Why Is That Undulating Blob Of Flesh Inspecting My Oil Drill?

Every so often, the Internet astonishes. Things I wouldn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t expect, sometimes happen. Take this, for example. On April 25, somewhere in the ocean off Great Britain, a remotely operated video camera mounted near a deep sea oil drill caught a glimpse — at first it was just a glimpse — of an astonishing looking sea creature. It was a green-gray blob of gelatinous muscle, covered with a finely mesh-like textured skin, no eyes, no tentacles, no front, no back. It moved constantly, floating up to the drill, then it backed off and disappeared. The camera operator tried to find it, and then, suddenly, out of the darkness, back it came. What was this thing?

That is truly incredible.

jtotheizzoe:

Best Illusion of the Year - Disappearing Hand Trick

A combination of visual, touch and position illusions come together in this freaky winner’s video. Gives me the willies just thinking about it. The illusion is part of a project to simulate sensory loss in stroke patients.

Check out the rest of the 2012 winners here.

jtotheizzoe:

BRAINBRAWL 2012!!!

The Main Event? Connectomics: Sebastian Seung vs. Tony Movshon.

We’ve all seen the pictures in the past couple months. The connectome, the brain’s wiring diagram, has been drawn in unprecedented detail, and is organized in a surprisingly simple fashion. If we can describe every neuron in the brain, can we know precisely how the brain works?

Carl Zimmer and Radiolab’s Robert Krulwich moderate a discussion on whether we are more or less than our connectome. It’s a room full of amazingly smart people, talking about the Big Questions in neuroscience. Here’s the complete video, thanks to Neuwrite.

As Stuart Firestein asks, “Does a parts list and a wiring diagram provide a satisfactory description of a brain, and maybe even a way to repair it?”

(by armenenikolopov)

guardian:

Source: Reuters

The northern lights from space - more space and science video wonders here

jtotheizzoe:

Epic Time-Lapse Escape: The Stars From Orbit

We’ve seen plenty of GIFs and time-lapses of stars and #starporn, but none precisely like this. It seems like Earth is often the star, instead of the stars themselves.

Nice to see that change. Full screen, HD, enjoy :)

(ᔥBad Astronomy)

Tellurium in stars

Tellurium is found in three distant stars. Professor Martyn Poliakoff comments on this MIT paper. More on elements being created in stars at this Sixty Symbols video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhhdkYFmd7A

We assume you already subscribe to Sixty Symbols - but you should also be following Deep Sky Videos at: http://www.youtube.com/DeepSkyVideos

More chemistry at http://www.periodicvideos.com/
Follow us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/periodicvideos
And on Twitter at http://twitter.com/periodicvideos

Periodic Videos films are by video journalist Brady Haran

MIT ress release at: http://web.mit.edu/press/2012/heavy-metal-stars-tellurium.html

jtotheizzoe:

A Tornado On The Sun

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this video of swirling plasma on the surface of the sun. It’s a tornado perhaps the size of the Earth itself, spinning at speeds a thousand times greater than Earth’s strongest storms.

(via NPR)

aamukherjee:

Football, Physics, and Symmetry

Unhappiness after a Super Bowl loss can only be combated with physics! Granted, there is not much physics actually involved in this video, but it’s an interesting watch nonetheless.

Remember, symmetry is more than just butterflies and Rorschach tests!

jtotheizzoe:

OK Go … Is There Nothing You Can Not Do?

Sesame Street has teamed up with the band OK GO in this video introducing the basics of color theory. It’s all about the three primary colors.

This video might seem simplistic at first, but color theory is deeply rooted in physics and biology. The “colors” we see in light are nothing more than a certain window of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. Red, blue and green are primary colors in human vision (“trichromacy”). This is because you possess three different kinds of cone cells, each corresponding (more or less) to one of these wavelength ranges.

More “complicated” colors are a result of your nervous system integrating these different wavelength combinations via a very complicated network of interconnected cells that the cones connect to. The same goes for what we view as “complementary” and so on. It’s all dependent on certain cells that you have in your head and how they interpret the world around you.

For more:

• Go play the OK Go color game
• A previous post about color vision, with links to mind-bending color illusions

(via Brain Pickings)

aamukherjee:

Explaining the Atom In A New Way

It comes down to the teacher; a great teacher can truly change the world for their students.

jtotheizzoe:

Shit Scientists Say

I’m a little tired of the “Shit ____ Say/Don’t Say” meme already, but I’ll make an exception for this one. It’s mildly hilarious.

Stochastic.

(by RoseEveleth)

jtotheizzoe:

NASA and MIT Are Building Android-Powered Light-Saber Training Droids

Or something like that, from their appearance. More at the MIT SPHERES project page.

More on this project from from GoogleNexus in this video:

(by SSLramirez)