Picked up this little gem earlier while browsing through Gizmodo. Below is an excellent video of the recent solar eclipse as seen from 27,000 feet in the air. This is some truly amazing footage.
The next video is another amazing look at the eclipse from ground level in Siberia.
[via Gizmodo]
Now that’s a big magnet! Below is a gigantic magnet which is part of an end cap to the ATLAS particle detector in the Large Hadron Collider, set to begin tests early this month. To help marvel at its beauty, Boston.com has published an article with an awesome set of pictures of the LHC to show you just how massive and glorious this thing truly is. Link to article and photos.
If you are not familiar with the LHC, check out the wiki here.
Here are a couple of videos which, if you have not seen before, are guaranteed to blow your mind. If you have never ventured into the world of physics and quantum mechanics, then forget everything you thought you knew about reality. As humans, we tend to simply accept our reality as we hear, touch, feel, taste, and see it, however there is a whole underlying world that is much more exotic and much more complicated than the illusions generated by our perceptions.
The first video is a BBC special called “The Illusion of Reality” in which Professor Jim Al-Khalili’s takes you on a journey by exploring the building blocks of our universe, Atoms. In this 58min documentary, he will guide you down a path of science and discovery that will most likely end with you re-evaluating your philosophy of what is real.
The second video is a short clip called “The Double Slit Experiment” which is a simplified, animated, re-creation of the experiment which sheds a little more light on the “Measurement Problem” which is brought up briefly in the first video.
Here is a picture (dimensions 2160px × 1389px) of the Lagoon Nebula which can be used as a great desktop wallpaper for the space geek. The Lagoon Nebula is a stellar nursery about 5,000 light years away towards the center of the Milky Way. The Nebula itself spans a distance of about 50 light years. Link to picture.
Picture Site @ NASA: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080715.html
Link to full-res File: m8_vanderhaven_big.jpg
Getawallpaper.com has a most stellar collection of geeky space wallpapers for your desktop. Almost 150 to be honest. With those numbers, odds are there is one in there to tickle your geeky fancy. Most are 1024×768 with some even in 1600×1200 and 3280×2606. Check em’ out here…
Imagine having the ability to produce a flash of light that lasts only billionths of billionth of a second and then taking a photograph of that flash. What would that photograph look like? Imagine no more. Researchers at Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany have recently done just that by creating the Fastest Ever Flashgun which can produce a laser beam pulse that is only 2.5 femtoseconds (billionths of billionth of a second). Now that’s fast! More @ NewScientist.com…
[via NewScientistTech]
Just came across these photos today in an email. I assume these were from the latest mission to service the john on the International Space Station. Follow the link below which contains about 12 killer hi-res images that will make you feel like you were actually there. Link to pictures…
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope brings you a most triumphant cosmic treat from 5,000 light years away. This is an infrared picture of the Rosette Nebula, a star-forming region in the Monoceros constelation. Link to picture…
Scientists at NASA believe that the phoenix lander’s descent engine may have blown away a layer of dirt, exposing what appears to be frozen water. “This suggests we have an ice table under a thin layer of loose soil,” said Horst Uwe Keller, the lead scientist for the Robotic Arm Camera.
Apparently researchers at NASA’s Space Sciences Laboratory have found a way to visualize magnetic fields through a process of sound-controlled CGI and 3D compositing. I am not sure of the details behind this science however this video demonstrating these visualizations is absolutely incredible. A must see for all geeks.
[Via Gizmodo | Via Animate Projects]
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