Double Blind: Stories of Science and Discovery

[nouralogical]

X-Ray GIFs by Cameron Drake | Behance 

My Amp Goes To 11: Twitter | Instagram

[doubleblindstories]

Human movement, beneath the surface

[trigonometry-is-my-bitch]

Scientists from MIT Developed a Trillion frames per second slow motion camera that can show light moving through a bottle. Ramesh Raskar presents femto-photography - For comparison, the imaging of a bullet captured at this many frames per second would last a year as explained in thepresentation by Professor Ramesh Raskar of MIT.

[video]

^ what you have witnessed above is light travelling in slow motion.

[nasa-ismy-truelove]

OOOOOOOOOH MY GOD

[invaderxan]

Mars. In true colour.

Just so you know, a lot of images of Mars which you’ll see have been manipulated. A lot of them have boosted contrast and saturation. So if you’ve ever wondered – images like this one are what Mars actually looks like.

[mj-the-scientist]

Why does this not have more notes?!?

YOU ARE LITERALLY LOOKING THROUGH THE EYES OF A ROBOT ON ANOTHER FUCKING PLANET

If you don’t think that’s the tightest shit, you can get out of my face.

[emkaymlp]

i wanted to reblog this so that everyone who sees it can realize just how amazing this is. you are looking at a photograph taken on an entirely different planet. an entire world that has been completely untouched by humanity until only recently. no human in the history of mankind has ever look at those rocks, the soil, the mountains, and the sky until now. and until we finally manage to set foot there for the very first time, no human has ever seen mars from this perspective with their own two eyes or feel the texture of the martian soil on the bottom of their boots. this was only possible by creating a robot, an actual robot, and shooting way out of the reaches of earth and with extremely careful calculations, have it safely land and deploy right where they want it. it’s a robot on another planet being controlled 225 million kilometers away, seeing and studying and sending information for us.

this is the sort of thing you would see in science fiction movies that are only a few decades old. what was only imagination and possibilities back then is now all in this photograph. im looking forward to see what happens in the coming decades

[fores-ttrial-blog]

I’m so infatuated by this. 

[ellliot-deactivated20151209]

225 million kilometers away and we got it on film that blows my mind

[coolthingsswd]

Ode to Apollo 11 and the joy of discovery

[doubleblindstories]

"Around 1994, [they] were actually thinking Zeiss should no longer manufacture fluorescence microscopes." - Martin Chalfie, Nobel Laureate for the discovery of Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP)

[ihearthisto]

Once upon a slide…the first microbiology book for 5 year olds!

At last! No more bed time fairy tales about damsels in distress, princesses in pink and knights in white shining armor.

Move over Disney. This is a world we should be opening our kids up to. Steeped in reality. A world 1000x more exciting than those lands too far far far away, and it is all playing out under our very noses, inside our refrigerators, outside our back doors and throughout our own bodies.

Thank you to Nicola Davies (author) and Emily Sutton (illustrator) for this beautiful non-fiction children’s book that introduces young readers to microscopy.

I can’t wait to buy this for my nieces.

Let me know if you need help with the histological sequel ;)

i-heart-histo

Sources:

View more of Emily’s beautiful artwork at her website

Find out more about award winning author Nicola at her blog/website

Images and book (ISBN:1406341045) seen at amazon.com and via Walker Books 

[doubleblindstories]

i-heart-histo, Can't wait to have nieces to buy this for! Can you start becoming a good uncle too early?

[doubleblindstories]

A dose of colour on a grey day #JohnStPasture #NYC

[doubleblindstories]

Focus #WarmNightsBrightLights #nyc

[doubleblindstories]

Night 3 #WarmNightsBrightLights

[asapscience]

Long exposure photo of a helicopter landing reveals the physics of the vehicle. 

via My Modern Met

[biomorphosis]

Sapphirina copepod, a.k.a. "sea sapphire" is a tiny shrimp like crustacean that makes up the bottom of the food chain. The microscopic layers of crystal plates inside their cells catch light and reflect back different hues, from bright gold to deep blue that resembles like a gem. 

