1.    93

     

    reblogged: freshphotons

    freshphotons:

    “Modeling the physics of foams and foamlike materials, such as soapy froths, fire retardants, and lightweight crash-absorbent structures, presents challenges, because of the vastly different time and space scales involved. By separating and coupling these disparate scales, we have designed a multiscale framework to model dry foam dynamics. This leads to a predictive and flexible computational methodology linking, with a few simplifying assumptions, foam drainage, rupture, and topological rearrangement, to coupled interface-fluid motion under surface tension, gravity, and incompressible fluid dynamics.” Via.

     
    2. May 17th, 2013     sciencebubblesfoamphysicsfluid dynamics
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  2.    32

     

    reblogged: kqedscience

    kqedscience: Kepler scientist: “A beautiful instrument has died”“One of NASA’s most popular and successful missions has hit a disabling technical snag, the agency announced Wednesday. A reaction wheel on the Kepler spacecraft has become stuck, say NASA engineers. Without it, scientists can’t aim the telescope as precisely as they need to.”Read more from KQED Science reporter Amy Standen.

    kqedscience:

    Kepler scientist: “A beautiful instrument has died”

    “One of NASA’s most popular and successful missions has hit a disabling technical snag, the agency announced Wednesday. A reaction wheel on the Kepler spacecraft has become stuck, say NASA engineers. Without it, scientists can’t aim the telescope as precisely as they need to.”

    Read more from KQED Science reporter Amy Standen.

     
    3. May 16th, 2013     sciencespacekeplernasasad face
    Comments

  3.    50

     

    reblogged: homo-medicus

    homo-medicus: Ancient DNA Found Hidden Below Sea Floor In the middle of the South Atlantic, there’s a patch of sea almost devoid of life. There are no birds, few fish, not even much plankton. But researchers report that they’ve found buried treasure under the empty waters: ancient DNA hidden in the muck of the sea floor, which lies 5000 meters below the waves. The DNA, from tiny, one-celled sea creatures that lived up to 32,500 years ago, is the first to be recovered from the abyssal plains, the deep-sea bottoms that cover huge stretches of Earth. In a separate finding published this week, another research team reports teasing out plankton DNA that’s up to 11,400 years old from the floor of the much shallower Black Sea. The researchers say that the ability to retrieve such old DNA from such large stretches of the planet’s surface could help reveal everything from ancient climate to the evolutionary ecology of the seas.

    homo-medicus:

    Ancient DNA Found Hidden Below Sea Floor

    In the middle of the South Atlantic, there’s a patch of sea almost devoid of life. There are no birds, few fish, not even much plankton. But researchers report that they’ve found buried treasure under the empty waters: ancient DNA hidden in the muck of the sea floor, which lies 5000 meters below the waves.

    The DNA, from tiny, one-celled sea creatures that lived up to 32,500 years ago, is the first to be recovered from the abyssal plains, the deep-sea bottoms that cover huge stretches of Earth. In a separate finding published this week, another research team reports teasing out plankton DNA that’s up to 11,400 years old from the floor of the much shallower Black Sea. The researchers say that the ability to retrieve such old DNA from such large stretches of the planet’s surface could help reveal everything from ancient climate to the evolutionary ecology of the seas.

     
    4. May 15th, 2013     sciencebiologyDNAsingle celled organismsoceansea floor
    Comments

  4.    1472

     

    reblogged: thescienceofreality

    thescienceofreality:

    ISS Astronauts Returned Safely to Earth.

    “After inspiring all of us on Earth, Commander Chris Hadfield and crew have finally re-joined us here. The Soyuz space capsule landed safely at 10:31 PM EDT in Kazakhstan. Hadfield had spent 144 days on the ISS, 2,336 orbits around the planet and totaled up around 62 million miles. That’s a lot of miles!

    The Soyuz capsule landed vertically, which is the preferred position. The crew, which includes Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, are back on Earth and reportedly all feeling good as they re-adjust to the gravity. Marshburn was one of the astronauts who performed the awe-inspiring emergency spacewalk to fix the leak of ammonia coolant two days ago.

    The landing of the capsule comes a little over three hours since the capsule undocked from the ISS. It marks the end of the ISS’ Expedition 35 Crew in space. The crew will head over to the medical tent to get all properly tested and fixed for normal Earth life. Or as normal life can be in the eyes of men who were in space.” via Gizmodo

    “On Sunday, Hadfield handed over command of the space station to Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov.

