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]

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?

Now THAT is a tiny robot! Inspired by the agility of flies, researchers have built light, maneuverable flying robots—or flybots, if you will.

The mechanical bugs flap their wings to hover, but all that whirring takes energy. To stay afloat, they need a slim tether connected to an external power source.

You can read more about the flybots in the journal Science.

A Boy and His Atom

This is the world’s smallest movie, a stop-motion film that IBM made by manipulating individual atoms.

Let’s just sit here and digest that for a while. We humans can move individual atoms around with incredible precision…and we use this fantastic ability to make adorable and dorky videos. Living in the future is so fricking awesome!

You can read more how the movie was made and filmed at Scientific American’s Observations blog.

circleoftyrants:

jtotheizzoe:

crookedindifference:

NASA Probe Gets Close Views of Large Saturn Hurricane

Holy hell … that’s gorgeous (and false-colored, sadly).

Regardless of the colour’s falsification, this is still a breath-taking photo. The detail of the 2nd picture is just too perfect to pass up.

ianbrooks:

Lava Mountains photos by Lusika33

Do you ever see pictures of lava and think: “that doesn’t look so hot, what’s the big deal”? A group of intrepid Russian photographers must have had the same idea when they ventured to the volcanic complex of Tolbachnik on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Consisting of two active volcanoes Plosky and Ostry, the pair put on some impressive fireworks when it recently erupted in November, 2012, with the lava flow overtaking buildings 4 kilometers away. While some of the pictures are mesmerizing in their display of the raw plasma that burns inside the furnace of the earth, I was more amazed (and quite frankly, a little concerned) with the nonchalant photographers setting up cameras mere meters away from the molten swarm. The flickering lights of the cooling magma resembles a city at night and almost seems romantic in an imminent fiery destruction-type way.

Photog: Livejournal (via: English Russia)

scinerds:

The ‘FlipperBot’ Is Almost as Cute as the Baby Sea Turtles It Mimics

This adorable little Flipper Bot was designed to mimics the motion of baby turtles as they crawl across a beach toward the ocean.  The speed with which it crawls has a lot to do with an individual turtle’s survival, and along the way, some baby turtles may get stuck in a rut created by the turtles that went before it.

Scientists at Georgia Tech and Northwestern University built the Flipper Bot to understand the motion the turtles use as they cross the sand.  This is valuable not only with respect to sea turtle conservation, but also with respect to beach restoration:

Umbanhowar said understanding beach surfaces and how turtles move is important because many beaches in the United States are often subject to beach nourishment programs, where sand is dredged and dumped to prevent erosion.

“If you are restoring a beach, it might be the wrong kind of sand or deposited in a way that is unnatural,” Umbanhoward said. “In order for this turtle to advance, it has to generate these kind of thrust forces and it may be unable to get their flippers into it. We could say something about that given our models.”

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