Eclipse by Adam David Brown
Brown describes his piece:
Using an ordinary blackboard I layered the scientific notation of Newton, Einstein and Hawking in order to make a black hole.
(via likeaphysicist)
22˚ Halo with Moon Dogs (by Bob West)
A 22° halo is an optical phenomenon which produces a halo of 22° around the sun or moon. This occurs when light is being refracted through hexagonal ice crystals that float high in the atmosphere when a haze of cirrus or cirrostratus clouds are present.
The two brighter spots on either side of the Moon are called Moon Dogs, which are a rarer event caused also by the refraction of moonlight that passes through hexagonal plate shaped ice crystals that tend to fall at a different orientation (flat) in the same clouds as the halo when the moonlight is strong enough.
(via buddhabrot)
Scientist creates lifelike cells out of metal
Researcher says he has created living cells made of metal instead of carbon — and they may be evolving.
(via scienceandphilosophy)
Impossible crystals are ‘from space’
Examples of a crystal previously thought to be impossible in nature may have come from space, a study shows. Quasicrystals have an unusual structure - in between those of crystals and glasses. Quasicrystals break some of the rules of symmetry that apply to conventional crystalline structures. They also exhibit different physical and electrical properties
Until two years ago, quasicrystals had only been created in the lab - then geologists found them in rocks from Russia’s Koryak mountains. In PNAS journal, a team says the chemistry of the Russian crystals suggests they arrived in meteorites.
(via weareallstarstuff)
Scientists are explorers. Philosophers are tourists.
(via fuckyeahquantummechanics)
Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.
(via likeaphysicist)
Eratosthenes’ measurement of the Earth’s circumference
Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth without leaving Egypt. Eratosthenes knew that on the summer solstice at local noon in the Ancient Egyptian city of Swenet (known in Greek as Syene, and in the modern day as Aswan) on the Tropic of Cancer, the sun would appear at the zenith, directly overhead (he had been told that the shadow of someone looking down a deep well would block the reflection of the Sun at noon). He also knew, from measurement, that in his hometown of Alexandria, the angle of elevation of the sun was 1/50th of a circle (7°12’) south of the zenith on the solstice noon. Assuming that the Earth was spherical (360°), and that Alexandria was due north of Syene, he concluded that the meridian arc distance from Alexandria to Syene must therefore be 1/50 = 7°12’/360°, and was therefore 1/50 of the total circumference of the Earth. His knowledge of the size of Egypt after many generations of surveying trips for the Pharaonic bookkeepers gave a distance between the cities of 5000 stadia (about 500 geographical miles or 800 km). This distance was corroborated by inquiring about the time that it takes to travel from Syene to Alexandria by camel. He rounded the result to a final value of 700 stadia per degree, which implies a circumference of 252,000 stadia. The exact size of the stadion he used is frequently argued. The common Attic stadion was about 185 m, which would imply a circumference of 46,620 km, i.e. 16.3% too large. However, if we assume that Eratosthenes used the “Egyptian stadion” of about 157.5 m, his measurement turns out to be 39,690 km, an error of less than 2%.
(via likeaphysicist)
Every fact of science was once damned. Every invention was considered impossible. Every discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy. Every artistic innovation was denounced as fraud and folly. The entire web of culture and ‘progress,’ everything on earth that is man-made and not given to us by nature, is the concrete manifestation of some man’s refusal to bow to Authority. We would own no more, know no more, and be no more than the first apelike hominids if it were not for the rebellious, the recalcitrant, and the intransigent. As Oscar Wilde truly said, ‘Disobedience was man’s Original Virtue.’
(via narvanonthebridge)
