Life is just a theory

In the early 1930s, Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen went to...

Thu, 31 May 2012 23:30:32 -0400

In the early 1930s, Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen went to Greenland, where his expedition snapped black-and-white photos of the glaciers. And then the glass plates of the images languished in a basement for 80 years. Now, researchers are comparing his images to more recent ones in order to determine the glaciers’ behavior.

Their results, published in Nature Geoscience, show that although the glaciers shrank from the 1930s to the 40s, they then began growing until the 70s, when they started retreating again. Apparently, Greenland’s sensitive glaciers respond strongly to climate change, which raises the question of what they’ll be doing as the planet continues to warm up…

For more details, check out the story at Mother Nature Network.

Finally, a good use for robot technology: performing the...

Thu, 31 May 2012 09:01:00 -0400

Finally, a good use for robot technology: performing the “Thriller” dance. These adorable little bipedal robots use quorum sensing to detect what their neighbors are doing and imitate them. That’s why, when one robot gets distracted from its moves, it can jump right back in. Check out the full story over at Discover.

Why Do Bubbles in Guinness Sink?

Wed, 30 May 2012 15:06:00 -0400

Why Do Bubbles in Guinness Sink?:

My first post for Discover magazine is about Guinness. Specifically, bubbles in Guinness. Specifically, why are these bubbles sinking down? Physics can explain!

How excited are you getting for the 2012 Olympics? You’re...

Wed, 30 May 2012 09:53:41 -0400

How excited are you getting for the 2012 Olympics? You’re probably not as pumped as the British chemists who synthesized a new molecule for the occasion. Okay, not exactly.

The aptly named Olympicene is the smallest possible five-ring molecule, but we can’t give Olympic fervor all the credit for its creation. Researcher Graham Richards thought it would be “an interesting synthetic challenge.”

Via Popular Science

ikenbot: Earth Experiences Back-to-Back Asteroid Close...

Wed, 30 May 2012 08:39:49 -0400

ikenbot:

Earth Experiences Back-to-Back Asteroid Close Encounters

Two small asteroids buzzed by Earth, zooming well within the moon’s orbit, over the last 48 hours. Neither posed any danger, but the events were eagerly captured by amateur astronomers, and the second encounter was a record-setter.

The first asteroid, designated 2012 KP24, was first detected last week and passed within 32,000 miles of Earth on May 28. It is less than 70 feet across, approximately the size of a blue whale.

The second asteroid, named 2012 KT42, zipped by at midnight PDT on May 29, coming within 8,950 miles of Earth. That’s closer than the orbit of geosynchronous satellites, making the KT42 encounter one of the top 20 closest approaches ever recorded. The asteroid was discovered only a day before its flyby, but is a puny 15 feet across, not much bigger than a minivan.

Continue Reading “Earth Experiences Back-to-Back Asteroid Close Encounters” »

ikenbot: Picturesque Venus Transit

Tue, 29 May 2012 23:44:16 -0400

ikenbot:

Picturesque Venus Transit

Gorgeous picture up today at NASA’s Astronomy Picture of...

Tue, 29 May 2012 08:07:44 -0400

Gorgeous picture up today at NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. Seen in Finnish Lapland, those columns of ice aren’t actually sentinels; they’re trees coated in driven snow. And for a bonus, the background sky includes a Belt of Venus, which a different APoD describes:

“Called the Belt of Venus, this off-color band between the dark eclipsed sky and the blue sky can be seen in nearly every direction including that opposite the Sun. Straight above, blue sky is normal sunlight reflecting off the atmosphere. In the Belt of Venus, however, the atmosphere reflects light from the setting (or rising) Sun which appears more red. The Belt of Venus can be seen from any location with a clear horizon.”

Ice trees + Venus belts = excellent setting for a sci-fi story.

Life Is Just a Theory

Sat, 26 May 2012 18:36:26 -0400

scienceon:

Blog: lifeisjustatheory.tumblr.com

Fields Discussed: Physics, art & science, all sciences.

Extra Information: Most of my original posts are on physics, but I’ll always make an exception for a cool photo or video, and I’ll reblog any science posts that make me sit up and say “wow!”

Hi to all my new followers who found me through ScienceOn!

Measuring the Universe How can researchers measure our distance...

Thu, 24 May 2012 14:31:58 -0400

Measuring the Universe

How can researchers measure our distance from distant stars? They use parallax, standard candles, and the Doppler effect…but those words alone aren’t very helpful. This awesome animation from the Royal Observatory Greenwich (part of their exhibition “Measuring the Universe: from the transit of Venus to the edge of the cosmos”) explains each method and how they relate to each other. And it features the most adorable lightbulb I’ve ever seen.

