China’s Chang’e 3 lunar lander in lunar orbit, and deploying the Yutu rover.
Now lunar landing conspiracy theorists have a whole new country to target!
Tags:
#awesome #the power of science
the power of science
Good morning! What IS that on Mars? Serina explains using dry ice on sand dunes. Might lead to a whole new sport.
Tags:
#awesome #the power of science
The ISS’s solar arrays glistening in the Sun with a breathtaking view of Earth’s limb.
Photo Credit : CSA
Tags:
#the brightest star in our sky #shinyyyy #I feel a sudden urge to research how solar panels are made #(and that’s just the *left* half of the picture)
Blow Out A Candle, Illuminate Your Mind
Featuring the stunning photos of Grover Schrayer, Kyle Hill shines light on a beauty you never knew existed: the waxbow.
The smoke that wafts from the just-extinguished wick of a candle is not mere ash and soot. It is a nearly-invisible cloud of vaporized droplets of wax. Head on over to But Not Simpler…to find out the physics behind this shimmering phenomenon.
A tidbit of wonder that’s been sitting under our noses, on our birthday cakes, this whole time. Keep your eyes open and your brains sharp … you never know when you’ll stumble on something amazing.
Tags:
#pretty things #the power of science
In the early years of space flight, both Russians and Americans used pencils in space. Unfortunately, pencil lead is made of graphite, a highly conductive material. Snapped graphite leads and particles in zero gravity are hugely problematic, as they will get sucked into the air ventilation or electronic equipment, easily causing shorts or fires in the pure oxygen environment of a capsule.
After the fire in Apollo 1 which killed all the astronauts on board, NASA required a writing instrument that wasn’t a fire hazard. Fisher spent over a million dollars (of his own money) creating a pressurized ball point pen, which NASA bought at $2.95 each. The Russian space program also switched over from pencils shortly after.
40 years later snide morons on the internet still snigger about it, because snide morons on the internet never know what they are talking about.
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU YOU WONDERFUL HUMAN
I’VE HEARD SO MANY PEOPLE GIVE AMERICA SHIT ABOUT THIS AND LAUGH BECAUSE THEY THINK AMERICA IS SO FUCKING STUPID FOR SPENDING A MILLION DOLLARS ON A PEN WHEN THEY COULD’VE USED A PENCIL, LIKE THEY WERE TOO STUPID TO THINK OF THAT CONCEPT
THAT PEN WAS AN IDEA THAT PROBABLY LITERALLY SAVED LIVES AND THIS DAMN POST HAS BEEN CIRCULATING WITH PEOPLE LAUGHING AT NASA AND TREATING THEM LIKE IDIOTS
SHUT THE FUCK UP AND SHIT THE FUCK DOWN
Tags:
#because you know there had to be more to it than that #history #the power of science
Shark Weak
Discovery Channel, we need to talk.
There’s nothing as tragic as seeing an old friend destroy their life, putting trash in their body, a ruined shell of their former self filled with nothing but wasted junk. They chase a drug that they don’t want to get a buzz they’ll never get again. For one old friend, that high is ratings, the drug is Shark Week, and the part of Lindsay Lohan is played by the Discovery Channel.
Since 1987, Discovery has been bringing sharks into our living rooms for one week a year. Exploring their incredible biology, misunderstood behavior, and terrifying image through a scientific camera lens. Well, they have thrown that mission away. It’s official. With this year’s fake-but-disguised-as-real mockumentary about the definitely-extinct Megalodon shark, they have officially jumped their own programming.
Last night, to kick off Shark Week, Discovery aired a program full of supposed home video footage that allegedly captured an enormous, never-seen shark. Could it be the terrifying prehistoric Megalodon, haunting the deep this whole time, right under our noses?
No, of course not. That thing’s extinct as extinct can be. Failing to make that clear to your audience, and interviewing actors as scientists is as bad as Animal Planet’s Mermaids fiasco. Discovery Channel now stands solely for entertainment, not science. So it goes, I guess.
We’ve lost science in our newspapers, on our radios, even in a good number of our schools. Discovery was founded to use the creative freedom of cable television to bring science to the airwaves. Now they have thrown it away, with a fantasy story presented as reality, lying to viewers for the sake of ad dollars.