    As part of his personal farewell to the space station, Hadfield released a video of his version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity, which NASA said is the first music video made in space.” via CBC

     
    5. May 14th, 2013     sciencespaceISSchris hadfield
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  5.    1045

     

    reblogged: thatscienceguy

    thatscienceguy:

    The Alkaline Metals simply added to water. (last gif features Cesium, and unfortunately i could not find any with Francium which is the most explosive)

     
    6. May 13th, 2013     sciencechemistryalkaline metals
    Comments

  6.    4326

     

    reblogged: wnycradiolab

    wnycradiolab: atlasobscura: Delivering a dinosaur to the Boston Museum of Science - Arthur Pollock -  1984 It kills me that I didn’t get to witness this.

    wnycradiolab:

    atlasobscura:

    Delivering a dinosaur to the Boston Museum of Science - Arthur Pollock -  1984

    It kills me that I didn’t get to witness this.

     
    7. May 10th, 2013     sciencemuseumdinosaurBoston Museum of Science
    Comments

  7.    48

     

    reblogged: semphotographs

    propaedeuticist:

    microscopic trichomes of the stinging nettle

     
    8. May 9th, 2013     sciencebiologynettlestinging nettlephotography
    Comments

  8.    1

     

    This is what happens when you frustrate a laser! In physics, the term “geometric frustration” refers to a situation where some ordered system can’t settle in to one single ground state. Scientists want to find out more about frustration because they think it may contribute to several unexplained phenomena, including high-temperature superconductivity.  To create a model for this type of system, physicists set up 1500 different lasers in set patterns. As an APS Physics Synopsis explains, By changing the position of the laser cavity output mirror, the authors could couple the lasers together by allowing light to leak from one laser to its neighbors. As the lasers go in and out of phase, patterns of optical interference change in the laser output. This creates the lovely images seen above. If you have a subscription, you can read more about the study in Physical Review Letters. Or just check out the full Physics Synopsis.

    This is what happens when you frustrate a laser! In physics, the term “geometric frustration” refers to a situation where some ordered system can’t settle in to one single ground state. Scientists want to find out more about frustration because they think it may contribute to several unexplained phenomena, including high-temperature superconductivity. 

    To create a model for this type of system, physicists set up 1500 different lasers in set patterns. As an APS Physics Synopsis explains,

    By changing the position of the laser cavity output mirror, the authors could couple the lasers together by allowing light to leak from one laser to its neighbors. As the lasers go in and out of phase, patterns of optical interference change in the laser output.

    This creates the lovely images seen above. If you have a subscription, you can read more about the study in Physical Review Letters. Or just check out the full Physics Synopsis.

     
    9. May 8th, 2013     sciencephysicslasersfrustrationgeometric frustrationoh so pretty
    Comments

  9.    2

     

    Ferrofluids are cool—period. I will never get tired of posting about them. In this video, Mark Miodownik puts this magnetic material through its paces, explaining how a liquid can respond to a magnetic field. Bonus points for the jazzy background music.

    Via [Geeks are Sexy]

     
    10. May 7th, 2013     sciencephysicsmaterials scienceferrofluidmagnetism
    Comments

  10.    498

     

    reblogged: biologicalmarginalia

    biologicalmarginalia:

    Historical depictions of the Walrus (Odobenus rosmarus) are supposedly some of the strangest and most varied of any animal. The Swedish writer Olaus Magnus is largely to blame for this, having produced the first five. Of course, context is everything; it was the 16th Century and there were no previous models to work from, no formal science, few remains and lots of garbled anecdotes. There was really no reason to think there wasn’t an armada of tusked monsters lurking in the mysterious Arctic. The third of these depictions — which can only be described as some sort of sabre-toothed otter-pig — was labeled the “Rosmarus seu Morsus Norvegicus”, and appears to have provided the walrus with the specific part of its scientific name.

    In 1598, De Veer had a close encounter with some “Sea Horses”, although somehow produced a drawing that looked like a legless otter with barely-protruding fangs. In 1613, things took a huge leap forward with Hessel Gerard’s “Walruss”, who drew the young animal from life and its mother from a mount. Apparently, this was the last time the hindlimbs of a walrus would be correctly depicted for 250 years.

    In 1765, things took a bit of a step back with Buffon’s illustration, evidently made from a mount posed like a true seal, and a huge step back with Marten’s neckless “Wall-Ross”.

    All of this information is from:
    Allen, J. (1880) History of North American Pinnipeds. Available.

    These are all supposed to be walruses?! Oh, biological illustration…why?

     
    11. May 6th, 2013     biologyillustrationwalrus
    Comments