Via Laughing Squid

thenewenlightenmentage: Like attracts like? Everything you...

Thu, 24 May 2012 00:10:30 -0400

thenewenlightenmentage:

Like attracts like?

Everything you thought you knew about electrostatics is probably wrong.

Make two metal spheres positively electrically charged, bring them close together, and what happens? They’ll repel one another, because like charges repel – right?

Wrong. According to physicist John Lekner at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, they will most probably attract one another, violating the intuitions of basic physics. The counterintuitive result was published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A¹.

Continue Reading

alanfriedman: Firecrackler Meet solar active region 1476. It’s...

Thu, 24 May 2012 00:03:43 -0400

alanfriedman:

Firecrackler

Meet solar active region 1476. It’s a corker and it’s rotating in our direction. Will it grow and send flares in our direction, or subside and shrink? When the clouds depart - hopefully by midweek, I’ll have another chance to look and shoot. In the meantime, keep an eye on Spaceweather.com. To be continued!

wastedlines: Playing with light and lenses for physics project...

Tue, 22 May 2012 23:46:31 -0400

wastedlines:

Playing with light and lenses for physics project last December…

ikenbot: The Fabric of Space-time Image: What happens to light...

Tue, 22 May 2012 19:38:41 -0400

ikenbot:

The Fabric of Space-time

Image: What happens to light as it passes through a point of space-time in where mass has been applied, as well as why objects in space orbit the way they do (planets, galaxies, clusters, etc.)

Also known as the Space-time Continuum, I’ve always been fascinated about the very space that holds the planet we live on, stars we see at night, solar system we observe, and supernovas we stargaze on telescopes. In astronomy you hear the term space-time get used a lot and I thought I’d highlight key features that describe what this fabric is. I find it odd that not that many people stop to think what holds us up, how are we suspended in space-time? Well, technically we’re not suspended. We’re constantly moving, constantly orbiting. And it’s not just Earth and the solar system joining in on this cosmic dance, you can include star clusters, galaxies, super clusters and even Blackholes, just about everything in our Universe. Keep in mind that even as you read this post, our solar system is orbiting the Milky Way galaxy, traveling at roughly 220 kilometers a second!

What is Space-time?

Einstein visualized gravity as a manifestation of the curvature of space-time - the three space dimensions and a fourth time dimension. Most of us cannot visualize a curvature of four dimensional space-time, so visualize a curved two dimensional rubber sheet. Placing a mass on the rubber sheet curves it downward like space-time curves in the presence of a mass. On such a rubber sheet a small mass can circle around the curvature produced by a large mass, just as planets orbit the Sun. Or a mass can roll straight downward just as an object falls to the Earth. Space-time being the very “material” these events and masses take place on.

Einstein explained gravity as a result of the curvature of space-time near the presence of a mass. The differences between general relativity and Newton’s law of gravity only become noticeable when the gravitational force is very strong.

Einstein’s general theory of relativity is one of the crowning intellectual achievements of the 20th century and led to such predictions as black holes, gravitational lenses, and the expanding universe. So far it has passed every experimental test with flying colors.

Info via Suite101

Love the illustration.

This gold earring, covered in ibex (wild goat) decorations, was...

Tue, 22 May 2012 16:45:21 -0400

This gold earring, covered in ibex (wild goat) decorations, was recently discovered at Tel Megiddo in northern Israel. For thousands of years, it, along with other pieces of jewelry, lay wrapped in textiles and hidden in a dirt-filled jug. Even after archaeologists from Tel Aviv University dug up the vessel, they didn’t immediately unearth its valuable contents — first, they had to analyze the outside of the ceramic container.

The Tel, or archaeological mound, at Megiddo has very distinct strata that mark different time periods, and knowing the layer in which the jug was discovered allowed researchers to date the jewelry to around 1100 BCE, the period when Tel Megiddo was a large Canaanite city-state. Some of the jewelry’s materials and designs, however, are similar to Egyptian ones, and may have originated either in Egypt or with a craftsman who had been influenced by other Egyptian jewelry. Either explanation is possible: at the time, Egypt’s control over the area was just ending. Perhaps a Canaanite woman purchased these pieces to wear, hid them away when fleeing her home during the Egyptian withdrawal, and then never returned.

For more details, check out the full story at American Friends of Tel Aviv University or EurekAlert

scinerds: Ancient Turtle Was as Big as Small CarContent via...

