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Tech NewsThis Trippy Music Video Is An At-Home Fluid Dynamics Experiment
What happens when your production budget consists of water, soap, food colouring, and maybe a bit of magnetic goo? If you’re the filmmaker responsible for this music video, the result is a beautiful demonstration of fluid dynamics, fingering flows, drips, and bubbles. Top image: Screenshot from the music video, “Jack and the Giant.” The fluid … Continued
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Tech NewsThis Expedition Helped Decide The Location Of The Panama Canal
In 1871, the USS Nipsic went to Limon Bay to scout out an appropriate location for the north end of the then-soon-to-be-constructed Panama Canal. The USS Nipsic in Limon Bay in 1871 as part of the Darien Expedition. Image credit: John Moran The Darien Expedition was led by Thomas Oliver Selfridge for the U.S. Navy. … Continued
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Tech News
The Emergency Escape Rockets For The Crew Dragon Are Surprisingly Quiet
A pair of SuperDraco engines firing at the same time is far quieter than I thought it would be. The dual firing is part of SpaceX pad abort testing for the rocket engines, ensuring both engines can simultaneously ignite and throttle if they need to carry the Crew Dragon to safety. Top image: SuperDraco engine … Continued
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Tech News
Can You Identify This Glittering Landscape?
This isn’t snow, so what is it? Here’s the full image. If you’re sharp-eyed, you might spot a familiar object for scale. As usual, the answer is after the photo: A sandy beach in Hawaii photographed on December 1, 2007. Image credit: Courtney Schaneville/USGS This is a sandy beach near Waimea on Kauai in Hawaii. … Continued
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Tech News
Drumlins Are The Easy-To-Identify, Hard-To-Understand Glacial Landform
Drumlins are a ubiquitous landform in lands once overrun by glaciers, and yet after two centuries of studying them, we still aren’t certain how these teardrop-shaped hills form. Top image: A drumlin field 27 kilometers southwest of Amundsen Gulf in the Nunavut Territory of Canada, imaged by Landsat 8 on June 21, 2014. Credit: NASA … Continued
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Tech NewsHow To Survive An Avalanche From This Dramatic Video Of A Buried Skier
Being buried alive in a snow avalanche is a terrifying end to a lovely day of enjoying the slopes. When an avalanche hit a group of skiers in the Alps, the disaster was caught on video. After watching it, you’ll either never want to go back-country again or be motivated to finally take that avalanche … Continued
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ScienceSpace & Spaceflight50 Years Ago, The First Spacewalk Nearly Ended In Tragedy
On March 18, 1965, Alexey Leonov stepped outside the thin metal shell of Voskhod-2 to float in the harsh void of space. For 12 minutes and 9 seconds, Leonov opened the doors on an entire new branch of exploration as the first spacewalker. It was nearly a disaster. Earlier on March 18, the Voshkhod-2 spacecraft … Continued
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SciencePhysics & Chemistry
When A Meteorite Hits Snow It Forms A “Snow Carrot” Instead Of A Crater
What happens when a meteorite hits snow? Instead of forming classic impact craters, the fragments form strange funnels of dense snow diving into the surface instead. Here’s the physics of how “snow carrots” form. When hunting for meteorite fragments, geologists found them at the bottom of dense funnels of coarse snow they named “snow carrots.” … Continued
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Tech News
Erosion Exposes Curving Sedimentary Beds In The Land Of Terror
The harsh terrain of the Tanezrouft Basin earns it an ominous nickname: Land of Terror. A rough wilderness of stone and shifting dunes constantly blasted by relentless wind, this is a land of rugged beauty and geology laid bare. Long ago, water eroded the canyons, basins, and plateaus of this basin in the Algerian Sahara. … Continued
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Tech NewsHow Will You Celebrate The Pi Day Of The Century?
