Explosion on the Moon!
Pock-marked with craters and splotched with long-cold beds of dark lava, our moon holds thousands of footprints from its violent past. But we don’t really think of it having a violent present.
Well, it still gets its fair share of action. On March 17, 2013, NASA astronomers captured video of a meteorite striking the moon. It made an explosion bright enough to be seen with the naked eye, like a temporary star drawn on the lunar surface. It turns out that these collisions are not that rare.
Most of the moon’s many meteor marks date from a period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment. That, combined with a magma-riffic adolescence gave the moon the special look we know today. Of course, none of that is as violent as the moon’s birth.
Anyway, make sure to watch that video above and see the meteor strike live. You’ll never look at the moon the same way again.
The World as 100 People: Equally interesting and shocking.
(via Visual.ly)
Butterfly Stew
What happens inside a pupa stays inside a pupa. Or it used to, anyway. Until recently, when special x-ray imagers were turned on a developing butterfly to elucidate its metamorphosis.
the process of caterpillar-to-butterfly is a messy one. An overfed worm not only has to convert a lot of the stored energy it gathered stuffing its face for a few weeks into new body parts, it does so by essentially dissolving much of its body and reforming. The pupa isn’t so much a dressing room for a beautiful diva as it is a bag to keep all the goopy globs of proto-butterfly from dripping on the ground. Sounds like both butterfly and human puberty involve a mess of bodily fluids and hiding in your room.
That’s what most biology books would have you believe anyway. This new work (written up in great detail by Ed Yong) demonstrates that while there’s still plenty of goop-globbing, quite a few structures remain intact, migrating and growing into adult forms in a more traditional way (like those blue circulation vessels). For the insect nerds in the bunch, this technique doesn’t revolutionize metamorphosis or anything, but it’s a view inside that most of us have never gotten.
And quite a view it is.
A revolution
isn’t exactly a spring. I wonder what they (who ever they are) were thinking when that term was coined. There is no experience of peace with the revolutions (in MENA). Although it (peace) becomes a means to the purpose of the revolutions, it carries no similitude to the mass physical and violent revolts we saw.
Unless, the term means a sudden jump. You know like a compressed coil once it’s let go… I don’t know. It’s got to be one of the worst naming experiences.
Enough about that. How about a fun fact? Did you know that Green is the most pleasing color to the eye! If you automatically think of Gaddafi then you’re just lame. A well established cameraman mentioned this to me. If you try to Google it you might get confused…so just trust me (or him) I guess. :)
nothing exciting (in the photos ^)….just things growing.
What is Evolution?
Excellent video from Stated Clearly explaining just what evolution is … using great illustrations from Rosemary Mosco’s Bird and Moon comics.
This is a great video to share with friends/enemies/confused relatives that might have trouble accepting evolution and how simple it can be to understand.
I’d like to add one thing to this video. Single amoebas, pairs of parents and a few children are used in these evolution illustrations to simplify the concept of evolution, but it’s important to remember that evolution is something that happens to populations, not individuals. The changes within a generation are random. It’s only after those changes have been passed on for several generations that a survival advantage or disadvantage (followed by either more or less individuals carrying the trait) occurs. That’s where evolution happens, it’s not in the change itself. And sometimes even harmful traits can become frequent in a population, like we see in diseases that are prevalent among isolated ethnic groups.
Bonus: I’d also recommend Understanding Evolution’s “Common Misconceptions” FAQ for those who want to dig deeper.
Orthodox Christians observe Good Friday celebrations in and around the famed monolithic rock-cut churches in Lalibela, Ethiopia on May 3.
Before you start reading,
put down your pen:
consider the ink,
how it comprehends bleedingLearn
from the distant horizon
and from narrowing eyes
the expansiveness of vision
and the treachery of handsDo not blame me - do not blame anyone -
if you die before you read on
before blood is understood
Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, Nothing
(via poetrytranslation)
What happens to mercury when it is exposed to various sound frequencies? This does.
Nick Moore placed a blob of quicksilver in the path of various sound waves between 10 and 120 Hz and then pressed record. What you’re seeing here, in slow motion, are three-dimensional standing waves forming in the mercury. The higher the frequency, the more “nodes” that form.
Visit Mental Floss to see the equally awesome full-speed version.
(via ayamai)
I’m not against religion in the sense that I feel I can’t tolerate it, but I think written into the rubric of religion is the certainty of its own truth. And since there are 6,000 religions currently on the face of the earth, they can’t all be right. And only the secular spirit can guarantee those freedoms and it’s the secular spirit that they contest.
