Shitstorm

Prepare your anus

[niccoloh]

“Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music." | Betrand Russell "Beauty of Mathematics" by Yann Pineill & Nicolas Lefaucheux 

[laughingsquid]

Google Has Acquired Boston Dynamics, An Engineering Company That Creates Robots That Can Walk and Run

[we-are-star-stuff]

                robots are going to kill us all someday

[vodro]

That's the scariest shit i've seen in my entire life.

[edmundmcmillen]

Huge Binding of Isaac news! ill let the Trailer speak for itself! share the hell out of this!

[vodro]

HOLY SHIT

[lolthatsme]

[kny111]

Comet

A comet is a relatively small solar system body that orbits the Sun. When close enough to the Sun they display a visible coma (a fuzzy outline or atmosphere due to solar radiation) and sometimes a tail.

Asteroid

Asteroids are small solar system bodies that orbit the Sun. Made of rock and metal, they can also contain organic compounds. Asteroids are similar to comets but do not have a visible coma (fuzzy outline and tail) like comets do.

Meteoroid

A meteoroid is a small rock or particle of debris in our solar system. They range in size from dust to around 10 metres in diameter (larger objects are usually referred to as asteroids).

Meteor

A meteoroid that burns up as it passes through the Earth’s atmosphere is known as a meteor. If you’ve ever looked up at the sky at night and seen a streak of light or ‘shooting star’ what you are actually seeing is a meteor.

Meteorite

A meteoroid that survives falling through the Earth’s atmosphere and colliding with the Earth’s surface is known as a meteorite.

[spaceplasma]

PixInsight is an advanced, modular image processing software platform designed specifically for the demanding requirements of astrophotography and other technical imaging fields.

[we-are-star-stuff]

Frozen body: Can we return from the dead?

The idea of preserving a person’s body at very low temperatures in the hope that it will be restored by future medical technology has been a staple of science fiction. But could cryonics be a genuine way of being brought back to life, years into the future?

What is the cryonic process?

When a person has been declared legally dead, the cryonic preservation company is informed and it dispatches a response team to attempt to keep the person’s blood pumping around their body. The body is packed in ice and injected with various chemicals in an attempt to reduce blood clotting and damage to the brain.

Once the body reaches the cryonics facility it is cooled to just above water’s freezing point and the blood is removed and replaced with organ preservation solution. The body’s blood vessels are injected with a cryoprotectant solution to try to stop ice crystal formation in the organs and tissues and the corpse is cooled to -130C. The final step is to place the body into a container which is lowered into a tank of liquid nitrogen, kept at -196C.

Latest figures reveal that around 150 people have had their whole body stored in liquid nitrogen in the United States, while 80 have had just their heads or brains preserved. However, there are more than 1,000 living people who have instructed companies to preserve their bodies after their death.

Why do some people think it might work?

Cryonic preservation enthusiasts say there are three reasons to be hopeful. Firstly, despite an organisation being required to wait for a patient to be declared legally dead before they can be frozen, they claim that damage to the brain can be reduced by ensuring oxygen levels are maintained.

Secondly, cooling a body to a low enough temperature slows chemical processes in cells and tissues sufficiently to prevent any further degradation of the body.

Finally, while damage is inevitably inflicted on the body from the cooling process and any illness or ageing they might have suffered, they hope that future nanotechnology may be able to repair this.

What problems have scientists identified?

If a person is cooled below -5C the water inside their cells freezes and creates ice crystals. As ice is less dense than liquid water, it takes up more space. So the crystals punch through the cell membranes causing severe damage. Cryonic preservation facilities attempt to overcome this by employing a process known as vitrification. This replaces some of the body’s water with cryoprotectant agents, in an attempt to reduce the amount of ice crystal formation.

