Quiet Musings

I love learning and I especially love science. I love to share that excitement & wonder with people--here is where I do this. I may also ramble/reblog about sci-fi, books, politics, feminism, education, culture & so on. Nice to meet you :)

[casliyn]

Rest in Peace, Andre Braugher.

[saywhat-politics]

[onethirdofimpossible]

Okay, I was just going to reblog this without commentary, but I can't keep this to myself. I'm a PhD student in environmental science and this is my fucking highway.

The first published study about climate change (that I am aware of-- feel free to point out if there's an older one) is an 1896 paper by Svante Arrhenius. He pointed out the link between the greenhouse effect and changes in atmospheric CO2.

Plate tectonics, which the geoscience community now recognizes as near indisputable, was a fringe theory until about the 1960s.

Just in case anyone thought that climate change was a "recent fad" in research.

[itsloriel]

by lauramakabresku

[nevver]

Día de los muertos, Isaac Cordal

[fuckyeahmexico]

San Cristóbal de las Casas. Chiapas. México. 2013

[maorisakai]

[auroraborealis22]

Early Morning, Tarpon Springs George Inness

[valarrstargaryen]

Saw Gerrera used to say one fighter with a sharp stick and nothing left to lose can take the day. They have no idea we’re coming. They have no reason to expect us. If we can make it to the ground we’ll take the next chance, and the next. On and on until we win… or the chances are spent

ROGUE ONE (2016) dir. Gareth Edwards

[elierlick]

Your annual reminder to not donate to Salvation Army!

[jellycreamjammedart]

“be quiet” i think the f not

[maureen2musings]

Lunar halo

@picabuzz

[depsidase]

[callmebliss]

Y’ever read something and have understanding that has eluded you interminably suddenly stop, curl up, and snuggle neatly into a fold in your brain because a new way way opened to it?

[macleod]

I've seen this passed around a few times, and I have one thing to say:

It's online. The book was carefully and wonderfully recreated online by hand. You can find it here. The entire book is this easy.

calculusmadeeasy.org

[memeuplift]

[nasa]

Boo! Did we get you? 🎃

This solar jack-o-lantern, captured by our Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) in October 2014, gets its ghoulish grin from active regions on the Sun, which emit more light and energy than the surrounding dark areas. Active regions are markers of an intense and complex set of magnetic fields hovering in the sun’s atmosphere.

The SDO has kept an unblinking eye on the Sun since 2010, recording phenomena like solar flares and coronal loops. It measures the Sun’s interior, atmosphere, magnetic field, and energy output, helping us understand our nearest star.

Grab the high-resolution version here.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[silverhawk]

REALLY aesthetically pleasing bugs to look at

picasso bug

mirror spider

rainbow grasshopper

phylliidae true leaf insect

[silverhawk]

rainbow stag beetle

crotalaria moth

lantern bug

[felinexfatale]

@ven0m0th v/ important

[wordsnquotes]

“Life doesn’t always introduce you to the people you want to meet. Sometimes life puts you in touch with the people you need to meet – to help you, to hurt you, to leave you, to love you, and to gradually strengthen you into the person you were meant to become.”

— Anonymous Wisdom | @wordsnquotes

[sciencenewsforstudents]

Smart windows could block brightness and harness light

A new type of material pulls double-duty as window shade and solar cell.

Who needs curtains? One day, you could block out afternoon glare and heat with changeable windows that absorb sunshine to charge your electronics.

A high-tech prototype panel described online January 22 in Nature Materials, switches between transparent pane and dark-tinted solar cell. The layer in the panel that’s responsible for soaking up sun has atoms that only arrange themselves into a light-absorbing crystal structure at high temperatures. When heated, these atoms form a dark-tinted crystal known as a perovskite, a new darling of the solar cell industry (SN: 8/5/17, p. 22).

[unsettlingstories]