second-breakfastt:

chocolate cake

This is a nice periodic table of the elements. Chemists have long tried to find different ways to diagram the periodic table.

Damn, this periodic table is beautiful

“In May 1949, LIFE Magazine published a stunning series of images to accompany an issue dedicated largely to The Atom. You can check out the feature in its entirety here, but the reimagination of the periodic table of elements as a colorful spiral is easily one of the most striking graphics of the lot.”

(via carl-sagan)

we-are-star-stuff:

mad-as-a-marine-biologist:

revoult:

fabledquill:

futuresoldierketchum:

livetomakeadifference:

0ut-0f-f0cus:

This is off the Bermuda Triangle,  where 16+ ships washed up on a sand bar. The mystery is still unsolved

Actually the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle has been given a scientific explanation: methane vents which have been discovered in that region. 

Methane reduces the density of water, causing ships that would normally float, to instead sink.

Methane, when in gas form, messes with the electrical components of aircraft, causing them to fail and sometimes fall right out of the sky.

Methane also causes the water to turn a ghostly greenish color, and the “ghost ships” reported to be seen are simply green reflections of the ships that scatter the bottom of the triangle.

Fucking science, man.

so

the bermuda triangle

is caused

by ocean farts

HAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAAH ^

Ocean farts. Brilliant. 

This photo is not of the Bermuda Triangle. It’s actually of a breakwall off the coast of Moreton Bay in Queensland, Australia. And those vessels have been deliberately sunk. 

Could gas release cause a ship to sink? Absolutely. If you release enough gas you generate a foam having such low density that a ship would not be able to displace enough to float. Did gas release related to hydrate breakdown result in sinking of ships off the southeastern United States? No. Evidence suggests that the collapse and abrupt release of gas related to hydrate breakdown probably occurred at the end of the glacial episode when ocean water was tied up in great continental ice sheets and, thus, sea level was lowered. The lower sealevel caused the pressure on the gas hydrate at the sea floor to be reduced, which would cause hydrate breakdown and gas release. This happened about 15,000 years ago or more, when the more technically advanced men’s ships were probably nothing more than hollow logs. [x]

And last but not least:

• The number of ships and aircraft reported missing in the area was not significantly greater, proportionally speaking, than in any other part of the ocean.
• In an area frequented by tropical storms, the number of disappearances that did occur were, for the most part, neither disproportionate, unlikely, nor mysterious;
• Furthermore, writers would often fail to mention such storms or even represent the disappearance as having happened in calm conditions when meteorological records clearly contradict this.
• The numbers themselves had been exaggerated by sloppy research. A boat’s disappearance, for example, would be reported, but its eventual (if belated) return to port may not have been.
• Some disappearances had, in fact, never happened. One plane crash was said to have taken place in 1937 off Daytona Beach, Florida, in front of hundreds of witnesses; a check of the local papers revealed nothing.
• The legend of the Bermuda Triangle is a manufactured mystery, perpetuated by writers who either purposely or unknowingly made use of misconceptions, faulty reasoning, and sensationalism.

(via imagineatoms)

scientiststhesis:

dr-archeville:

8bitstickmod:

nightguardmod:

songoharotto:

fabricated-amity:

my entire math life

This is basically the problem with the entire modern educational system.

Time to do unpopular opinion? Time to do unpopular opinion.

Balancing a checkbook is applied addition and subtraction, stuff of the third grade. Okay, yeah, it is a failure of the modern educational system if he hasn’t learned it by now.

Imaginary numbers interact with real numbers (1, 2, π, 1.5, etc) for complex numbers, and are useful if you want to get into engineering or science — you know, high paying jobs.

Remember Tomb Raider? How they make her turn? Quaternions, which use THREE sets of imaginary numbers.

Like how your cell phone gets reception? That requires resonance, the understanding of which can be aided by complex numbers.

And don’t even get me started in the more exotic physics like fluid dynamics or quantum mechanics. That is, the forefront of how planes fly and how computer chips work.

There’s this term, innumeracy, that is to math what illiteracy is to english. One thing that bugs me is when ignorance is paraded about, when one acts as if math is an optional knowledge. Doubly so when it’s the very thing holding them back.

The failure is not in teaching these things, but the lack of teaching about why we should care about these things.

Thank you maths side of tumblr

The failure is not in teaching these things, but the lack of teaching about why we should care about these things.

Come to think of it, that’s applicable to how a lot of subjects are taught.

But I’m afraid maths gets the worst of it, really. I mean, how often have you heard people complaining about history? Social sciences? Even chemistry, which is more specialised than maths? No, maths gets the worst of it by far, and everyone demonises it because no one ever tells them that maths is a language, and a quite difficult one at that, because it’s the language of the Universe (of god, if you will).

Not only that, but it’s also the only language that’s truly universal (we’re certain aliens will arrive at the same maths we have) and that can truly explain everything that’s in principle conceivable. Human language can describe the stuff we see, and some extrapolations we imagine; maths can describe everything that is, was, will be, has never been, and could ever be.

