meaningful patterns

science-junkie: Beautiful ‘flowers’ self-assemble in a...

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:22 -0700

Beautiful ‘flowers’ self-assemble in a beaker

With the hand of nature trained on a beaker of chemical fluid, the most delicate flower structures have been formed in a Harvard laboratory—and not at the scale of inches, but microns.

These minuscule sculptures, curved and delicate, don’t resemble the cubic or jagged forms normally associated with crystals, though that’s what they are. Rather, fields of carnations and marigolds seem to bloom from the surface of a submerged glass slide, assembling themselves a molecule at a time.

By simply manipulating chemical gradients in a beaker of fluid, Wim L. Noorduin, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and lead author of a paper appearing on the cover of the May 17 issue of Science, has found that he can control the growth behavior of these crystals to create precisely tailored structures.

“For at least 200 years, people have been intrigued by how complex shapes could have evolved in nature. This work helps to demonstrate what’s possible just through environmental, chemical changes,” says Noorduin.

Read more

Images: [x]

science-junkie: Inorganic Flora by Macoto Murayama

Thu, 16 May 2013 08:01:18 -0700

science-junkie:

Inorganic Flora by Macoto Murayama

odditiesoflife: The Glowing Spider-Worms of New Zealand For...

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:01:42 -0700

odditiesoflife:

The Glowing Spider-Worms of New Zealand

For over one hundred years, millions of tourists have flocked to the ancient limestone Waitomo Caves on New Zealand’s North Island, where a stunning species of fungus gnat called Arachnocampa luminosa live.

Unique to New Zealand and Australia, they are found in caves, grottoes, and other sheltered places. Arachnocampa means ‘spider-worm,’ as the gnat is known for the way their larvae hang strong vertical silk threads from their underground habitats. Since the larvae are luminescent, the thousands of tiny threads light up cave ceilings like a starry sky.

invaderxan: Desert Varnish – Signs of a shadow biosphere?

Wed, 15 May 2013 08:01:32 -0700

invaderxan:

Desert Varnish – Signs of a shadow biosphere?

fuckyeahfluiddynamics: When a drop falls from a moderate height...

Tue, 14 May 2013 16:01:20 -0700

fuckyeahfluiddynamics:

When a drop falls from a moderate height into a shallow pool, its impact creates a complicated pattern. The photo above is a composite image showing a top-down view 100 ms after such an impact. On the left side, the flow is visualized using dye whereas the right shows a schlieren photograph, in which contrast indicates variations in density. Both methods show the same general structure - an inner vortex ring generated at the edge of the impact crater and formed mostly of drop fluid and an outer vortex ring, consisting primarily of pool fluid, formed by the spreading wave. Both regions show signs of instability and breakdown. (Photo credit: A. Wilkens et al.)

gigighering-thepursuit: ‘Memory’ by artist Esther Paleologos

Tue, 14 May 2013 08:01:31 -0700

gigighering-thepursuit:

‘Memory’ by artist Esther Paleologos

showslow: With a wooden panel, nails, and one single piece of...

Mon, 13 May 2013 16:01:24 -0700

showslow:

With a wooden panel, nails, and one single piece of thread Kumi Yamashita made those amazingly realistic portraits.

Previously (x).

sciencesoup: White dwarfs polluted with planetary debris The...

Mon, 13 May 2013 09:23:16 -0700

sciencesoup:

White dwarfs polluted with planetary debris

The Hubble Space Telescope has found chemical evidence for the building blocks for rocky planets in an extremely unusual place: the atmospheres of two burned-out stars. Called white dwarfs, these stars are small, dim shadows of stars that would have once been like our sun, and they reside 150 light-years from Earth in the young star cluster of Hyades. Hubble’s spectroscopic observations identified silicon and low levels of carbon, both of which are strong indicators of a rocky material similar to that which makes up Earth. “When these stars were born, they built planets,” said Jay Farihi, lead author of the study, “and there’s a good chance they currently retain some of them… Based on the silicon-to-carbon ratio in our study, we can actually say that this material is basically Earth-like.” The material is thought to have ended up in the atmosphere of these stars after they collapsed into white dwarfs, and the larger planets in their solar system nudged asteroids into star-grazing orbits. The stars’ gravitational pull tore the asteroids apart, and the pulverised debris fell into a ring around the white dwarfs and were eventually funnelled inwards to pollute the stars themselves. The discovery suggests that rocky planets may commonly assemble around stars, and may help us to understand what will happen to our solar system in five billion years, when our own sun burns out.

wnycradiolab: natgeofound: A wave of rock shaped by wind and...

Mon, 13 May 2013 09:08:35 -0700

wnycradiolab:

natgeofound:

A wave of rock shaped by wind and rain towers above a plain in Western Australia, September 1963. Photograph by Robert B. Goodman, National Geographic

Damn.

"The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about."

Mon, 13 May 2013 09:06:57 -0700

““The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.””

