Earth

Anything and everything amazing in this world. The microscopically little, and universally enormous.

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Sunrise and Fuji by Jirat Srisabye

[atraversso]

Delicate Arch by Lillian Rodriguez

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10 Insects with interesting or scary names

"Ant lions were the likely inspiration for one of the most frightening scenes in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983), in which Jabba the Hutt feeds his captives to a sand-dwelling Sarlacc whose lair in the Great Pit of Carkoon lies just beneath Jabba’s floating ship."

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Ceres is like the gatekeeper to the history of water in the middle solar system.

Britney Schmidt, Research Scientist Associate, Institute for Geophysics

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The largest object in the asteroid belt, Ceres makes up nearly a third of its mass. Even so, it remains the smallest known dwarf planet, only 590 miles (950 km) across — roughly the size of Texas. A day on Ceres lasts a little over 9 Earth-hours, while it takes 4.6 Earth-years to travel around the sun.

"The fact that Ceres is so round tells us that it almost certainly had to form in the early solar system," Schmidt said. She explained that a later formation would have created a less rounded shape.

The close proximity and low mass of Ceres have led some scientists to suggest that it could serve as a potential site for manned landings and a launching point for manned deep space missions.

NASA's Dawn mission launched September 27, 2007. It travelled to the asteroid Vesta, where it remained in orbit from July 2011 to July 2012 before heading to Ceres. It is slated to spend five months studying the dwarf planet, though Schmidt expressed hope that the craft would continue working beyond the nominal mission, allowing the team to study the icy body even longer.

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Nothing is ever as tranquil as it seems. This image is pretty and has lots of fun, trippy colors. But all of that variation is being produced by gas, dust and other matter as whole galaxies fall into a supermassive black hole. Created from Hubble data, the image shows the cosmic tug-of-war going on in the Perseus Cluster of Galaxies 230 million light years away.

The central galaxy, NGC 1275, has the black hole at its center, and produces radio waves, x-rays and huge filaments of glowing gas as matter enters the black hole. The filaments are preserved by strong magnetic fields without which they would not withstand the collisions happening all over the galaxy. As with any neighborhood, there's lots of drama here. 

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Russian Missile Lights Up Space Station’s Sky

"Suddenly, a flash of light: Out of one eye, he catches motion, quickly turns, and to his astonishment sees an expanding cloud of white vapor in the far distance. He grabs a camera with a telephoto and starts snapping. What could this be? he thinks."

[ourearthisawesome]

"Under the theory, grains are spun, propeller-like, by photons. Their alignment is modified by magnetic fields, which orients them with respect to the field, telling an observer its direction. Impurities and defects on the dust grains produce catalytic sites for the formation of hydrogen molecules, which are subsequently ejected, creating miniature 'rocket engines'"

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Super storm rips through Saturn

A massive storm on Saturn churns up water and ammonia ice from the planet's depths.

"It's so strange. We look out into our universe and see such wonderful and mysterious sights. It invokes just awe and mind expanding thoughts that these things and so many others occur unseen and unnoticed."

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http://www.zaarchitects.com/en/other/113-interactive-cloud.html

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http://www.zaarchitects.com/en/other/82-art-shadows.html

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Somersaulting MIT cube robots can self-assemble

These brightly colored blocks may look like child’s toys, but watch out: These adorable cubes are actually spinning robots that can connect to build modular machines. There’s no assembly required: The blocks, built at MIT , will do it themselves.

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What if you could feel what you see on touchscreens?

Disney creates tech that allows you to feel the shape and texture of items pictured on a perfectly flat touchscreen.

Gotta love Disney. No need to follow the rules.