Heartland Institute’s mendacity,” he writes. “I really don’t get that. He’s a scientist. Scientists gather data to make informed decisions. Gleick got the data the Heartland Institute tried to hide. You can’t on one hand condemn Gleick for asking for the information and getting it handed to him, while praising hackers for breaking into a server and illegally taking data.”

I’m surprised that Meyers doesn’t see what’s happening here. Gleick’s goal in “beating himself up” isn’t to confess to some perceived professional lapse — although that’s exactly how he casts it — but to verify the authenticity of the documents. The documents are unquestionably real and we know that because Peter Gleick just confessed to what the right are hyperbolically and hypocritically referring to as “theft.” He’s put his personal and professional reputation on the line — or, at least, he seems to have. In truth, he did what any good investigative journalist might have done. There is no actual ethical breach here and Gleick knows it.

Peter Gleick has a PR strategy of his own. Turnabout is, after all, fair play.

-Wisco

shortformblog:

Fun guy chillin’ in South American rainforest finds plastic-eating fungi

Seriously, though this is kind of a big deal. Know that big problem we have? You know, the one involving a crapload of used plastic hanging around in landfills with nowhere to biodegrade for a couple million years? Well, Jonathan Russell might’ve solved that problem. See, Russell and his fellow Yale students went to Ecuador, where they found a new kind of fungus they’re calling Pestalotiopsis microspora. Big deal, you’re thinking. Anyone can find fungus anywhere! Well, something his fellow students found out after the fact is that this fungus can live on a diet of polyurethane alone — and even crazier, it doesn’t even need air to do so! In other words, we could potentially put it at the bottom of a landfill and cover it with plastic, and it would do the rest of the work. This might be game-changing if it works as advertised. (photo via Flickr user dbutt; EDIT: Updated with link to research abstract) source

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thescienceofrealities:

“ In 2008 NASA’s Gravity Probe-B satellite completed a 2-year measurement of the angular displacement of a high-precission gyroscopes spin axis as it orbited Earth. It took another two years but in 2010, physicists confirmed a prediction made by Einsteins Theory of General Relativity over 70 years ago that the spin axis will change by a minute amount due to the gravitational ‘frame dragging’ effect caused by the spinning spacetime surrounding Earth. This effect has also been detected in other situations but not with the extremely high precission that the GP-B measurements provided. “

Source: Space Math at NASA

kateoplis:

Moon Rock Hunter

latimes:

A very rough road for community college students: Many graduated from low-performing high schools that ill-prepared them for college, making them unlikely to get a degree. L.A.’s. community college district is responding with special programs, but one social scientist says it’s not enough.

The challenges facing community colleges nationwide are borne out by a trio of studies released last week by the Civil Rights Project, a social science research group at UCLA:

The studies found that black and Latino community college students in Southern California are failing to advance because many have graduated from low-performing high schools that ill-prepare them for college work. These students then end up at similar two-year institutions with poor transfer records.

One of the studies analyzed high school graduates and the transfer rates of students after six years at 51 community colleges in Ventura, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange and San Diego counties. It found that students who graduated from high schools with large minority populations, low test scores and low numbers of parents with college degrees were far less likely to transfer to a four-year institution.

The likelihood of attending a low- or high-performing high school was strongly related to race and ethnicity, the studies found. Patterns of high school segregation — by race, ethnicity and poverty — continued in the community college system because students typically attend the college closest to home.

Photo: Los Angeles Southwest College students Vincent Atkins, from left, Frank Simmons, Kent Williams and Foster Washington work on a class project together. Behind them is supplemental English instructor Eddie Powell. Credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

skepttv:

Effects Of Galaxy Collision On Star Clusters

This movie accompanies MNRAS-accepted paper Formation versus destruction: the evolution of the star cluster population in galaxy mergers by Kruijssen, Pelupessy, Lamers, Portegies Zwart, Bastian and Icke.

infojunked:

Everything is Connected to Everything by Brian Cox

thenextweb:

In a report by mobile analytics company Flurry, it appears the advertising industry still doesn’t seem to understand the potential mobile advertising has, despite the fact that it’s where consumers are spending tons of their time. (via Advertisers Aren’t Taking Advantage of Mobile)

If you’d…

awesome-everyday:

ACCURATE

riyanadee:

completely amazed.

