Hey guys, my friend Jake is doing a research project for class, and more data = better results. It’s only 5 questions, it took me maybe 5 minutes, and you would be awesome for doing it.

Tywin Lannister may not shit gold, but these guys do.

My favorite What-If? so far. It includes such lines as:

“The pressure forces the water sideways, creating a supersonic omnidirectional jet that destroys everything in its path.”

and

“Fear reigns supreme as the world fears rain supreme.”

and also

“…the unexplained meteorological phenomenon is simply dubbed a ‘Skrillex Storm’—because, in the words of one researcher, ‘It had one hell of a drop.’”

I love this site.

“The rover’s arm will scoop up samples of soil and deliver them to an onboard analysis chamber, where they will be studied by a gas chromatograph, a mass spectrometer, and a laser spectrometer, looking for telltale isotopes, gases, and elements. Chemical sniffers will sample the Martian air for carbon compounds - especially methane - which are the building blocks and by-products of life. Martian geology will be studied with a long-distance laser that can blast a million-watt beam at rocks up to 23 ft. (7 m) away, vaporizing them and allowing a spectrometer to analyze the chemistry of the residue. An onboard X-ray spectrometer will do similar work on rocks near the river…. Most appealing for the folks back home will be the 17 cameras arrayed around Curiosity. They will have the visual acuity to resolve an object the size of a golf ball 27 yd. (24.7 m) away and the resolution to capture one-megapixel color images from multiple perspectives.” -“Live from Mars” by Jeffrey Kluger, TIME (Emphasis mine)

“The rover’s arm will scoop up samples of soil and deliver them to an onboard analysis chamber, where they will be studied by a gas chromatograph, a mass spectrometer, and a laser spectrometer, looking for telltale isotopes, gases, and elements. Chemical sniffers will sample the Martian air for carbon compounds - especially methane - which are the building blocks and by-products of life. Martian geology will be studied with a long-distance laser that can blast a million-watt beam at rocks up to 23 ft. (7 m) away, vaporizing them and allowing a spectrometer to analyze the chemistry of the residue. An onboard X-ray spectrometer will do similar work on rocks near the river…. Most appealing for the folks back home will be the 17 cameras arrayed around Curiosity. They will have the visual acuity to resolve an object the size of a golf ball 27 yd. (24.7 m) away and the resolution to capture one-megapixel color images from multiple perspectives.”

-“Live from Mars” by Jeffrey Kluger, TIME

(Emphasis mine)

ianbrooks:

Scientists by Tomas Muller

With the intention of depicting science as the true adventure and worthy pursuit it is, Tomas created this series as a promotion for the Charles University’s Faculty of Science in Prague. These Titans of ginormous stature are each a visual representation of an area of science: biology, geography, chemistry, and geology.  I’ll let you figure out which Titan is which, after all, you should already know this stuff. But before you ask: the Titan representing the science of pizzamaking was, sadly, omitted.

Artist: behance / website

"In a desert plain in Tanzania, in the shadow of the volcano Ol Donyo Lengai, there’s a dune made of volcanic ash. The beautiful thing is that it moves bodily. It’s what’s technically known as a “barchan,” and the entire dune walks across the desert in a westerly direction at a speed of about 17 meters per year. It retains its crescent shape and moves in the direction of the horns. What happens is that the wind blows the sand up the shallow slope on the other side, and then, as each sand grain hits the top of the ridge, it cascades down on the inside of the crescent, and so the whole horn-shaped dune moves. Steve Grand points out that you and I are, ourselves, more like a wave than a permanent thing. He invites us, the reader, to “think of an experience from your childhood — something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all, you really were there at the time, weren’t you? How else would you remember it? But here is the bombshell: You weren’t there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that doesn’t make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it again until it does, because it is important."
— Richard Dawkins, The universe is queerer than we can suppose (TED Talk)
"

The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation.

For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday, and lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.

"
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (via sirmitchell)
"The scientists by large know more liberal arts, than the science known by liberal artists and that needs to change. If you go to a science cocktail party and someone talks about Shakespeare no one is gonna say “Oh I was never good at Shakespeare! I was terrible in nouns and verbs!” No, you’ll never hear that. But if you go to a liberal art party, an artists party, and someone start talking about math it’s all “Oh I was never good at math, I hated math” and they all chuckle and all agree, and all like sip the next sip of champagne and go on talking about the art and that’s somehow ok. No that’s not ok."
Underwater neutrino detector will be the second largest structure ever built

iheartchaos:

The search for neutrinos might get a big, big boost at some point… like the second largest structure ever built kind of boost. This proposed state of the art neutrino detector, taller than the Burj Khalifa tower and only second in area to the Great Wall of China would sit at the bottom of the Mediterranean, just looking for neutrinos. 

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"I heard the jury’s still out on… science."
— G.O.B. Bluth