Everything is maths.

(via science-isinteresting)

mindbuzzz:

Octfalls is an audiovisual installation by Ryoichi Kurokawa 

(via turecepcja)

(via b-vlletproof)

Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks

space.com

Don’t miss your chance to see three bright planets in the night sky.

stellar-indulgence:

The combination of Titan’s low gravity and thick atmosphere would allow a human to fly by strapping “fake wings” to their arms.

The second-largest moon in the solar system, Saturn’s Titan is the only moon with a substantial atmosphere, which is much deeper than Earth’s. It’s so thick and the gravity so weak, in fact, that you could strap wings on your arms and flap them like a bird to fly. The air is mostly nitrogen, but the rest is mostly hydrocarbons, giving Titan’s atmosphere a thick orange smoggy haze that is opaque to visible light. Cassini studies Titan in infrared light (which can penetrate the haze) and with radar — and in 2004, via the Huygens Probe, an atmosphere probe became the first spacecraft to transmit from the surface of a moon other than our own. Titan is remarkably earthlike, apart from being so cold that water is as hard as rock; in addition to the atmosphere, it is the only place other than Earth known to have bodies of liquid on the surface — lakes as large as the Great Lakes, except that it’s not water: it’s probably methane or ethane. The climate is probably similar to some of our deserts, with gigantic monsoons perhaps once a decade or more, and long droughts between. NASA scientists are working on a mission called Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) specifically to study the lakes of Titan.

Read the full text here: http://mentalfloss.com/ It’s Raining on Titan! Illustration Credit & Copyright: David A. Hardy (AstroArt)

(via we-are-star-stuff)

astro-stoner:

shityo:

morefunthanbeingsad:

physicsphysics:

An interesting model of our solar system’s path as it travels through space in the Milky Way.

Certainly a departure from usual models that show the Sun as a static object, which it certainly isn’t

I had no idea this was happening. Where are we going?

To fuck some shit up

Around the center of the Milky Way, which is heading towards the Andromeda Galaxy.  And our whole Local Group is moving towards the Virgo Cluster.

But we’ll never actually reach the Virgo Cluster because space is expanding between us and them faster than we’re moving towards it.

Motherfucking science.

(via we-are-star-stuff)

we-are-star-stuff:

DNA prediction of categorical eye and hair colour on the individual level. Examples of applying the HIrisPlex system to four European individuals (A–D). The actual eye and hair colours are displayed on the left side by photographs. The HIrisPlex prediction results, in terms of the probabilities belonging to certain colour categories, are shown on the right side, where the colour categories with the highest probabilities are highlighted.

Human hair, eye, and skin colour are very complex and difficult to predict, because each of these traits is controlled by more than one gene. It’s not really a matter of a child taking after the father or mother’s side; genes don’t work that way. What matters is which parent has the dominant versions of the various genes that affect the traits in question, because these are the ones most likely to be expressed by the child - though not always.

Every animal (including humans) carries two copies of every gene. Scientists now estimate that a human has about 30,000 genes in his/her genome, and every human has two copies of that genome: one from mom, and one from dad. The two versions of each gene (called alleles) may be the same in a single person, or they may be different. This means that the different versions can combine and interact in unpredictable ways to produce a wide range of phenotypes (physical appearance).

A trait that is controlled by several genes is called a polygenic trait. A polygenic trait is the expression of a single phenotypic trait that is affected by the action of more than one gene. There are too many examples to list, since most traits are - at least to some degree - polygenic.  But human hair, eye and skin colour are among them.

Hair colour is a result of interaction between several genes that not only control the colour of the hair pigmentation (one gene controls the expression of brown -eumelanin- pigment and a different gene controls expression of red -phaeomelanin- pigment), but also how much pigment is deposited in the hair shaft. The darker the hair, the greater the melanin deposition, but one can’t really predict how dark a baby’s hair will be, since s/he may inherit a wide variety of “darkness level” genes from both parents, and they can recombine in various ways to produce hair that ranges in colour from very light to very dark.

If a person expresses both the eumelanin (brown) and phaeomelanin (red) genes, the hair will be reddish brown. Dark to light brown hair with no trace of red occurs when only eumelanin is expressed, but in varying concentrations. Blonde hair with no trace of red occurs when there is weak eumelanin expression and no phaeomelanin. Red hair occurs when there is strong expression of phaeomelanin and weak expression of eumelanin. Not all people express both genes, but in dark-haired people that do express both, you can sometimes see a reddish sheen in the hair in certain light. But the darker eumelanin pigment often makes it difficult to see the red pigment, if it’s present.

Light colored eyes (blue, green, hazel, grey, etc.) are usually considered recessive to dark-colored eyes. But this trait is controlled by at least five different genes. There are genes that control whether or not melanin is deposited in the iris (the dominant B allele codes for brown, and the recessive b allele, coding for no melanin, will result in pale irises. These will be blue in the absence of other pigments), the amount of pigment deposited (several genes that can combine to generate eyes that are very dark, almost black to relatively light brown), as well as overlying carotenoid pigments that can change a blue iris to green, aqua, grey, or any number of variations.