As yet there is no proof that we can vitrify human organs. Cryobiologist Dr Dayong Gao, from the University of Washington, said: “We know we can successfully vitrify very small things like insects and simple tissues like blood vessels. This is because the smaller size makes it easier to control cooling and cryoprotectants can be properly diffused.”

So how will the organs of cryonics patients be affected? Dr Gao said: “We simply don’t know if they’ve been damaged to the point where they’ve ‘died’ during vitrification because the subjects are now inside liquid nitrogen canisters.”

The outcome isn’t hopeful according to biochemist Prof Ken Storey, from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada: "We have many different organs and we know from research into preserving transplant organs that even if it were possible to successfully cryopreserve them, each would need to be cooled at a different rate and with a different mixture and concentration of cryoprotectants. Even if you only wanted to preserve the brain, it has dozens of different areas, which would need to be cryopreserved using different protocols.”

Could a human survive the thaw?

If scientists did one day work out how to successfully cryopreserve a whole human body, there is still the matter of bringing the body back to life. Dr Gao said: “Even if you manage to limit the damage from cryoprotectants, the question remains of how they would be safely removed.”

There are other significant complications, such as the fact that cooling a body to -196C makes it incredibly brittle.

"The body could easily fracture like glass during warming due to thermal stress," Dr Gao said. He added that the brain, which has as many as 10,000 connections for each of the 100 billion neurones, is particularly sensitive to heating and cooling.

What’s the damage?

There is also the issue that bodies are likely not to be at the pinnacle of health, but at the end of life after illness and ageing have had their effect. Cryonic preservation advocates say nanotechnology, which is the manipulation of matter at a molecular level, could one day provide a solution. However, Prof Storey is extremely doubtful of this claim, because of the scale of the problems in each cell.

"A human cell has around 50,000 proteins and hundreds of millions of fat molecules that make up the membranes. Cryopreservation disrupts all of them," he said. A far more detailed understanding of how the brain works would also be critical in knowing what would need to be repaired.

Neuroscientist Dr Martin Ingvar from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm said: “The subtle properties of the brain network are uneven. Some of these connections are crucial whereas others could be lost - but we do not know which ones.”

Still, Dr Ingvar said a person’s identity could theoretically be retained in the future if scientists worked out how to overcome the destructive effects of cryopreservation. "If that could be solved, there is no reason why (in theory) a cryonic procedure couldn’t preserve memories. However, it would be like time travel with a lot of confusion for the subject."

An uncertain future

However you look at it, cryonics is a matter of hope and belief in the future. Broad statements crop up on all cryonic organisation websites stating that while “there are no guarantees” cryopreservation can work “technology is always improving”.

"People can always have hope that things will change in the future, but there is no scientific foundation supporting cryonics at this time," Dr Gao said.

[via BBC]

[thenewenlightenmentage]

Waking Up to a New Year: Exoplanet Orbits Its Star in 8.5 Hours

Aug. 19, 2013 — In the time it takes you to complete a single workday, or get a full night’s sleep, a small fireball of a planet 700 light-years away has already completed an entire year.

Researchers at MIT have discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet named Kepler 78b that whips around its host star in a mere 8.5 hours — one of the shortest orbital periods ever detected. The planet is extremely close to its star — its orbital radius is only about three times the radius of the star — and the scientists have estimated that its surface temperatures may be as high as 3,000 degrees Kelvin, or more than 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. In such a scorching environment, the top layer of the planet is likely completely melted, creating a massive, roiling ocean of lava.

Continue Reading

[likeaphysicist-deactivated20141]

By me :D Having fun with photoshop again!

[quanticshift]

Neil deGrasse Tyson as the doctor… from the COSMOS Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMJxjYRXYkU

[sagansense]

via Seventy Percent…

[visualgraphc]

Perfect is Boring

by Daniel Patrick Simmons

[edmundmcmillen]

an awesome video that explores the homages used in the binding of isaac and how its used in the games underlined story.

