Happy Birthday Tron— Celebrating 30 Years
Greeting Programs
Some things may change, but one thing that doesn’t is our love of Tron.
Amazing, how far computer graphics in movies have come!
(via prgm)
Europe - André Kuipers
I - ISS Over Europe
II - Wolgograd
III - London
IV - Amsterdam
V - Naples
VI - Paris
(Original Photo credit to NASA)
Because this is so a;sdlfkja;woeijoa;we cool and I haven’t posted anything science-y lately.
Curiosity’s Landing, the View From Those Who Built It
Water on Mars? Pretty rare. Water on my face? Definitely.
Mark Rober is a JPL engineer who has devoted most of his professional life to designing the Curiosity rover. Seven years of work came down to seven nervous minutes last week.
“… what I think makes JPL really great aren’t its robots. It’s the people who build them.”
Mark produced the video above not only to commemorate the mission and the thousands of people behind it, but also the people behind those people. Behind every great scientist are the teachers, family and friends that make all this discovery worth it.
This one’s almost enough to bring a tear to your eye.
(via The Atlantic)
Okay I really did cry a little this time.
Anatomy of a Lunar Rover Vehicle, used for the first time on NASA’s Apollo 15 mission, which began 41 years ago today.
And without it, we may not have Curiosity, ten days away from landing on freakin’ Mars.
*stealth-sciences from the plane*
Listen to the Higgs Boson
When I visited CERN last year, I was blown away not only by the science, but by the incredible amount of artistic creativity in the people that live and work at the biggest science experiment in the world. We met people in bands, people who painted murals, videographers, and so much more. So this little project by the folks at ATLAS to ‘sonify’ the Higgs finding just has me grinning. They assigned notes to data points and what came out was this lovely little habanera rhythm that corresponds with the Higgs.
It’s such a fun piece of music.
Nice find, Chels!
Still mostly lurking, but I simply could not leave this be! Who knew Higgs was so much fun? (And I totally agree that some of the most imaginative and aesthetically talented people I’ve met are “scientists”. :D)
ISS long exposure photography
These images are part of a series photographed by NASA astronaut and Expedition 31 flight engineer Don Pettit using a mounted camera on the International Space Station. He used a special long exposure technique to create star trails as well as city light trails. Lightning storms are also featured prominently in the images.
ISS long exposure photography
These images are part of a series photographed by NASA astronaut and Expedition 31 flight engineer Don Pettit using a mounted camera on the International Space Station. He used a special long exposure technique to create star trails as well as city light trails. Lightning storms are also featured prominently in the images.
Holy star-trails, Spaceman! O.O
So, remember that launch announcement I reblogged just a few days ago? The first successful private industry space launch ever?
Well, half by accident, I actually ended up at the Kennedy Space Center today, where I not only got to see (from a distance) the launchpad (#40 - it’s one of those blocky buildings that’s hovering in the distance) which SpaceX leased for their Dragon takeoff, but they were showing a live video feed during one of their presentations of the capsule being docked with the ISS, which occurred this morning.
Plenty more space-tech porn pics to come!
(Second funny thing - on a whim, we decided to watch MIB 3 tonight, and what’d you know, half the movie was about Cape Canaveral and the Apollo moon launch!)
Looking like a bright star streaking up into a black sky, a rocket took off before dawn today from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida carrying an unmanned capsule filled with food, clothes, and other supplies for astronauts on the international space station.
But this robotic cargo ship doesn’t belong to NASA. Instead, it’s owned by a company called SpaceX, which made history by launching the first ever private spacecraft on a mission to the station.
SpaceX has a $1.6 billion cargo-delivery contract with NASA, which is turning routine flights to the station over to industry so that the veteran space agency can start to focus on more ambitious exploration efforts. (NPR)
Photo: Historic @SpaceX #DragonLaunch to ISS. @NASA on Twitpic
This is a landmark moment in space travel. With the entry of private firms into the public space game, NASA not only ensures continued support for ISS projects, but can turn their resources to missions above and beyond near-earth orbit.
This is the kind of progress that lets NASA worry less about meeting a bottom line or boldly going where we’ve gone many times before, and instead lets them start thinking about what’s next.
I don’t know how hopeful one should be about what NASA may be able to tackle next, but I am unbelievably excited by private industry’s first successful foray into a commercial space endeavor.
Photography In Space - How It’s Done
Alan Poindexter had the honor of commanding the shuttle Discovery on her final mission, STS-131. NASA takes space photography very seriously, and trains their astronauts to capture informative and inspiring images while in orbit.