(via…

Researchers at…

black-tangled-heart:

Google Celebrates Heinrich Rudolf Hertz Birthday

One of the pillars of the “Electromagnetic Theory of Light,” German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz is the center of the Google universe today, February 22nd (Australian Time) with his own Google Doodle. According to Google, the new Doodle celebrates the 155th birthday of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz.

moderation:

A Mardi Gras Moon Crossing

—

The Sun seems to be glowing in traditional Mardi Gras colors in this image, made from three AIA channels taken today at approximately 14:11 UT (about 9:11 a.m. EST) as the Moon passed between it and the Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft. Looks like it’s that time of year again!

 During portions of the year, the Moon transits the Sun on a regular basis from the perspective of NASA’s SDO spacecraft, which lies within the Moon’s orbit. When this happens we are treated to an improvised eclipse… and it gives SDO engineers a way to fine-tune the observatory’s calibration as well.

Here’s more AIA views of the same event captured in different wavelengths:

(via universetoday)

expose-the-light:

20 Things You Didn’t Know About The Periodic Table

How it started, how it’s like solitaire, how to fold it, and how it ends.

by Rebecca Coffey

Image above: Periodic Table by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

1  You may remember the Periodic Table of the Elements as a dreary chart on your classroom wall. If so, you never guessed its real purpose: It’s a giant cheat sheet.

2  The table has served chemistry students since 1869, when it was created by Dmitry Mendeleyev, a cranky professor at the University of St. Petersburg.

3  With a publisher’s deadline looming, Mendeleyev didn’t have time to describe all 63 then-known elements. So he turned to a data set of atomic weights meticulously gathered by others.

4  To determine those weights, scientists had passed currents through various solutions to break them up into their constituent atoms. Responding to a battery’s polarity, the atoms of one element would go thisaway, the atoms of another thataway. The atoms were collected in separate containers and then weighed.

5  From this process, chemists determined relative weights—which were all Mendeleyev needed to establish a useful ranking.

6  Fond of card games, he wrote the weight for each element on a separate index card and sorted them as in solitaire. Elements with similar properties formed a “suit” that he placed in columns ordered by ascending atomic weight.

7  Now he had a new Periodic Law (“Elements arranged according to the value of their atomic weights present a clear periodicity of properties”) that described one pattern for all 63 elements.

8  Where Mendeleyev’s table had blank spaces, he correctly predicted the weights and chemical behaviors of some missing elements—gallium, scandium, and germanium.

9  But when argon was discovered in 1894, it didn’t fit into any of Mendeleyev’s columns, so he denied its existence—as he did for helium, neon, krypton, xenon, and radon.

10  In 1902 he acknowledged he had not anticipated the existence of these overlooked, incredibly unreactive elements—the noble gases—which now constitute the entire eighth group of the table.

11  Now we sort elements by their number of protons, or “atomic number,” which determines an atom’s configuration of oppositely charged electrons and hence its chemical properties.

12  Noble gases (far right on the periodic table) have closed shells of electrons, which is why they are nearly inert.

13  Atomic love: Take a modern periodic table, cut out the complicated middle columns, and fold it once along the middle of the Group 4 elements. The groups that kiss have complementary electron structures and will combine with each other.

14  Sodium touches chlorine—table salt! You can predict other common compounds like potassium chloride, used in very large doses as part of a lethal injection.

15  The Group 4 elements (shown as IVA above) in the middle bond readily with each other and with themselves. Silicon + silicon + silicon ad infinitum links up into crystalline lattices, used to make semiconductors for computers.

16  Carbon atoms—also Group 4—bond in long chains, and voilà: sugars. The chemical flexibility of carbon is what makes it the key molecule of life.

