Darth Ambiguous say "Relax"

10 November 12 (Permalink)

Comments | 51 notes

jimwich:

Hurricane Sandy’s Fibonacci Golden Spiral

Ah, sweet, sweet laws of nature

27 June 12 (Permalink)

Comments | 9,569 notes

infinity-imagined:

Fluid dynamics of Earth’s ocean, colored by surface temperature.

Credit: NOAA, Thomas Delworth, Anthony Rosati. Watch the animation here.

6 April 12 (Permalink)

Comments | 29 notes

letslook4treasure:

40 years ago in 1972, the Club of Rome released a highly controversial environmental study, The Limits to Growth (AB). It estimated that if we continued to consume more than nature was capable of providing, global economic collapse and precipitous population decline could occur by 2030.

Research by Australian physicist Graham Turner supports the conclusions reached 40 years earlier by the MIT researchers that performed the original study. Turner compared real-world data from 1970 to 2000 to the first model and found that the predictions nearly matched the facts. “There is a very clear warning bell being rung here,” he says. “We are not on a sustainable trajectory.” (via Smithsonian Magazine)

9 January 12 (Permalink)

Comments | 116 notes

alanfriedman:

How BIG?

We know stuff on the sun is big, but how big? I find it easy to use Adobe Photoshop as my solar ruler. Make a circle the size of the sun, divide the diameter by 109 and you get a nice earth sized circle to measure with. This lovely spray of hydrogen plasma stretches out about 11 earth diameters along the limb. That’s close to 90,000 miles. Now that’s BIG.

7 January 12 (Permalink)

Comments | 96 notes

biocanvas:

A polarized light view of the crystals of phenol, a common precursor for many industrial chemical reactions.

Image by Doug Craft.

6 January 12 (Permalink)

Comments | 385 notes

cwnl:

Hunt for Exomoon Around Alien Planets is On

Side Note: Remember last night’s question about moons having moons of their own? As it turns out, new research may suggest the possibility of moons also having life of their own in recent exoplanet and exomoons simulations as implied in this SPACE article.

Imaged Above: According to the Planetary Habitability Laboratory’s recently released periodic table of exoplanets, 16 warm Neptunes and 96 warm Jovians lay within their star’s habitable zone. If they managed to capture rocky Earth-sized moons on their journey inward, such moons would be able to hold liquid water, and be potential wells of life. Credit: PHL

While astronomers continue to search for potentially habitable alien planets, they’re expanding the hunt to include moons that could host life as well.

Three new computer simulations may help researchers identify rocky satellites beyond our solar system that could harbor water on their surfaces, if their parent planets circle close enough to their stars.

When scientists working with NASA’s Kepler space telescope announced the discovery of 1,235 planetary candidates in February 2011, the list included 37 Neptune-sized planets and 10 Jupiter-sized planets within their star’s habitable zones — the region of space where water can exist as a liquid on a rocky planet. Though gas giants would not boast liquid water on their surface, their moons might.

According to David Kipping, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a good-size rocky moon at the right distance from its star “ticks all the boxes for our wish list of habitable conditions.”

Kipping, one of the members of the Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler team, authored and utilized one of three computer simulations designed to help astronomers pick such an “exomoon” out of the spacecraft’s data.

Read on..

why look when one has already been found and documented? It’s called Yavin IV.

23 December 11 (Permalink)

Comments | 34 notes

iamktn:

Irrational tips.

16 November 11 (Permalink)

Comments | 63 notes

unknownskywalker:

Montage

This montage of New Horizons images shows Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io, and were taken during the spacecraft’s Jupiter flyby in early 2007. The image of Jupiter is an infrared color composite that highlights variations in the altitude of the Jovian cloud tops, with blue denoting high-altitude clouds and hazes, and red indicating deeper clouds. The prominent bluish-white oval is the Great Red Spot.

The image of Io is an approximately true-color composite and shows a major eruption in progress on the night side, at the northern volcano Tvashtar. Incandescent lava glows red beneath a volcanic plume, whose uppermost portions are illuminated by sunlight. The plume appears blue due to scattering of light by small particles within it.

12 November 11 (Permalink)

Comments | 18 notes

Space Stations that Never Were

Did You Know? The classic space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey was based on a real concept by Wernher von Braun, the first director of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

(Source: scientificamerican.com)

26 October 11 (Permalink)

Comments | 31 notes

scipsy:

EMILIN1 (red) and DAPI (blue) staining of a wild-type skin section (via JCBD)

Wow - on my iPhone4 this looks 3D!

11 October 11 (Permalink)

Comments | 16 notes

Meteorite lands on home of Mrs Comette

An 88 gram meteorite decided that out of the entire universe, in our quadrant, in our galaxy, in our spiral arm, in our solar system, on our planet, it would land on the house of Mrs Comette.

Ironic comment by meteorite with delusions of being a comet perhaps?

(Source: thelocal.fr)

5 October 11 (Permalink)

Comments | 12 notes

alanfriedman:

Sun Symphony

I had a chance today to work with the wide field data collected August 17th. The seeing was good… I had some nice material to work with. Two large prominences provide the variation on a theme for this sun symphony.

Solar Spam! You’ve got to check out Mr Alan Friedman’s Tumblr … astonishing!

29 September 11 (Permalink)

Comments | 460 notes

Joke I heard yesterday:

"We don't serve neutrinos in here"
A neutrino walks into a bar.

24 September 11 (Permalink)

Comments | 556 notes

“

“I hear your mom was asking about evolution,” Perry said today. “That’s a theory that is out there — and it’s got some gaps in it.” Perry then told the boy: “In Texas, we teach both creationism and evolution. I figure you’re smart enough to figure out which one is right.”

Yep, that’s how schools work. You tell kids some things that are true and some things that are made up and you trust that the children will be “smart enough” to figure it out. “America’s first three presidents were George Washington, John Adams and the Green Lantern. Good luck on your AP History test.”

— The GOP candidates have no time for your “science,” scientists - Salon.com (via scipsy)

Posted: 2:40 AM (Permalink)

Comments | 4,064 notes

scipsy:

The CLOUD project aims to study the influence of galactic cosmic rays on the Earth’s climate through the media of aerosols and clouds. (via Interactions.org)

What a waste of time and money. We all know the influence cosmic rays have. They turn people into superheros. Sheesh.

Themed by Hunson. Originally by Josh & tweaked like crazy by Darth Ambiguous