Mon, 21 May 2012 13:14:41 -0400

scinerds:

Ancient Turtle Was as Big as Small Car
Content via livescience.com. Artwork by Liz Bradford.

A turtle the size of a small car once roamed what is now South America 60 million years ago, suggests its fossilized remains.

Discovered in a coal mine in Colombia in 2005, the turtle was given the name Carbonemys cofrinii, which means “coal turtle.” It wasn’t until now that the turtle was examined and described in a scientific journal; the findings are detailed online today (May 17) in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology.

The researchers say C. cofriniibelongs to a group of side-necked turtles known as pelomedusoides. The turtle’s skull, roughly the size of an NFL football, was the most complete of the fossil remains.

In addition to its colossal size, the turtle would have been equipped with massive, powerful jaws, meaning it could’ve eaten just about anything in its range, from mollusks (a group that includes snails) to smaller turtles and even crocodiles, the researchers noted.

Continue Reading On LiveScience.com

explore-blog: Physics student Andrew Oriani diagrams patron...

Mon, 21 May 2012 11:55:37 -0400

explore-blog:

Physics student Andrew Oriani diagrams patron movement at the Cleveland Museum of Art to better understand how visitors walk through a museum.

The article suggests that although people generally look at individual pieces for only a few seconds, this “superficial” assessment isn’t a bad thing. It’s actually akin to beach-combing or even hunter-gathering. Besides, “Let’s not pretend that wandering through a museum or looking at a work of art needs to be done in a logical or linear way. As hunter-gatherers, we’re designed to work differently. It’s all right to zigzag.”

bloodredorion: strictlyastronomy: A Gallery Of May 20 Annular...

Mon, 21 May 2012 10:32:28 -0400

bloodredorion:

strictlyastronomy:

A Gallery Of May 20 Annular Solar Eclipse Images

1. The sun sets behind a barn and windmill on Sunday, May 20, 2012, southwest of Ellis, Kansas, during a partial solar eclipse. Credit: Steven Hausler, The Hays Daily News / AP

2. An annular solar eclipse appears in the sky over Yokohama near Tokyo Monday, May 21, 2012. Credit: AP / SL

3. A view of partial solar eclipse, seen through a black film in Srinagar, India, in January 2011. Credit: Mukhtar Khan/AP/Canadian Press

4. An annular solar eclipse appears during a break in clouds over Taipei, Taiwan, Monday, May 21, 2012. Credit: Wally Santana / AP

5. An annular solar eclipse appears in Fujisawa, near Tokyo, Monday, May 21, 2012. Credit: AP

6. A partial annular solar eclipse appears through construction scaffoldings in Beijing, China, Monday, May 21, 2012. Credit: Ng Han Guan / AP

The top one is like what I saw !!

And even more eclipse pictures!

mapmeoblivion: Sergio Cittolin, a scientist working on the...

Mon, 21 May 2012 10:28:06 -0400

mapmeoblivion:

Sergio Cittolin, a scientist working on the Large Hadron Collider, combined his two passions of art and science to create a series of incredible drawings of various elements of the LHC, in the style of Leonardo da Vinci.

Don’t forget to take the time to see his other beautiful drawings of the LHC! They’re definitely worth having a look.

Credit: CERN/Sergio Cittolin

These are awesome!

superpunch2: Images of various eclipses. I fell into a burning...

Mon, 21 May 2012 10:04:09 -0400

superpunch2:

Images of various eclipses.

I fell into a burning ring of fire…

Chemistry is awesome! In this reaction, sulfuric acid and sugar...

Sat, 19 May 2012 10:26:05 -0400

Chemistry is awesome! In this reaction, sulfuric acid and sugar combine to form a tower of carbon and some stray water. According to io9,

“First the mixture will collapse down as the acid wets the sugar. It will also turn slightly yellowy. So far it’s no different from water mixing with sugar. Then things get weird. The mixture turns black and gooey. The color is the result of pure carbon atoms getting loose. On their own, they’re black. Then the mixture starts to heat. The heating water and the expanding stack of carbon atoms push up a porous column of graphite, while the water boils and escapes as steam from all the nooks and crannies along its surface. Depending on how much acid and sugar were in the container, this can go on for a while, pushing up snakes of carbon that eventually break off and allow the mixture to push up more.

Check out the full story on sulfuric acid and why you shouldn’t add water to it over at io9. And remember — cool as it looks, don’t try this one at home, kids. It creates a lot of heat.