17  Mendeleyev wrongly assumed that all elements are unchanging. But radioactive atoms have unstable nuclei, meaning they can move around the chart. For example, uranium (element 92) gradually decays into a whole series of lighter elements, ending with lead (element 82).

18  Beyond the edge: Atoms with atomic numbers higher than 92 do not exist naturally, but they can be created by bombarding elements with other elements or pieces of them.

19  The two newest members of the periodic table, still-unnamed elements 114 and 116, were officially recognized last June. Number 116 decays and disappears in milliseconds. (Three elements, 110 to 112, were also officially named earlier this month.)

20  Physicist Richard Feynman once predicted that number 137 defines the table’s outer limit; adding any more protons would produce an energy that could be quantified only by an imaginary number, rendering element 138 and higher impossible. Maybe.

nevver:

Made by Big

World War II was a period…

m-louis:

nezzz:

Google

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Time to have an End of Line Party soon!

netflixia:

Leaving Soon: Tron: Legacy

Available only until the end of Feb. 2012 (Starz Play)

(2010) PG – 125 minutes

While investigating the mysterious disappearance of his father, Kevin (Jeff Bridges), techie Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) lands in a beguiling computerized world of enslaved gladiators, where his dad has been living for more than 20 years. Joined by Kevin’s trusted friend (Olivia Wilde), the father and son must journey across a breathtaking — and perilous — cyberscape in this 21st-century update to the beloved 1982 sci-fi classic.

6.9/10 – IMDB

View Trailer || Add/Watch on Netflix

oneheadtoanother:

The ancestor of all life on Earth might have been a gigantic planetary super-organism

xombebe:

The Strongest Material Known to Man (by bigthink)

Today in…

skepttv:

Are You Lightest In The Morning? (Daily Weight Fluctuations)

Are you heaviest at night before you go to bed and lightest in the morning? I tried to tease out the factors to figure out what really causes weight gain and loss during the day.

thenewenlightenmentage:

The History of the Universe: From Big Bang to Big Blah

After the furies of birth, the mature cosmos now evolves more slowly. Stars will continue to form for as long as another 100 trillion years (about 10,000 times the present age of the universe), which leaves plenty of time for slow-building cosmic phenomena to occur.

» View the timeline

thenewenlightenmentage:

Primodial Black Hole Relics from the Big Bang —Are They a Source of Dark Matter? (Today’s Most Popular)

Scientists looking to capture evidence of dark matter — the invisible substance thought to constitute much of the universe — have unveiled a ready-made method for detecting the collision of stars with an elusive type of black hole that is on the short list of objects believed to make up dark matter. Such a discovery could serve as observable proof of dark matter and provide a much deeper understanding of the universe’s inner workings.

Continue reading “Primodial Black Hole Relics from the Big Bang —Are They a Source of Dark Matter? (Today’s Most Popular)” »

slamthatstem:

@larsenroed has scientific PROOF that slamming is better than not slamming.

Please note that Mr. Diagram Man is rocking a sweet tuck.

He also appears to have no chain, no brakes (though he has brake levers), but is still also sporting some sweet shades.

Australian and American…

ScienceDaily (Feb. 20, 2012) — Pulsars,…

brianduprix:

Sony Xperia U ‘Kumquat’ pics leak, gets sized up ahead of MWC, from Engadget http://engt.co/wTu1Ao

Funny how the trend was to make gadgets ‘smaller’ just a short time ago.

myimaginarybrooklyn:

Steve Job’s Bookshelves.

ajesguerra:

Touch pocket watch.

what!

thiscircularparade:

Godspeed, John Glenn – Photographs from Friendship 7?s Historic Mission

thenewenlightenmentage:

When 14 Billion Years Just Isn’t Enough Time [Preview]

Some say its glory days are long gone, but the universe has life in it yet. Brand-new types of celestial phenomena will unfold over the coming billions and trillions of years.

