Better Than A Van Gogh: NASA Visualizes All The World’s Ocean Currents. Our oceans are every bit as turbulent as “Starry Night.”
We imagine the ocean as having high tides and low tides, water that comes in and out in waves. Beyond that, how does water actually move around the world? What’s that flow look like?
What you’re looking at is the surface current flow (not anything deeper) of oceans around the world, recorded from 2006 to 2007. The white lines are the currents, and the darker blue colors of the water represent bathymetry (the fancy word for misnomer “ocean topography”).NASA Scientific Visualization Studio assembled this remarkable animation of the surface currents of our oceans. It’s called Perpetual Ocean, and the full work is 20 minutes of HD video, assembled from a huge amount of satellite, on location, and computational data generated by ECCO2 (Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, Phase 2). ECCO2 itself exists to better understand our oceans and their role in the changing global climate.
Watch the video HERE.
Adam Savage dipping his fingers into a pot of molten lead. Immediately prior to submerging his fingers in the lead, he wet them with water, which will form a thin protective layer of water vapor on contact with the lead, which was heated to 850 degrees Fahrenheit. This is known as the Leidenfrost effect.
SCIENCE BONER
screams
THAT IS TERRIFYING
even though i know youd be fine i COULD NOT do this
I’d be like “NOPE.”
This is one of the few episodes I’ve actually seen.
THAT CAT GIF
I
MY HAND HURTS JUST THINKING ABOUT THIS
Laughing so fucking hard at that cat gif. Accurate.
(via youfelinedevil)
npr:
The Smallest Bits Of Things: A Brief History Of Matter
The Greek atomists were the first to ponder the fundamental constitution of matter. They considered, in an amazingly prescient insight, that if you could cut matter into smaller and smaller pieces you’d end up with its smallest bits, which they called atoms.
The word itself means that which cannot be cut. They further considered that atoms were eternal and indestructible, thus constituting the essence of Being. However, as they combined with each other in myriad ways, they made up all the stuff that we see in the world, from rocks to water drops to frogs and people. This way, Being turns into Becoming, capturing the essence of nature, of things that are and things that change. They went further, and in an attempt to create a unified theory of nature, proposed that thoughts and feelings were also made of atoms. Unified theories are as old as philosophy.
Although the modern concept of atoms is quite different from that of the pre-Socratic Greeks, the notion that matter is made up of small, indivisible bits remains alive and well, constituting the basis of elementary particle physics, the branch of physics that tries to find the fundamental constituents of matter. - Marcelo Gleiser
(Photo credit: Network for Computational Nanotechnology, Purdue University, National Science Foundation)
A light micrograph reveals a weblike pattern of cells called astrocytes in the cerebellum, a brain structure involved in motor control. (via Scientific American Mind)
Richard Nixon’s Never-Used 1969 Speech In Case of Apollo 11 Disaster
Thankfully, not needed.
IN THE EVENT OF MOON DISASTER:
Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.
These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.
These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.
They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.
In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.
In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.
Others will follow and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.
For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.
PRIOR TO THE PRESIDENT’S STATEMENT: The president should telephone each of the widows-to-be.
AFTER THE PRESIDENT’S STATEMENT, at the point when NASA ends communications with the men: A clergyman should adopt the same procedure as a burial at sea, commending their souls to “the deepest of the deep,” concluding with the Lord’s Prayer.(via The Atlantic)
(via arsvivendi)
Mind-Melter of the Day
It turns out that if you divide 1 by 998,001 you get all three-digit numbers from 000 to 999 in order.
Except for 998.
(via Futility Closet)
(via arsvivendi)
An account of a rare sighting: that of a leucistic, or a nearly all-white penguin, by a National Geographic expedition team in Antarctica:
Despite colorful variation in facial patterns, all penguins are decked in the standard black and white pattern. This is no accident. Counter-shading camouflage in so necessary to diving birds that all are fundamentally alike. But to our astonishment we found an exception. At the water’s edge stood a leucistic Chinstrap. This bird was whitish, but not quite an albino. Instead, it had pigmented eyes and a washed-out version of a Chinstrap’s normal pattern. Many wondered about this unusual bird’s chances of success. While odd coloration may make fishing a bit more difficult, leucistic birds are regularly found breeding normally.
Or… the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences publishes a peer-reviewed paper on the sociology of hipsterdom and socially distinctive behavior in small peer groups.
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