Values

Neil deGrasse Tyson wrote: "Italy valued cathedrals while Spain valued explorers. So worldwide, five times as many people speak Spanish than Italian."

On the other hand, maybe it had something to do with Spain having ports on the Atlantic. Because even more people speak English, in spite of England building some very nice cathedrals.

Printing Fossils

Instead of laboriously chipping delicate fossil bones from their enclosing matrix of rock, paleontologists  like Brett Nachman are printing out 3D models of the bones based on CT scans of the fossils still locked in the rock. Elegant!

Stunning Pictures of the Meteor Over Russia

A professional photographer was in the right place at the right time.

A Renaissance of Amateurs

The most recent Curiosity videos were a forceful reminder of how much we benefit from people doing things for the love of it. This, this and this were all apparently produced by individuals on their own time with no obvious hope of monetary gain.

Amateurs can do great things: Mendel, Darwin, and William and John Herschel were amateurs, whose primary income was not from the work we remember them for.

In the richer world of the 21st century, more people can do more in their spare time for the love of it.

Curiosity Shot First

Curiosity's Do List:

1) Land safely.
2) Phone home
3) Start looking around
4) Zap a rock with a laser, because I come in peace for all mankind, but I have a laser, and I'm not afraid to use it, so fear my mad laser skillz, and also SCIENCE!
5) Finish looking around
6) Move
(To be continued)

Chekhov's Laser in practice: "If in the first act you have put a one ton robot equipped with a laser on the surface of Mars, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there."

How to Use a Venn Diagram

Like this. Or this. Or this.

Not this.

It's like they don't care about the nerd vote at all.

The Tesla Gun

The Tesla Gun, the Tesla Gun!
It's perfectly glorious steampunk fun!
Everyone wants a Tesla Gun:
The wonderful, horrible Tesla Gun!

Life on Mars?

A new study suggests that the Viking missions did find evidence of life on Mars in 1976.

Perpetual Ocean

A stunning visualization from NASA.

Science! History! Fun!

Mike Outmesguine shares this video:

My son, Mikey, and his classmates put on a demonstration for his school. His class created their own culture faire after learning about ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt. His class set up tables and demonstrations for parents and the lower grades at the school.

Pretty darned adorable!

Dawn Flies Around Vesta

Animation based on images from Dawn's framing camera.

Endeavour Crater

Image : NASA

Opportunity has reached the rim of Endeavour Crater, 14 miles in diameter. Click on the image for a larger view.

I wrote this years ago, when both rovers were rolling on Mars. Remarkably, Opportunity is still moving forward and showing us new things

We Throw our Servants into the Dark...

...and yet we hit the mark.

Cassini-Huygens
Dawn
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
Mars Express
Mars Exploration Rovers
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
MESSENGER




Meanwhile, having passed Jupiter, New Horizons is halfway to Pluto, on its way to the cold outer marches of our Solar System.

What a Lovely Home We Have

Messenger looked back at Earth. Beautiful, isn't it?

Time Lapse From Space

A Clockwork Monk

A 16th century automaton.

More Saturn

5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation from stephen v2 on Vimeo.

Along with a team of effect artists, Van Vuuren has pieced together thousands of stills taken from the Cassini spacecraft during its flyby of Saturn, animating the four-year journey around the ringed planet with incredible effect.

More here.

Peer Review with SWoRD

SWoRD is a site that not only facilitates peer review, it allows for student grades to actually be determined by their classmates' reviews.

More here.

Cassini Mission

CASSINI MISSION from cabbas on Vimeo.

Sequential still photos from Cassini edited into a breathtaking short film by Chris Abbas.

More on the video here.

Very Large Telescope Shows You a Very Large Universe

Hat tip to Popular Science:

There’s very little we can write to preface the imagery below, so we’ll just set the scene and get out of the way. The video below was captured by Stephane Guisard and Jose Francisco Salgado at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile’s Atacama Desert. And it might make you cry.

What makes this time lapse particularly amazing--because we’ve all seen plenty of time lapse videos of the night sky--is the four telescopes in the foreground. Watching these instruments work against a black background would be endlessly fascinating on its own. Unfortunately you won’t be able to pay them too much attention. Because damn, what a sky.

Watch it on full screen.

This edited version shows the Earth rotating against a fixed sky.