Time’s seemingly inexorable march has always provoked interest in, and speculation about, the far future of the cosmos. The usual picture is grim. Five billion years from now the sun will puff itself into a red giant star and swallow the inner solar system before slowly fading to black. But this temporal frame captures only a tiny portion—in fact, an infinitesimal one—of the entire future. As astronomers look ahead, say, “five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years,” as humorist Douglas Adams did in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, they meet a cosmos replete with myriad slow fades to oblivion. By then the accelerating expansion of space will have already carried everything outside our galaxy beyond our view, leaving the night sky ever emptier. Lord Byron captured the prospect of such a celestial wasteland in his 1816 poem “Darkness”: “The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars/Did wander darkling in the eternal space.”

thenewenlightenmentage:

NASA’s Webb Telescope: Revolutionary Design, Runaway Costs

In deep, cold space, nearly a million miles from Earth, a giant telescope later this decade will scan for the first light to streak across the universe more than 13 billion years ago.

The 7-ton spacecraft, one of the most ambitious and costly science projects in U.S. history, is under construction for NASA at Northrop Grumman Corp.’s space park complex in Redondo Beach, Calif.

The aim is to capture the oldest light, taking cosmologists to the time after the big bang when matter had cooled just enough to start forming the first blazing stars in what had been empty darkness. Astronomers have long dreamed about peering into that provenance.

Read More

geneticist:

A worker at Dalian Hoffen Bio-Technique Company in northern China pieces together plastinated human parts (yes, made from the bodies of the unclaimed deceased)
The completed piece will be put on exhibit for people around the world to see. Read more

jtotheizzoe:

The Forgetting Pill: Can We Erase Painful Memories?

If you could take a pill that would erase any memory, would you take it? Traumatic memories can be painful, debilitating baggage, persisting for decades and often difficult to control. Previous therapies involved discussing traumatic memories in detail, but new models of the elastic and networked basis of memory have demonstrated that this isn’t effective. Jonah Lehrer writes in Wired:

Since the time of the ancient Greeks, people have imagined memories to be a stable form of information that persists reliably. The metaphors for this persistence have changed over time—Plato compared our recollections to impressions in a wax tablet, and the idea of a biological hard drive is popular today—but the basic model has not. Once a memory is formed, we assume that it will stay the same. This, in fact, is why we trust our recollections. They feel like indelible portraits of the past.

None of this is true. In the past decade, scientists have come to realize that our memories are not inert packets of data and they don’t remain constant. Even though every memory feels like an honest representation, that sense of authenticity is the biggest lie of all.

However, a “memory” is not a “thing”, in the usual sense of the word. It is an experience, in our brain, that we replay.

We have new understanding that the formation of memories is utterly dependent on biological processes, on proteins that help write new connections in our neural network. When we “re-fire” this network, we “recall” a memory. What if we could block the proteins that write the connections? Could we truly forget?

New research is getting close to just that. In rats, drugs can block the function of a key protein (PKMzeta) involved in strengthening memory synapses. The effect is preventing experiences from being reinforced. In a sense, one can forget that small neural web, and the memory that it encodes.

When we begin to view memory as relative, as dependent on a constant flux of neural networks, it calls into question what is “true”. And the ethics of taking a “forgetting” pill are just as murky. It turns out that our assumption that we can’t choose what to remember or forget is wrong, and soon we might have the power to make that choice. Would you?

For more, check out Jonah Lehrer’s full article, and this series on PKMzeta from Ed Yong. 

(via Wired Magazine, image by Dwight Eschliman)

the-lives-of-stars:

A Message From Earth 

What are these Earthlings trying to tell us? The above message was broadcast from Earth towards the globular star cluster M13 in 1974. During the dedication of the Arecibo Observatory - still the largest single radio telescope in the world – a string of 1’s and 0’s representing the above diagram was sent. This attempt at extraterrestrial communication was mostly ceremonial – humanity regularly broadcasts radio and television signals out into space accidentally. Even were this message received, M13 is so far away we would have to wait almost 50,000 years to hear an answer. The above message gives a few simple facts about humanity and itsknowledge: from left to right are numbers from one to ten, atoms including hydrogen and carbon, some interesting molecules, DNA, a human with description, basics of our Solar System, and basics of the sending telescope. Several searches for extraterrestrial intelligence are currently underway, including one where you can use your own home computer.

nevrfail:

“Observations not only disturb what is to be measured, they produce it.”