If you’ve ever wondered about some the techniques and technology behind capturing those great shuttle and ISS photos, check out Captain Poindexter’s great behind-the-lens post. Little-known fact: If you become an astronaut you apparently get access to prototype Nikon cameras … so study that science, you budding photographers!
When done right, this space photography can be truly inspiring. If you really want to dig in to some astronaut photography, you can’t miss the Crew Earth Observations collection. Truly epic photos and videos (including this eye-popping distorted moonset from the ISS).
(via Luminous-Landscape.com, images copyright NASA)
Hey, now you get to do your own star porn! Well … if you had the right vantage point. :D
Aaaand now I’m obsessed with ferrofluids.
Join the club, Radiolab!
Ferrofluids are a colloid, like mayonnaise, except instead of fat suspended in liquid there’s iron-containing particles that can respond to a magnetic field. The particles are so small that they can remain dispersed in the liquid instead of sedimenting, the way that sand sinks and river silt stays suspended. When a magnetic field and some kind of substructure is applied (here, the cones), you get something amazing.
The peaks and valleys that are created are due to the magnetic field preferring the liquid over the air (something called “normal-field instability”). You get liquid dancing in dimensions that you aren’t used to seeing, and you get the illusion of dancing, dynamic solids growing solely from a black lagoon.
I’m gonna need a minute. This was too cool.
This is just so ever-lovin’ COOL
(Source: youtube.com)
Outer Space. The View From Cassini and Voyager
Jaw ————> Floor.
If Rocky Balboa was an aspiring astronomer, this is what he would watch every morning to get pumped up instead of running up that damned staircase.
Sander van den Berg has assembled a plethora of real images, converted to black and white video, from the Cassini and Voyager missions to create this simple, awe-inspiring and sometimes haunting tour through near outer space.
I know I’ve been heavy on the space stuff lately, but with videos like these sending my brain flying out the back of my head how can I not post it?!?!? :)
(by Sander van den Berg)
Wow. Just … wow.
I’ve been using the “pure awesome” tag a lot lately, but … there really is that much pure awesome lately! And this … I have no words for this. How perfect and pure and beautiful and lonely it is out there, and what mankind has managed to accomplish in order to bring these images back … just amazing.
The Forbidden City has—at least to Western eyes— been shrouded in mystery over the course of its almost-600-year history, and the headlines it’s making today tell a classic tale, not only of East meeting West, but of Old meeting New. It turns out, the Forbidden City is about to undergo an extreme home makeover of monumental proportions but, instead of construction crews, the renovators will be using 3D printers.
This is yet another symbolic push in favor of the 3D technology - another technology which seems to be sneeking up on the world, not from the traditional business and industrial logic, but from the crafts area as well as from the bottom-up DIY/innovation world. It seems somewhat similar to how the Internet early on was ignored by the businesses but grew exponentially in a world of connected hackers and enthusiasts.
Haven’t had some 3D printing in a while either, and it even combines Chinese landmarks and historical relics! \o/ Win-win!
(via emergentfutures)
Boron-treated carbon nanotubes soak up oil from water repeatedly
Researchers at Rice University and Penn State University have discovered that adding a dash of boron to carbon while creating nanotubes turns them into solid, spongy, reusable blocks that have an astounding ability to absorb oil spilled in water. […]
The blocks are both superhydrophobic (they hate water, so they float really well) and oleophilic (they love oil). The nanosponges, which are more than 99 percent air, also conduct electricity and can easily be manipulated with magnets. […] He then put a match to the material, burned off the oil and returned the sponge to the water to absorb more. The robust sponge can be used repeatedly and stands up to abuse; he said a sample remained elastic after about 10,000 compressions in the lab. The sponge can also store the oil for later retrieval, he said.
“These samples can be made pretty large and can be easily scaled up,” said Hashim, holding a half-inch square block of billions of nanotubes. “They’re super-low density, so the available volume is large. That’s why the uptake of oil can be so high.” He said the sponges described in the paper can absorb more than a hundred times their weight in oil. […]
“Oil-spill remediation and environmental cleanup are just the beginning of how useful these new nanotube materials could be,” added. “For example, we could use these materials to make more efficient and lighter batteries. We could use them as scaffolds for bone-tissue regeneration. We even could impregnate the nanotube sponge with polymers to fabricate robust and light composites for the automobile and plane industries.” […]
WOW. This is, like, the holy grail of holy grails, perfect on all fronts … the only thing it doesn’t do is butter your toast for you.
(via emergentfutures)