[vodro]

luv this game so much lets have bits 2gether

[bentheillustrator]

Spaghetti Lovers - One of my Twisted Fifties artworks, check out all the prints and cards on my STORE!

[vodro]

srsly wtf

[sagansense]

10 Things We Learned About the ‘Cosmos’ Reboot From Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Reddit AMA

If you loved the original Carl Sagan Cosmos as much as we did, you’re probably viewing the idea of an updated version of the series with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. Yay for new Cosmos! But what if it’s no good? Argh! Well, anyway, new host astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson — who also moonlights as the director of the Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium — took to Reddit for an AMA session over the weekend, and in the course of the discussion he let slip with various tidbits of information about the new series. Read on for a convenient summary of what we learned.

On the role of producer Seth MacFarlane: “[Seth MacFarlane] advised on doing graphic novel-style animation for many of our historic recreations. Also, he’s an all-around TV-Movie smart person. So his guidance and advice, particularly with regard to Network broadcasting was invaluable. Also, his contacts in the business brought to us many production professionals who work on films but were also fans of science, and what a new Cosmos can do for the world. That’s how we got, for example, Bill Pope, our director of photography, perhaps best known as the director of photography for the Matrix Trilogy. We’ve assembled talented people, bitten by the Cosmos mission, bringing their formidable talents to the series.”

On where and when you’ll be able to watch it: “It will appear on network television around the world. That normally counts as free. After that, and after re-runs, it will surely be available for purchase. But there’s not plans to just post it for everyone to download.”

On the show’s mission, such as it is: “To remind people that science is not something to be feared but embraced. And that understanding our place in the universe, as revealed by the methods and tools of science can not only be intellectually, but spiritually uplifting.”

On what to expect: “It’s not a remake. It’s not a re-tread. It’s perhaps best described as a re-boot. You can ask, if Cosmos were freshly conceived today, what would it look like? That being said, we are, of course, deeply informed by what made the original Cosmos so successful. So combine these mission statements and I have high confidence that Cosmos will land exactly where it needs to in all of our hearts and minds. 13 episodes, like the original. Cosmic Calendar returns. So does the Ship of the Imagination. But in 21st century versions. I, of course, am taking over as host. But I will be sans turtleneck.”

On how it compares to the original series: “We carefully reviewed what worked and what did not work as intended in the original series. We are keeping — and enhancing — all that we are confident is worthy of carrying forward. Not only the tools of storytelling, such as the Cosmic Calendar — seen briefly in the trailer — but also the kinds of stories that are told. All of this is true to the sprit [sic] of the original. And that what matters most to us.”

On what he’s most excited about discussing: “Alerting the viewer of science martyrs of the past, who made discoveries that conflicted with prevailing dogma – religious, political, cultural, and who gave their careers or even their lives for the truth of their discoveries.”

On what he hopes people take away from the show: “Science is not a subject you took in school. It’s life. We are wrapped by it, in it, with it. And one’s science literacy should never be viewed as a disposable dimension of ones mind — not in this, the 21st century, where the engines of tomorrow’s economies will derive from wise investments and innovations in science and technology.”

On the show’s audience: “The show targets people who are sure they don’t like science as well as those who never knew they could like science. As for the scientifically literate out there — Redditors surely leading that pack — the show will take you places you have surely never been before: emotionally, intellectually, spiritually.”

On the return of Carl Sagan’s awesome spaceship: “You get a glimpse of the Space Ship of the Imagination from the trailer. It’s a literal and figurative vehicle to move through space and time, and, quite frankly, it’s badass. But that will be for viewers to judge. I enjoyed filming in the set for the ship. Gesturing to all manner of places in the universe – past and present.”

via flavorwire

[vodro]

10¹°°/10 totally want to watch

[thenewenlightenmentage]

Starry Starry Night

Image Credit: Perri Schelat

[vodro]

Human eyes sucks, imagine how awesome will be see the sky like that omfg

[thenewenlightenmentage]