-
aamukherjee Entropie -
alchymista Alchymista -
crownedrose Hymn To The Sea -
epistemophobiarunsdeep Falling Over Myself. -
expose-the-light Quarks to Quasars -
ikenbot cwl -
pieceinthepuzzlehumanity This Is The Right One -
project-argus Hello, Universe. -
torgothegreat God Delusion
The Mileage of Light
Composite Image Credit & Copyright: Dennis L. Mammana
If you’re driving down a dark road on a starry night, you might want to check the odometer. Earlier this month, when traveling astronomer Dennis Mammana did he was greeted with the significant mileage reading of 186,282 miles.
That’s the number of miles light travels in one second. Or, if you prefer kilometers, the number you are looking for is 299,792. Mammana muses that in driving to countless observatories, star parties, and night sky photo shoots it has taken his 1998 vintage sport utility vehicle over 13 years to cover that distance. Of course, he considers his next important mileage milestone to be the distance to the Moon.
ikenbot
Physicists Discover Quantum Speed Limit
The speed of light is the cosmic speed limit, according to physicists’ best understanding: No information can be carried at a greater rate, no matter what method is used. But an analogous speed limit seems to exist within materials, where the interactions between particles are typically very short-range and motion is far slower than light-speed. A new set of experiments and simulations by Marc Cheneau and colleagues have identified this maximum velocity, which has implications for quantum entanglement and quantum computations.
Horsetail Firefall (by Rob Kroenert)
Horsetail Falls is a small seasonal waterfall that only appears in late winter and early spring. It flows over the east side of El Capitan, so as a backdrop it has one of the most impressive walls of granite in the entire park. Then – only for part of February, and only when the sky is clear – the very last sunrays of the day selectively linger on the falls, lighting it up with a golden glow that makes the water look like lava.
(via shychemist)
crownedrose
Previously, if you wanted to look at a single-chained protein, you needed X-rays. This was bad news for biologists, whose lively samples were destroyed or damaged by such intense light. Now, by exploiting the short de Broglie wavelength of slow electrons, you can finally look at single proteins with sub-nanometer resolution. This is good news for disease fighters and medicine designers!
lonecenturion
In this surprisingly high-tech microscope slide from the Victorian Era, special filters are used in the microscope to transform the pale porpoise bone into the vibrant colors seen above. Polarizing filters eliminate certain wavelengths of light based on the direction in which they vibrate, and, when positioned correctly, they reveal special properties of the specimen, related to how the substance refracts, or bends, the light waves that enter it. This produces what’s known as interference colors. An additional filter, made of the mineral selenite, further alters the behavior of light and changes the colors that the viewer sees.
alchymista
This lamp supposedly “mimics and reproduces the cosmic light that fills the Universe.” How?
They claim the the lights twinkle in various colors and sequences that visualize how stars’ light has changed over billions of years. This works via an algorithm that expresses the 14-billion-year history of the cosmos in a 14-second loop.
Woah.
via Fast Co Design
cwnl:
Citizen Science: GLOBE at Night
For starters, what is GLOBE at Night?
The GLOBE at Night program is an international citizen-science campaign designed to raise public awareness of the impact of light pollution on our night skies. GLOBE at Night aims to raise awareness by inviting citizen-scientists to measure their night sky brightness and submit their observations to a website from a computer or smart phone.
Light pollution not only threatens our “right to starlight”, but also affects energy consumption, wildlife and health. For the past six years, the GLOBE at Night campaign has been involving people in 115 countries.
Participating in GLOBE at Night requires only five easy steps:
1) Find your latitude and longitude.
2) Find Orion, Leo or Crux by going outside more than an hour after sunset (about 8-10pm local time).
3) Match your nighttime sky to one of the provided magnitude charts.
5) Compare your observation to thousands around the world.
You can also use the new web application data submission process. The GLOBE at Night website is easy to use, comprehensive and holds an abundance of background information. The database is usable for comparisons with a variety of other databases, like how light pollution affects the foraging habits of bats.
(via ikenbot)
Geometry of Light by Alyson Shotz imagines “What would it look like to see light stopped in time”.
About the artist:
Interested in physics, Alyson Shotz uses industrial material, mirrors, stainless steel, to visualize invisible forces like gravity, space and light – the basic elements of our physical world. Materials that proved no less important when it comes to Art. “Questions about what the universe is made of (what is space, what is matter) seem primary to what sculpture, or art, should be about”, says Shotz.
Deep Purple Northern Lights
Skywatcher Yuichi Takasaki took this photo of deep violet hues in an auroral display. Multiple exposures are made to collect enough light for an image that would otherwise not be evident to the eye.
CREDIT: Yuichi Takasaka/TWAN,SPACE.com
torgothegreatLED Moon Light by Nosigner
Inspired by the recent “Supermoon”, product and graphic designer Nosigner (Eisuke Tachikawa) has designed an LED-embedded moon light using actual 3D topographical data taken from the lunar orbiter Kaguya. I can only hope that such a lovely, hypnotizing object will one day be made for sale.