Pascual Jordan

herochan:

Smooth Minimalist Heroes – by Grégoire Guilleminu

Website | Store

akio:

(via Remembering Roger Boisjoly: He Tried To Stop Shuttle Challenger Launch : The Two-Way : NPR)

Roger Boisjoly was a booster rocket engineer at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol in Utah in January, 1986, when he and four colleagues became embroiled in the fatal decision to launch the Space Shuttle Challenger.

Boisjoly was also one of two confidential sources quoted by NPR three weeks later in the first detailed report about the Challenger launch decision, and the stiff resistance by Boisjoly and other Thiokol engineers.

The experience both haunted and inspired Boisjoly in the decades that followed. We learned this weekend from this story in The New York Times that Boisjoly died last month in Utah at age 73.

samsaranmusing:

The Examination of Life in the Context of Space-Time

 All designed systems have a “purpose”.  A watch, a space shuttle or a toaster oven … all have as their central characteristic a function. 

 
There is an unbroken connection between every living thing on this planet from tube worms in the Pacific Rift to you and the first self replicating system. You are directly connected to every living thing on Earth both now and since the beginning.

The American Science Fiction author Kurt Vonnegut once wrote a short story called “Timeline”. In it he describes human beings as fourth dimensional beings. Worm like creatures pink and small at one end and grey at the other. We are constrained by our three dimensional perspective.

Life is not the discrete form you see with your senses. It is a vast fourth dimensional web of being. We accept time as linear and progressive because this is the way we perceive it with our senses and interpret it with our consciousness.

The truth, as physics shows us is that time is not linear. It is as many Eastern philosophies have described it for centuries eternal. All that was and will be is. We only see time as linear in the same way we can only sense certain wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum or the way our senses are limited in scale. We cannot perceive the very small or the very large. Likewise we see time as flowing from moment to moment always forward.

Look at life in the fourth dimension. Consider the atoms which make up living things as they move both in space and in time. It becomes a tangled overlapping skein of life, You are connected, not is some vague philosophical way but in a very real and physical way with this tangled fourth dimensional web of life. Viewed in this way, the question of “life after death” becomes meaningless. The Hindu/Taoist/Zen view of death as not an end but a transition makes very real and concrete sense.

There is no death only the death of consciousness within the individual. Viewed from a fourth dimensional perspective YOU have always been alive and will always be alive. It matters little that the atoms of carbon and hydrogen which have agreed, for the time being, to be you will someday go a different way and become something else. Your mind, your consciousness is not so much as a tool for gathering information as it is a reducing valve to reduce information to a form useful for gathering sustenance and allowing you to pass along your immortal coil … your genes … your DNA. Your consciousness will have served its purpose but its essence is contained within the helix.

We are obsessed with endings and beginnings. Whence did life begin? When will it end? Is my death the end of that which is truly me? How was the universe formed? What existed before space and time? These questions only matter from the perspective of one locked in three dimensions.

If there is a God then it is us.

(arXiv.org) Published: 8 February 2012. The XENON…

skepttv:

Is this the birth of 3D liquid crystal displays?

In this video, you’ll see an amazing vision of the high-tech future: A series of videos taken under the microscope, documenting a new kind of pixel that could one day turn your tablet computer into a 3D display. University of Cambridge photonic engineer Tim Wilkinson is combining liquid crystals with nanotechnology in an effort to create realistic 3D displays you wouldn’t need clunky glasses to appreciate.

{Read full story.}

nevrfail:

“In the beginning there were only probabilities. The universe could only come into existence if someone observed it. It does not matter that the observers turned up several billion years later. The universe exists because we are aware of it.”