- Dr Wayne Dyer (via mishaboom)

Photo

Wed, 08 May 2013 22:40:49 -0700

currentsinbiology: How Burning Plants Signal Future Generations...

Wed, 08 May 2013 16:01:37 -0700

currentsinbiology:

How Burning Plants Signal Future Generations to Grow

Previous studies have reported that chemicals known as karrikins are created as trees and shrubs burn during a forest fire and remain in the soil after the fire, ensuring the forest will regenerate. In the April 23 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), scientists at the Salk Institute and the University of California, San Diego, sought to uncover exactly how karrikins stimulate new plant growth.

The researchers found that a plant protein know as KAI2 binds to karrikin in dormant seeds, changing its shape. This karrikin-induced shape change may send a new signal to other proteins in the seeds causing seed germination when the time is right, after a forest fire.

christinetheastrophysicist: NASA’s Spacesuits Through the...

Wed, 08 May 2013 08:01:22 -0700

christinetheastrophysicist:

NASA’s Spacesuits Through the Years

Nothing says “astronaut” quite like a spacesuit. Whether it’s the shiny aluminized nylon flight suits worn by the original Mercury Seven astronauts or the pressurized bright orange “pumpkin suits” worn by space shuttle crews, the clothes do make the man or the woman. It’s much more than a look; the suits could be the only thing that separates an astronaut from life or death in case of an emergency. Here’s a look at some spacesuits in NASA’s storerooms.

See More.

stellar-indulgence: Stellar Archaeology Traces Milky Way’s...

Tue, 07 May 2013 16:01:28 -0700

stellar-indulgence:

Stellar Archaeology Traces Milky Way’s History

Unfortunately, stars don’t have birth certificates. So, astronomers have a tough time figuring out their ages. Knowing a star’s age is critical for understanding how our Milky Way galaxy built itself up over billions of years from smaller galaxies. But Jason Kalirai of the Space Telescope Science Institute and The Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Astrophysical Sciences, both in Baltimore, Md., has found the next best thing to a star’s birth certificate.

Using a new technique, Kalirai probed the burned-out relics of Sun-like stars, called white dwarfs, in the inner region of our Milky Way galaxy’s halo. The halo is a spherical cloud of stars surrounding our galaxy’s disk. Those stars, his study reveals, are 11.5 billion years old, younger than the first generation of Milky Way stars. They formed more than 2 billion years after the birth of the universe 13.7 billion years ago. Previous age estimates, based on analyzing normal stars in the inner halo, ranged from 10 billion to 14 billion years. Kalirai’s study reinforces the emerging view that our galaxy’s halo is composed of a layer-cake structure that formed in stages over billions of years.

White dwarf stars have remarkable properties, yet they are very simple. These stripped cores of normal hydrogen-burning stars are about 1 million times denser than matter on Earth. This means that a tablespoon of material from a white dwarf’s surface would weigh as much as a school bus on Earth. White dwarfs also have no fuel to generate energy, and most of their atmospheres contain a single atom, hydrogen.

The second figure illustrates the spectral features of a white dwarf, in comparison to the Sun and a blue giant. The white dwarf spectrum is simple, containing only absorption lines from the hydrogen atom. But, unlike the same lines in the blue giant spectrum (a bloated star with a low density), the features in the white dwarf are broadened due to the intense pressure on the surface of the star (essentially, the energy levels of the atom are being perturbed). This broadening of the lines, as well as their depth, is directly related to the mass and temperature of the star. Unlike for most stars, astronomers can therefore reliably establish fundamental properties for white dwarfs from their spectra.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild and J. Kalirai (STScI)

Photo

Tue, 07 May 2013 10:02:56 -0700

This Ad Has a Secret Anti-Abuse Message That Only Kids Can See

Tue, 07 May 2013 09:41:07 -0700

This Ad Has a Secret Anti-Abuse Message That Only Kids Can See:

coagulates:

In an effort to provide abused children with a safe way to reach out for help, a Spanish organization called the Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk Foundation, or ANAR for short, created an ad that displays a different message for adults and children at the same time.

THIS IS AMAZING OMG

katzmatt: thewavespectra: Isotope Titanium Lume Ring The...

Tue, 07 May 2013 09:38:03 -0700

katzmatt:

thewavespectra:

Isotope Titanium Lume Ring

The Isotope is all about contrast. The brilliant glow of the lume, and the sharp lines of the titanium create a visual moment that refuses to be ignored.

The special lume material in the Isotope ring soaks up both natural and artificial light and will glow bright green as soon as it is in a low-light environment. Wear it to bed and it will still be glowing when you get up for that 3am visit to the bathroom!

Moonglow Material:

Moonglow is a ultra-high output photoluminesent polycarbonate. It soaks up both natural and artificial light and will glow bright green for hours once it is in a low-light environment. It also a passive-lume material, meaning it absorbs light. It does not generate its own light as radioactive materials such as tritium do.

https://www.touchofmodern.com/sales/black-badger—3/isotope-titanium-lume-ring

oh man tron rings

romkids: To get ready for Early Life Weekend, I took a trip up...

