The Cool Science Stuff Thread

[phrodeau]

Link to video, please.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jHsq36_NTU

From 10 to 17 seconds, the solar system is shown and it's all wrong.

And there's a lot more wrong about it: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astr...ing_sun_s_motion_through_galaxy_is_wrong.html

 

[thør]

 

[Phelia]

Oh man, guys. I have a big old boner for the universe right now. Hubble gets footage of a cobalt blue planet, HD 189733b, with a temp of over 1000 degrees C and glass raindrops. It's the first time we've been able to determine the color of an alien planet.

Illustration:

It's been classified as a "hot Jupiter" planet. I'll say!

 

[phrodeau]

http://www.fastcompany.com/3014418/...tures?partner=rss&google_editors_picks=true#1

What would you do if your spacesuit helmet started filling with water, in zero gravity?

 

[crazychemgirl]

like.

 

[thør]

 

[MagicFingers]

Voyager I

It was launched 35 years ago and is just reaching the limits of our solar system.
That's amazing. And also that they can still talk to it.
It's 11.5 Billion miles away now.

 

[thør]

 

[Jani715]

This is great

 

[Antoninus]

To science, and especially physics nerds, I highly recommend the MIT Technology Review blog, which reports on research and development prior to formal publication in the journals. I have noticed the occasional slip by the editor, but the blog remains worthwhile for affording an insight to the bleeding edge. A recent example:

How Smart Dust Could Spy On Your Brain

Intelligent dust particles embedded in the brain could form an entirely new form of brain-machine interface, say engineers

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/517091/how-smart-dust-could-spy-on-your-brain/

 

[Colonel Hogan]

It was launched 35 years ago and is just reaching the limits of our solar system.
That's amazing. And also that they can still talk to it.
It's 11.5 Billion miles away now.

What is really amazing is the number of people who cannot extrapolate the cold hard facts from Voyager I with regard to human space travelers one day zipping around our own Solar System as if we owned the damned place.

It ain't happening.

 

[SalviaDivinorum]

To science, and especially physics nerds, I highly recommend the MIT Technology Review blog, which reports on research and development prior to formal publication in the journals. I have noticed the occasional slip by the editor, but the blog remains worthwhile for affording an insight to the bleeding edge. A recent example:

How Smart Dust Could Spy On Your Brain

Intelligent dust particles embedded in the brain could form an entirely new form of brain-machine interface, say engineers

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/517091/how-smart-dust-could-spy-on-your-brain/

The biggest problem I find with being essentially an idiot with an interest in physics is that, if I make a physics joke, no-one gets it. On the other hand, if an actual clever person/physicist makes a joke, I don't get it.

So as a consequence, I spend part of my life being misunderstood, ironically enough at times when I almost feel clever, and the rest of the time I spend feeling just dumb.

 

[Antoninus]

The biggest problem I find with being essentially an idiot with an interest in physics is that, if I make a physics joke, no-one gets it. On the other hand, if an actual clever person/physicist makes a joke, I don't get it.

So as a consequence, I spend part of my life being misunderstood, ironically enough at times when I almost feel clever, and the rest of the time I spend feeling just dumb.

In my experience the greatest mastery of a subject entails being able to convey that subject to an audience at any level of exposure. Because to do so draws upon a broad array of educational instruments, and the flexibility to invent new instruments on the fly. Only a conceptual expert in, say, the general relativity theory could discern a student's most sophisticated mathematical toolkit involves high school geometry, and then use that geometry to appreciate least action principles and geodesics in curved spacetimes.

Whatever else may be said for Thomas Friedman, I believe he was correct in saying passion is at least as important as raw intellectual ability.

All this is to say, if you have a passion for physics, there is no reason not to pursue it. The trick to learning is to find a clever instructor.

 

[Phelia]

Here's a pile of caterpillars!

Do you feel them swarming all over your body now? Good! Why are they doing that, other than to give you nightmares for the rest of your life? Because it helps them move faster!

Every caterpillar spends some time on each ‘floor’. At the ground floor, a caterpillar moves at normal speed. The next floor up, it’s moving at 2X speed, because the floor is moving forward and so is the caterpillar. The next layer up, it’s moving at 3X speed, because the floor is moving at 2X speed, and so on. Every single caterpillar has spent some time moving slowly in the first floor, and some time moving faster in the higher floors. On average, its speed is somewhere in between – faster than a lone caterpillar, but slower than the caterpillars on the top.

Check out the article to find out exactly how much it speeds them up and also watch the video because they modeled it with legos and it is sooooo fuckingggg coooollllll.

http://www.empiricalzeal.com/2013/07/19/why-are-these-caterpillars-climbing-over-each-other-the-surprising-science-behind-the-swarm/

 

[evesdream]

Here's a pile of caterpillars!

Do you feel them swarming all over your body now? Good! Why are they doing that, other than to give you nightmares for the rest of your life? Because it helps them move faster!



Check out the article to find out exactly how much it speeds them up and also watch the video because they modeled it with legos and it is sooooo fuckingggg coooollllll.

http://www.empiricalzeal.com/2013/07/19/why-are-these-caterpillars-climbing-over-each-other-the-surprising-science-behind-the-swarm/

I saw the word "swarm" at the end of your link and it made me too unhappy to go on. But I pushed through the horror to the intriguing (kind of gnarly) video. It got really interesting around 2:24.

 

[islandman]

Team examining Gulf shipwreck finds 2 other wrecks

GALVESTON, Texas (AP) — Marine archaeologists made a thrilling discovery this week while examining a well-preserved shipwreck deep in the Gulf of Mexico — two other sunken vessels that likely went down with it during an early 19th century storm.

Much isn't known about the ships, including the flag or flags they sailed under and the year they sank about 170 miles southeast of Galveston. They came to rest 4,363 feet, or nearly three-quarters of a mile, below the surface, making them the deepest Gulf or North American shipwrecks to have been systematically investigated by archaeologists, the researchers said.

 

[islandman]

On this day 55 years ago, NASA was created.

 

[Sean]

 

[crazychemgirl]

 

[Sean]

LMAO.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Sean]

Loads more at Cracked. http://now.msn.com/clues-that-your-professor-is-cooler-than-you#scpshrjmg

 

[crazychemgirl]

Loads more at Cracked. http://now.msn.com/clues-that-your-professor-is-cooler-than-you#scpshrjmg

LMFAO!!!!

 

[crazychemgirl]

 

[phrodeau]

It's actually 2/3 pi r cubed. Any math geek knows that.