Martin Rees

Fusion is awesome stuff, but currently it isn’t efficient in that it takes way too a…

Can’t we just get along?

roguesquid:

RogueSquid says: “NASA has confirmed that the unbalanced climate is in fact from Humans (Anthropogenic) causes. The diagram I quickly put together is to represent the heat from the sun; the large arrows are what we are taking IN for heat, and the little arrows represent what our Ozone is releasing. Unfortunately, we are taking IN more heat than we are letting go. With our over abundance of CO₂ we are making it harder for the extra heat we DON’T need to leave, which is causing global warming. (:p Sorry for the silly diagram)”

mothernaturenetwork:

Mars-bound penny will keep things in perspective for Rover
The penny is intended to act as a scaling tool for any pictures that the Curiosity rover takes on the Red Planet.

laboratoryequipment:

X-Ray Light Makes Clear Atomic Nuclei

At the high-brilliance synchrotron light source PETRA III, a team of Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) scientists headed by Ralf Röhlsberger has succeeded in making atomic nuclei transparent with the help of X-ray light. At the same time they have also discovered a new way to realize an optically controlled light switch that can be used to manipulate light with light, an important ingredient for efficient future quantum computers. The research results are presented in the current edition of the scientific journal Nature.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-X-Ray-Light-Makes-Clear-Atomic-Nuclei-020912.aspx

fvlr:

Electronic Tattoo Monitors Brain, Heart and Muscles

Elastic electronics offer less invasive, more convenient medical treatment

Imagine if there were electronics able to prevent epileptic seizures before they happen. Or electronics that could be placed on the surface of a beating heart to monitor its functions. The problem is that such devices are a tough fit. Body tissue is soft and pliable while conventional circuits can be hard and brittle—at least until now.

“We’re trying to bridge that gap, from silicon, wafer-based electronics to biological, ‘tissue-like’ electronics, to really blur the distinction between electronics and the body,” says materials scientist John Rogers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to the NSF site (…)

shortformblog:

A poster inspired by yesterday’s amazing marshmallow cannon situation. Obama’s mouth has never been so agape.

jtotheizzoe:

Heart Stop Beating: The Story of the First Man WIth No Pulse

If we were to walk outside and ask the first hundred people on the street what criteria someone would have to possess in order to be “alive”, I am guessing that a heartbeat would be at or near the top of the list.

In most of our bodies, that electrochemical muscle machine works without fail. But others aren’t so lucky. Doctors are left with two choices then: Repair the heart, or replace it outright.

This film by Jeremiah Zagar tells the story of Billy Cohn and Bud Frazier, two visionary surgeons from the Texas Heart Institute, and their quest to save a man’s life by taking away his heartbeat. 

You may remember the groundbreaking device from this stunning movie from last year. Science does mighty amazing things.

(by Focus Forward Films)

theblackworkshop:

Bookcase Wall System by Poliform

a2owaterblog:

High levels of chromium in tap water correlate with carcinogenic activity.The states with the red dots show where the chemical can be found.

CLEAN WATER IS IMPORTANT!!!!

Click on the photo to read this article from Environmental Working Group and to find an enlarged version of the photo.

shortformblog:

Eco-friendly Maldives president resigns: Mohamed Nasheed, the first democratically-elected president of the Maldives, long held a reputation as being an environmentally-focused activist and organizer who used those skills to become president in 2008, replacing Maumoon Abdul Gayoom Gayoom, who led the country for three decades. But in recent weeks, Nasheed’s power was shaken over allegations he forced out a judge who supported the opposition. On Tuesday, he resigned amid protests. ”It will be better for the country in the current situation if I resign,” Nasheed said in a news conference. “I don’t want to run the country with an iron fist.” (Photo: In an attempt to highlight global war Nasheed holds the world’s first underwater cabinet meeting in 2009. EPA photo)

To  be fair, though, Namor was holding underwater cabinet meetings waaaaay before 2009.

roninwood:

For my senior seminar class we were asked to re-design the book cover of How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul. One cover “good design” and one “bad design” 

I had a lot of fun.

smokink:

And last one of the Sherlock picspam, this one for trekkies:

Leonard Nimoy (Spock in TOS) an Brent Spiner (Data in TNG) as Sherlock xD

hellgab:

The Legend of Zelda Posters (Second Set) - by Gabriel Leoni

Website | deviantART | Tumblr

Personal note: The Legend of Zelda, one of the best selling games that Nintendo has ever created, was recently added to the Hall of Fame of video games.