Sat, 04 May 2013 16:01:24 -0700

Trilobites stacked on top of each other like a game of pick up sticks.

The core of a petrified tree, polished by time.

Fossilized plants. Also just beautiful art.

A colony (?) of trilobites, dead from a single disaster.

Dave Rudkin, hand model.

Peytoia! One of the first beasts of the ocean.

Sea Scorpions caught in a time stream.

romkids:

To get ready for Early Life Weekend, I took a trip up to the Royal Ontario Museum’s palaeontology department and hung out with Dave Rudkin.

DAVE RUDKIN

Dave Rudkin is the Assistant Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology at the ROM and a truly great guy. Dave’s been busy preparing for the Gallery of Early Life, a permanent gallery opening in 2014, but he still found time to show me around the invertebrate palaeontology collections.

What I like most about Dave is that he always has time to support children’s programming, whether it’s to lend a few objects for a weekend, or just chat about palaeontology. His energy is infectious and he loves trilobites SO MUCH.

VERTEBRATE PALAEONTOLOGY

As all y’all know, I LOVE dinosaurs, and have spent a ton of time up in vertebrate palaeontology collection (of which you can see a few photos of here), but I’ve have had merely a glimpse of the workings of the invertebrate side.

This photo set features all sorts of animals from BEFORE the dinosaurs, the time when life first evolved on Earth. The ROM is a world leader in research on first life, specifically from the Burgess Shale site, so we have an absolutely PACKED collections room full of prehistoric treasures.

Click the photos for more info.

Learn more about ROM research on the Burgess Shale HERE.

Check out more behind the scenes photos HERE.

Learn more about Early Life weekend HERE.

itscolossal: Candace Couse

Sat, 04 May 2013 08:01:21 -0700

itscolossal:

Candace Couse

spaceplasma: NASA’s Fermi, Swift See ‘Shockingly Bright’...

Fri, 03 May 2013 22:01:39 -0700

The maps in this animation show how the sky looks at gamma-ray energies above 100 million electron volts (MeV) with a view centered on the north galactic pole.

This animation shows a more detailed Fermi LAT view of GRB 130427A.

spaceplasma:

NASA’s Fermi, Swift See ‘Shockingly Bright’ Burst

A record-setting blast of gamma rays from a dying star in a distant galaxy has wowed astronomers around the world. The eruption, which is classified as a gamma-ray burst, or GRB, and designated GRB 130427A, produced the highest-energy light ever detected from such an event.

“We have waited a long time for a gamma-ray burst this shockingly, eye-wateringly bright,” said Julie McEnery, project scientist for the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “The GRB lasted so long that a record number of telescopes on the ground were able to catch it while space-based observations were still ongoing.”

The burst subsequently was detected in optical, infrared and radio wavelengths by ground-based observatories, based on the rapid accurate position from Swift. Astronomers quickly learned that the GRB was located about 3.6 billion light-years away, which for these events is relatively close.

Gamma-ray bursts are the universe’s most luminous explosions. Astronomers think most occur when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel and collapse under their own weight. As the core collapses into a black hole, jets of material shoot outward at nearly the speed of light.

The jets bore all the way through the collapsing star and continue into space, where they interact with gas previously shed by the star and generate bright afterglows that fade with time.

If the GRB is near enough, astronomers usually discover a supernova at the site a week or so after the outburst.

“This GRB is in the closest 5 percent of bursts, so the big push now is to find an emerging supernova, which accompanies nearly all long GRBs at this distance,” said Goddard’s Neil Gehrels, principal investigator for Swift.

Ground-based observatories are monitoring the location of GRB 130427A and expect to find an underlying supernova by midmonth.

Explanation:

The 1st animation: The maps in the animation show how the sky looks at gamma-ray energies above 100 million electron volts (MeV) with a view centered on the north galactic pole. The first frame shows the sky during a three-hour interval prior to GRB 130427A. The second frame shows a three-hour interval starting 2.5 hours before the burst, and ending 30 minutes into the event. The Fermi team chose this interval to demonstrate how bright the burst was relative to the rest of the gamma-ray sky. This burst was bright enough that Fermi autonomously left its normal surveying mode to give the LAT instrument a better view, so the three-hour exposure following the burst does not cover the whole sky in the usual way.

The 2nd animation: This animation shows a more detailed Fermi LAT view of GRB 130427A. The sequence shows high-energy (100 Mev to 100 GeV) gamma rays from a 20-degree-wide region of the sky starting three minutes before the burst to 14 hours after. Following an initial one-second spike, the LAT emission remained relatively quiet for the next 15 seconds while Fermi’s GBM instrument showed bright, variable lower-energy emission. Then the burst re-brightened in the LAT over the next few minutes and remained bright for nearly half a day.

Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler