Introducing 114 and 116. Watch those shifty scientists
Back a few years ago Cobb County, a major suburban county in metro Atlanta (my hometown and current address), posted stickers in high school biology books that read, “This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open [...]
Art Sunday: Stories and numbers meet in the theater of the sky
Stanislaw Lubieniecki, Theatrum cometicum (The Theater of Comets). Amsterdam, 1666-68. Here, the sea monster Cetus seems ready to chow down on some comet. Image source: Out of this World from the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering, and Technology. The interested reader will also want to investigate Thinking Outside the Sphere, another fine online exhibition [...]
Behold the Kepler Collection
Kepler‘s planets, seen in silhouette, against their parent stars. The star colors — which are accurate — indicate temperature: the redder, the cooler; the bluer, the hotter. These are not images taken by Kepler, but are generated from Kepler data; measurements of the stars’ temperatures and distances help astronomers determine their luminosities, and once these [...]
Please watch this
5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation from stephen v2 on Vimeo. The video is accompanied by Barber‘s Adagio for Stings Dear Alert Reader, This is required viewing for everyone on the planet. It must be viewed on the largest monitor you have, in full-screen HD, and in a dark room if you (1) are sick of [...]
Art Sunday: Saturn, Titan, Enceladus, Pandora
I once heard someone from Pixar describe their work as “art by committee.” Well, today we bring you “art by gargantuan federal administration.” Left to right: Pandora, Titan, Saturn (tbsp), Enceladus. Click on the image to see a high-resolution version. Credit: NASA/JPL This is art, folks. We have defended the artistic value of the latest [...]
The Kepler Orrery
Orrery (n.): planetarium consisting of an apparatus that illustrates the relative positions and motions of bodies in the solar system by rotation and revolution of balls moved by wheelwork. Definition lifted from Princeton’s WordNet; see an example of a traditional mechanical solar system orrery here. The Kepler Orrery. The incredible dancing exoplanets. The numbers that [...]
Awake, my Sol
Sol in action. Captured in the ultraviolet by SDO, this movie shows an erupting solar prominence and covers about 90 minutes (24 seconds per frame). This may make one think the prominence moves pretty slowly, but scale is important here: Placed side-to-side, about 20 Earths could fit across the frame. So this curtain of ionized [...]
And now for a little perspective
This, for all Alert Readers to enjoy and share on this beautiful Wednesday afternoon: a video, chock-full-o-coolness and guaranteed to amaze. It appeared yesterday at APOD, which is our home page and should be yours too. Our thoughts on this mind-blowing piece of work? We can do no better than to recall the closing words [...]
From the Dept. of Followups: On space aliens and abiogenesis
This electrifying scene from Mel Brooks‘s Young Frankenstein wins the prize for best comedic abiogenesis scene ever. Image source: American Movie Classics We just came across a couple of interesting stories at Science & Religion Today that remind us of previous posts here at psnt.net. The first has to do with the data coming in [...]
Here’s some blatant coolness: powers of ten
Powers of Ten. Credit and copyright: Charles & Ray Eames (Eames Office) What sublime joy to discover, just now, today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, brought to you by our friends at NASA. Here’s their explanation for the completely cool video above. How different does the universe look on small, medium, and large scales? The [...]