In this second set I have created posters that represent each one of the The Legend Of Zelda’s games that I did not put in the first set.

You can check the first set HERE.

I want to thanks for the support to it8bit, pacalin, herochan, ronworkman, svalts, gamefreakz and all the users who like and enjoyed my sets, the posters will be on sale soon.

unknownskywalker:

NASA’s Chandra finds Milky Way’s black hole may be grazing on asteroids

This image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the center of our Galaxy, with a supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A* for short) in the center. The image contains nearly a million seconds of Chandra observing of the region around the black hole, with red representing low-energy X-rays, green as medium-energy X-rays, and blue being the highest.

Using intermittent observations over several years, Chandra has detected X-ray flares about once a day from Sgr A*. A new study provides a possible explanation for the mysterious flares. The suggestion is that there is a cloud around Sgr A* containing hundreds of trillions of asteroids and comets, which have been stripped from their parent stars.

An asteroid that undergoes a close encounter with another object, such as a star or planet, can be thrown into an orbit headed towards Sgr A*, as seen in the series of artist’s illustrations. If the asteroid passes within about 100 million miles of the black hole, roughly the distance between the Earth and the Sun, it would be torn into pieces by the tidal forces from the black hole.

These fragments would then be vaporized by friction as they pass through the hot, thin gas flowing onto Sgr A*, similar to a meteor heating up and glowing as it falls through Earth’s atmosphere. A flare is produced and eventually the remains of the asteroid are swallowed by the black hole.

gutewerbung:

Beijing Sports Radio: Boxing, Golf, Tennis

Advertising Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Hong Kong
Executive Creative Directors: Simon Handford, Sandy Chan
Creative Director: Alvin Lim
Art Directors: Alvin Lim, Sonny Tjahjadi, Jason Pan, Hubert Yeung
Associate CD / Copywriter: Richard Sorensen
Retoucher: A Thousand Eyes
Account team: Tak Chi Lee, Paul Lam, Cao Yu

gutewerbung:

Beijing Sports Radio: Boxing, Golf, Tennis

Advertising Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Hong Kong
Executive Creative Directors: Simon Handford, Sandy Chan
Creative Director: Alvin Lim
Art Directors: Alvin Lim, Sonny Tjahjadi, Jason Pan, Hubert Yeung
Associate CD / Copywriter: Richard Sorensen
Retoucher: A Thousand Eyes
Account team: Tak Chi Lee, Paul Lam, Cao Yu

pbsthisdayinhistory:

FEBRUARY 8, 1828: AUTHOR JULES VERNE BORN

184 years ago today, French author Jules Verne was born. Verne was one of the first pioneers of science fiction writings.

Watch this Antiques Roadshow clip to see how much a rare, first American edition of the author’s famous book, “Twenty Thousands Leagues Under the Sea” is worth now.

You will not believe how much – you may want to start book collecting!

pbsthisdayinhistory:

FEBRUARY 8, 1828: AUTHOR JULES VERNE BORN

184 years ago today, French author Jules Verne was born. Verne was one of the first pioneers of science fiction writings.

Watch this Antiques Roadshow clip to see how much a rare, first American edition of the author’s famous book, “Twenty Thousands Leagues Under the Sea” is worth now.

You will not believe how much – you may want to start book collecting!

pbsthisdayinhistory:

FEBRUARY 8, 1828: AUTHOR JULES VERNE BORN

184 years ago today, French author Jules Verne was born. Verne was one of the first pioneers of science fiction writings.

Watch this Antiques Roadshow clip to see how much a rare, first American edition of the author’s famous book, “Twenty Thousands Leagues Under the Sea” is worth now.

