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Color Me Curious
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PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
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Origami Around
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Not today Justin
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@braininkblog-blog
Teenager sends $50 camera into space and captures these stunning images of Earth
Adam Cudworth, a 19 year-old student from the U.K., who recently sent his Canon A570 camera to the edge of space, in hopes of capturing some cool images of Earth from space. And that he did.
Check out Cudworth’s Flickr photostream to see more pics.
I think I have something to add to my bucket-list. :)
Fractal flatware.
Best appearance of fractals since this collection of satellite photos demonstrating Earth’s fractal geography patterns.
(via fractalforums)
Big Think: Bill Nye - How to Talk to an Alien
… said Bill, understatedly.
I'm back from traveling the country!
Now back to work on videos and blogging. :)
In scientific inquiry, often the answer to one simple question fortuitously explains the answers to many others; they may even answer questions that have yet to be conceived. Powerful ideas unify concepts or phenomena that were previously thought to be unrelated.
Neil deGrasse Tyson adds to some of history’s most beautiful definitions of science.
The man is a science-sage of the finest variety.
Truth.
(via jtotheizzoe)
Zoological Universe
illustrations by Christian Petersen :: via etsy.com
Viral Conception
How the origin of mammals could be written in our genome … by viruses.
Every human being starts the same way, with a sperm and egg becoming one, 23 chromosomes from each parent contributing the genetic instructions that will one day make, well … you. But the genes, the actual DNA that writes for proteins, make up only about one one-hundredth of all the DNA in those 46 chromosomes.
A full 8% of the DNA in your genome, though, are the remains of ancient viruses. A certain type of virus called a “retrovirus” is capable of inserting its genome into its host, literally writing itself into your DNA. This is the family that HIV belongs to. If a retrovirus infects an egg and inserts its genome, it can get passed down to the next generation. We are full of these remnants, as inactive but still recognizable fossils of past infections.
Dr. Samuel Pfaff and his team were trying to come up with a list of genes that were turned on in a developing mouse embryo, just after sperm and egg had come together. In its earliest stages, an embryo’s cells can become any tissue (one of the ideas behind stem cell therapies). What genes make this possible?
It turns out that for over 100 genes, the switches (called “promoters”) that turned them on came from a very unlikely place: viruses. WHAT?! We know that these genes must be activated in order for an embryo to correctly develop, but the switches that control them come from ancient viral infections! The genes themselves? Purely mouse.
What an odd paradox of evolution!! We need these genes on at a very precise moment, and off a short while after that. If any of it goes wrong, no baby mouse. So evolution selects these viral sequences to be the control mechanism. Could an ancient infection have been the key to the very existence of mammals?
Carl Zimmer has more at The Loom.
I know that the molecules in my body are traceable to phenomena in the cosmos. That makes me want to grab people on the street and say: ‘Have you HEARD THIS?’
Neil deGrasse Tyson (via thescienceofreality)
I know exactly how he feels.
(via jtotheizzoe)
Hey everyone, sorry about the lack of posts. I've been traveling a lot, and haven't had access to the Internet. I'll try to post when I can.
(https://www.facebook.com/mymodernmet )
In 1965, the late artist Roman Opałka began his famed work by hand-painting a consecutive series of integers, starting with “1” on the uppermost left-hand corner of the canvas. Fast forward several decades and Opałka’s final number painted was 5,607,249. http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/roman-opalka-the-finite-defined-by-the-nonfinite
Science is a collection of facts.
Science is complete.
There is a single Scientific Method that all scientists follow.
The process of science is purely analytic and does not involve creativity.
And many, many more here: A wonderful resource of what science is, and what science isn’t from Berkeley. Also see this collection of definitions of science from Brain Pickings.
Black-Hole Hunter Is NASA’s Latest Cheap-but-Awesome Mission
The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) will be the first telescope dedicated to observing high-energy x-rays. It will scan the skies for energetic events, particularly focusing on black holes, mapping out their distribution in the cosmos. Because high-energy x-rays penetrate the gas and dust that typically obscures a black hole’s event horizon, NuSTAR will also provide the first detailed view of these exotic objects.
bluebonita answered your question: Question of the Day:
the universe has no center because that implies the Big Bang originated at that point; but the Big Bang occurred everywhere at once.
Yup. The big bang didn't occur in empty space. Space was created and expanded at the big bang. Like you said, the big bang occurred everywhere at once. This is why when we look deeply into space, we can see the cosmic background radiation in all directions.
Question of the Day:
How far is the Earth from the center of the universe?