Here’s some collected reactions:
- Christie Wilcox tears Discovery a new one for the Megalodon dud, especially the BS disclaimer they ran in 0.12 point font, and The Verge keeps the punches coming.
- Wil Wheaton is pissed too, and no one wants to see someone so smart and wonderful be sad, do they?
- Discovery’s Facebook post asking what people thought of the Megalodon show is not to miss. See if you can find a single positive comment! I couldn’t.
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” you might say. “They’re just trying to make something entertaining, who cares?“ you may think. This is a big deal. This means that dozens of people, when designing their flagship programming week, made a deliberate choice to present a lie as truth, because they don’t think you are smart enough to be entertained by the truth.
Tell Discovery what you think by visiting their Facebook page and Twitter page. Do not give them another dollar/minute of your TV time until they apologize, and even then think twice because you know how addictions go. It’s time to tell them that you deserve better.
Want real, truthful, respectful shark science this week? I suggest checking out NatGeo Wild’s SharkFest programming (made with real science!) and my friend and marine scientist David Shiffman’s sharktastic Twitter feed.
Discovery Channel … this is an intervention. We’re here as friends, we’re concerned that you’re going to do damage to yourself that you can’t undo, and we want our old channel back. Stop insulting the intelligence of the audience you claim to serve, and get your shit together. If you chum the water with crap, this is what swims to the surface.
Do you agree to check into scientific rehab today?
Tags:
#saw the show #didn’t realise it was fictional #thought the Megalodon hunters were cryptozoologists: they believed it was real but it wasn’t #and that the show should have made their Bigfootishness more clear #it’s worse than I thought
Looking in the mirror from 898,410,414 miles away…
NASA has just released a raw edition of Friday’s photo of Earth and the moon, as seen from the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn.
From out there, we look like stars.
Just a tip, NASA: We’re gonna have to give it a better name than “N00213959.jpg”. Maybe “Pale Blue Sparkle”?
(hi-res at NASA website, a more processed version is sure to come… stay tuned)
Tags:
#the power of science #I wanted to go outside and wave #but there was a sudden downpour and it was raining sheets at 5:30 #so I waved out the window #anyway this is #awesome
Chris Hadfield and students from coast-to-coast fill the sky with music
For his last downlink before returning to Earth, CSA Astronaut Chris Hadfield performed I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing) with hundreds of students at the Ontario Science Centre and nearly a million people, mostly students from coast-to-coast Canada and around the world, performing the song in unison from their location.
I.S.S. is a song co-written by Hadfield and the Barenaked Ladies’ front man Ed Robertson.
Credit: CSA
Tags:
#music #the power of science #the brightest star in our sky #now I understand what choking-up-with-happiness means
Into the Abyss: Incredible Shrinking Cups
Marine biologists and ocean scientists are somewhat of a tribe unto themselves. They spend weeks and months in cramped conditions aboard research vessels, doing science that’s a bit unlike any other science, and drinking enough to make Jack Sparrow proud. So it’s perfectly natural that their tribe would have some unique customs.
I discovered one of those today: Sending styrofoam cups to the bottom of the ocean as souvenirs.
When exploring deep ocean trenches and thermal vents, it’s usually a robot or a high-tech manned submersible doing the dirty work. The Cayman trough (where the top cup went) is home to some of the world’s deepest hydrothermal vents. At around 5,000 meters deep, the cup experiences nearly 500 times the pressure we experience at sea level. And since styrofoam is a foam made of air pockets inside a hydrocarbon polymer, it compresses under the added weight!
The bottom cup began as a normal-sized drinking utensil. But after it went to the bottom of the Mariana Trench (the world’s deepest point), it returned the size of a ketchup packet. The pressure down there is about a thousand times higher than at the surface!
(Squashed cups via Southern Fried Science and imgur)
Tags:
#awesome #the power of science
Kitchener-Waterloo, ON – home to BlackBerry, uWaterloo and the church my wife and I got married in.
Hey look, it’s a picture of me! (And about half a million other people.)
(This picture was taken during the day, so no matter how much you zoomed in you would not see me in my backyard, looking up and waving. Evening, now, that’s another matter.)
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#Waterloo Region #our home and cherished land #with everything all white and grey it’s hard to get your bearings on this picture #no picking out towns by the light-clusters #but I’m pretty sure I’m in there *somewhere*
Brinens and Things 