You will not believe how much – you may want to start book collecting!

laboratoryequipment:

Supercomputers Help Decode Space Weather

“When a storm goes off on the sun, we can’t really predict the extent of damage that it will cause here on Earth. It is critical that we develop this predictive capability,” says Homa Karimabadi, a space physicist at the Univ. of California, San Diego (UCSD). Karimabadi’s team, in close collaboration with William Daughton at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is currently using the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s (OLCF’s) Cray XT5 Jaguar supercomputer, one of the most powerful in the world with a peak performance of 2.33 petaflops, to better understand the processes giving rise to space weather.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Researchers-Use-Supercomputer-to-Understand-Solar-Storms-020812.aspx

laboratoryequipment:

Supercomputers Help Decode Space Weather

“When a storm goes off on the sun, we can’t really predict the extent of damage that it will cause here on Earth. It is critical that we develop this predictive capability,” says Homa Karimabadi, a space physicist at the Univ. of California, San Diego (UCSD). Karimabadi’s team, in close collaboration with William Daughton at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is currently using the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s (OLCF’s) Cray XT5 Jaguar supercomputer, one of the most powerful in the world with a peak performance of 2.33 petaflops, to better understand the processes giving rise to space weather.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Researchers-Use-Supercomputer-to-Understand-Solar-Storms-020812.aspx

laboratoryequipment:

Supercomputers Help Decode Space Weather

“When a storm goes off on the sun, we can’t really predict the extent of damage that it will cause here on Earth. It is critical that we develop this predictive capability,” says Homa Karimabadi, a space physicist at the Univ. of California, San Diego (UCSD). Karimabadi’s team, in close collaboration with William Daughton at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is currently using the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s (OLCF’s) Cray XT5 Jaguar supercomputer, one of the most powerful in the world with a peak performance of 2.33 petaflops, to better understand the processes giving rise to space weather.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Researchers-Use-Supercomputer-to-Understand-Solar-Storms-020812.aspx

kml:

DSC08816_org (via itokoichi)

…creepy.

kml:

DSC08816_org (via itokoichi)

…creepy.

kml:

DSC08816_org (via itokoichi)

…creepy.

shychemist:

Where stars are born: Infrared telescope ‘cuts through’ clouds of huge Carina nebula to capture the young stars forming inside

The Carina Nebula lies in the southern part of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, 7500 light years from our planet. The glowing cloud of gas and dust is a ‘nursery’ of huge young stars, and spectacular from Earth even when viewed in visible light.

But scientists at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope have used an infrared HAWK-I camera to ‘cut through’ the dust – revealing stars that have never been seen before in the sharpest mosaic picture ever taken of the nebula.

Click title to read more.

shychemist:

Where stars are born: Infrared telescope ‘cuts through’ clouds of huge Carina nebula to capture the young stars forming inside

The Carina Nebula lies in the southern part of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, 7500 light years from our planet. The glowing cloud of gas and dust is a ‘nursery’ of huge young stars, and spectacular from Earth even when viewed in visible light.

But scientists at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope have used an infrared HAWK-I camera to ‘cut through’ the dust – revealing stars that have never been seen before in the sharpest mosaic picture ever taken of the nebula.

Click title to read more.

shychemist:

Where stars are born: Infrared telescope ‘cuts through’ clouds of huge Carina nebula to capture the young stars forming inside

The Carina Nebula lies in the southern part of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, 7500 light years from our planet. The glowing cloud of gas and dust is a ‘nursery’ of huge young stars, and spectacular from Earth even when viewed in visible light.

But scientists at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope have used an infrared HAWK-I camera to ‘cut through’ the dust – revealing stars that have never been seen before in the sharpest mosaic picture ever taken of the nebula.

Click title to read more.

Stylin’ fuel efficient airplanes of the future…
Image: Courtesy of NASA.

Stylin’ fuel efficient airplanes of the future…
Image: Courtesy of NASA.

Stylin’ fuel efficient airplanes of the future…
Image: Courtesy of NASA.

sportsnetny:

Super Bowl XLVI Mashup: All the Commercials in 2 Minutes 

Adweek