When they’re abundant near the water’s surface the sea shimmers like diamonds falling from the sky. Japanese name this kind of water, “tama-mizu”, jeweled water. Combine this nifty trick with the sea sapphire’s impressively transparent body, and you have an animal as radiant as a star in one moment, and invisible in the next.

[skunkbear]

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

I was recently reminded how much I still enjoy this endlessly zooming video from 1968, “Powers of Ten”:

You’ve got to watch the video for the narration and the kickin’ soundtrack. For a modern, interactive take, check out “The Scale of the Universe" by Cary Huang. Get some perspective!

[doubleblindstories]

Perspective

[theangelofhistory]

Bryce Canyon, Utah.

[doubleblindstories]

My favourite region of the planet, Bryce Canyon in Utah's southern canyon lands <3

 wnycradiolab:

From the AMNH lantern slide collection.

[doubleblindstories]

One of my favourite albums right now set to an artist (Linden Gledhill) I've come across a few times in the last couple days for his science communication = bliss.

[skunkbear]

Close-ups of butterfly wing scales! You should definitely click on these images to get the full detail.

I’ve paired each amazing close-up (by macro photographer Linden Gledhill) with an image of the corresponding butterfly or moth.  The featured lepidoptera* are (in order of appearance):

Madagascar diadem Hypolimnas dexithea (photo by Michel-Georges Bernard)

Comet moth Argema mittrei (photo by Axel Strauß)

Sunset moth Chrysiridia rhipheus (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Giant Blue Morpho Morpho didius (photo by Didier Descouens, Muséum de Toulouse)

Rippon’s Birdwing Troides hypolitus (photo by Robert Nash, Ulster Museum)

*Lepidoptera (the scientific order that includes moths and butterflies) means “scaly wing.” The scales get their color not from pigment - but from microscopic structures that manipulate light.

The great science youtube channel “Smarter Every Day” has two videos on this very subject that I highly recommend:

[doubleblindstories]

Endless Forms Most Beautiful

Lepidoptera is an order of "scaly-winged" insects, including the moths and butterflies that have modified, flattened hairs to produce the astonishing array of colours and patterns we see. Gorgeous macro photography by Linden Gledhill, and brilliantly paired by skunkbear :)

I'm reminded of a Darwin quote: “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

[doubleblindstories]

Angiogenesis - Paving our Circulatory Highways

Like the roads or highways of a city, we are wired with a sprawling network of blood vessels that provides the transportation grid we need to power our bodies. Just as we build new roads to service a new subdivision, the human body can sprout new branches from its circulatory highway. This brings more blood where its needed. It is especially important for our bodies natural healing, and could be used to increase healing after certain injuries. But like many brilliant features of human biology, this system can be highjacked.

Graduate researcher Abby Callahan works in the Kovala lab at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, in Sudbury, where she uses the tools of cellular biology to understand how our bodies coordinate their molecular construction crews to build these highways.

Produced, directed and edited by Colin Stringer and Jillian Leonard, graduate students of Science Communication at Laurentian University (2014). 

Written by Colin Stringer, Jillian Leonard and Abby Callahan. Narration by Abby Callahan.  Illustration by Colin Stringer. Starring Abby Callahan and Jillian Leonard. Special thanks to Jonas Saxén for contributing footage (Mango Branching Time-lapse).

[doubleblindstories]

Cold Northern Fate

Does climate affect mercury levels in fish?  For one of my final Science Communcation student projects, Jillian Leonard and I collaborated with Laurentian University graduate researcher Alexandra Sumner who is investigating this question, and elaborated for us in her musical debut.  Enjoy, and if you like it, please share away! :)

Written by Alexandra Sumner. Produced, directed and edited by Colin Stringer and Jillian Leonard, graduate students of Science Communication at Laurentian University (2014).