Happy Pi Day! How are you celebrating the transcendental, irrational mathematical constant central derived from circles on 3/14/15 at 9:26:53? For me, it’s going to be giggling over physicists engaging in an epic chalk battle, and devouring an apple-ginger pie. Pi Day is the best reason ever to bake a pie for breakfast. Image credit: … Continued
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Tech NewsNew Satellites Will Track The Explosive Secret Of Magnetic Reconnection
A quartet of satellites launched tonight, the Magnetospheric Multiscale observatories. The four identical satellites will observe and measure magnetic reconnection, the explosive moment when mismatched magnetic fields connect, realign, and reconnect in a new configuration. Top image: Artist’s concept of the Earth’s protective magnetosphere with the tetrahedral constellation of MMS observatories. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Conceptual Image Lab … Continued
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Tech News
Golden Sunshine Over Fog Gave Astronauts A Beautiful Homecoming
Expedition 42 to the International Space Station is officially over with the safe landing of Barry “Butch” Wilmore, Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova in Kazakhstan. The decent featured a brief surge of drama when communications flickered out. Top image: Soyuz TMA-14M descending under parachute above Kazakhstan on Thursday, March 12, 2015. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls NASA … Continued
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Tech News
Japanese Tsunami Is A Reminder To Prepare In the Pacific Northwest
In 2011, a massive earthquake hit Tōhoku, triggering a tsunami that devastated coastal Japan and surged across the ocean. The triple-plate tectonic junction that spawned the disaster has a mirror image across the Pacific Ocean, a nasty intersection of looming catastrophe in the Pacific Northwest. Road damage after the 2001 Nisqually earthquake in Washington. Image … Continued
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Tech News
Marvel At The Variety Of Sea Ice Along The Northwest Passage
Not all ice is created equal: this view of the Amundsen Gulf has open ocean, older thick ice, young thin ice, fresh snow and even broken brash ice adrift at sea. Top image: Ice in the Amundsen Gulf on June 21, 2014. Credit: NASA This chunk of ice is along the Amundsen Gulf, the westernmost … Continued
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Tech News
Can You Identify This Microscopic Image?
This is not a photograph of a reptile’s skin. Can you figure out what it is? Here’s the full electron scanning microscope image with a scale bar. Any guesses? The answer is after the photo. Chanomphalus pilsbryi shell under a scanning electron microscope. Image credit: A. Thompson/USGS This is a what a snail shell looks … Continued
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Tech News
Find Inspiration From These Women Working With Science In Public
One of the things that brings me joy in life is finding enthusiastic, friendly people working on interesting and unusual projects. Here’s my short list of fantastic women who inspire me by doing cool things with science and sharing it all with us on Twitter. Water-colour coelacanth for this weeks’ Science Art Tweetstorm. Image credit: … Continued
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SciencePhysics & Chemistry
These 17 Women Changed The Face Of Physics
From discovering pulsars to correcting the optics of the fuzzy Hubble Space Telescope, here are 17 stories of women who made undeniably vital contributions to astronomy and physics. The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics put together a gallery of pioneering women in physics, writing: They discovered pulsars, found the first evidence of dark matter, pioneered … Continued
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Tech News
Mercury’s Caloris Basin Is Buried In Kilometers Of Lava
Once upon a time, the Caloris basin on Mercury was flooded with lava, forming a volcanic layer 2.5 to 3.5 kilometers thick with an occasional fresh crater punching through to the original basin floor. The image is enhanced-colour, revealing geological details. As NASA explains: This mosaic of Caloris basin is an enhanced-color composite overlain on … Continued
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SciencePhysics & Chemistry
This Is What Happens When You Load Uranium In A Cloud Chamber
What do you do onceyou’ve built a cloud chamber using party supplies? If you’re Cloudylabs, you load it up with a chunk of uranium and watch the physics happen. From the video description: This video shows the Cloudylabs’s cloud chamber running for approx. 50 min with an Uranium mineral. After 40 min, there is not … Continued
Mika McKinnon
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