And to make things even more complicated, eye colour, like hair colour, can change with age.

Still, one can predict, to some degree, whether a child will have light-colored or brown eyes. The allele coding for light eyes (i.e. lack of melanin in the iris) is recessive to the allele coding for dark eyes (i.e. melanin deposited in the iris). For a person to have light eyes, s/he must inherit two copies of the b allele (genotype bb). A person needs only one copy of the B gene to have dark (brown) eyes, so can be either BB or Bb.

Skin colour is probably the most complex of all the traits. The shade of the skin in humans may be controlled by several genes, each with several alleles, and this makes the prediction of skin tone in a baby a nearly impossible task. x

sciencenote:

The Doppler effect is observed whenever the source of waves is moving with respect to an observer. The Doppler effect can be described as the effect produced by a moving source of waves in which there is an apparent upward shift in frequency for observers towards whom the source is approaching and an apparent downward shift in frequency for observers from whom the source is receding. It is important to note that the effect does not result because of an actual change in the frequency of the source. Using the example above, the bug is still producing disturbances at a rate of 2 disturbances per second; it just appears to the observer whom the bug is approaching that the disturbances are being produced at a frequency greater than 2 disturbances/second. The effect is only observed because the distance between observer B and the bug is decreasing and the distance between observer A and the bug is increasing.

The Dopplereffect can be observed for any type of wave - water wave, sound wave, light wave, etc. We are most familiar with the Dopplereffect because of our experiences with sound waves. Perhaps you recall an instance in which a police car or emergency vehicle was traveling towards you on the highway. As the car approached with its siren blasting, the pitch of the siren sound (a measure of the siren’s frequency) was high; and then suddenly after the car passed by, the pitch of the siren sound was low. That was the Dopplereffect - an apparent shift in frequency for a sound wave produced by a moving source.

(via we-are-star-stuff)

odditiesoflife:

Grand Prismatic Spring

Located in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, the Grand Prismatic Spring is the largest natural hot spring found in the US. The spring has a scalding temperature of 160 °F (70 °C), a total depth of 160 feet and a diameter of 300 feet. The vivid, rainbow colors in the spring are the result of pigmented bacteria in the microbial mats that grow around the edges of the mineral-rich water.

(via we-are-star-stuff)

we-are-star-stuff:

If Earth Had a Ring Like Saturn

Our planet is lucky enough to have a large moon orbiting not too far away, which makes for very pretty moonlit nights. But for spectacular skies it might almost be worth trading in our moon for a ring like Saturn’s.

In fact, the earth did once have a ring - as part of the formation of our moon, ironically enough. When the planet Thea crashed into the earth, a titanic amount of material was blown into space. This went into orbit around the earth, forming a ring until it all eventually coalesced into our present-day satellite. This only happened because the material was orbiting outside of earth’s Roche limit.

In 1848, the French mathematician Edouard Roche calculated that if a large satellite were to approach too closely to a planet, it would be torn apart by the planet’s gravitational forces. This happens because the gravitational attraction of a planet on a moon is not equal. The planet pulls more on the side of the moon closest to it and less on the side further away. If the moon gets too close, this unequal pull can become great enough to tear the moon apart. Every planet has what is called a Roche limit.

Some astronomers believe that Saturn’s rings are material that was unable to form into a moon because it lies within the planet’s Roche limit. The gravitational pull of Saturn prevents particles from clumping together to form a moon. Another idea popular among scientists suggests that during the time when Saturn was first forming, it had one or more moons just outside its Roche limit. The bigger a planet is, the more gravity it has. And the more gravity it has, the bigger its Roche limit is. So as Saturn grew larger, its Roche limit grew, too. The limit soon moved past the inner moons and these moons soon broke apart. The remnants of the destroyed moons eventually formed the magnificent rings we see today. There may still be large pieces of these ancient moons within the rings. They would be much smaller than their ancestors but a thousand times larger than a typical ring particle. Another theory suggests that a few hundred million years ago - at a time when the early ancestors of the dinosaurs were roaming Earth - Saturn may have had no rings at all. The rings formed when one or more small moons wandered too close to Saturn. When they got within the Roche limit, Saturn’s gravity ripped them apart. After millions of years of bumping against one another, the pieces of moon were ground into the tiny particles that form the rings today.

If we had rings in the same proportion to our planet that Saturn’s are to it, it is pretty easy to figure out what they would like like from different places on the earth. From the equator the rings would be passing directly overhead. Since you’d be looking in the same plane as the rings, all you would see is a bright line arching from horizon to horizon. Here is what the rings might look like from Quito, Ecuador:

If we travel just a little further north to Guatemala, the rings begin to spread across the sky. The earthlight illuminating the dark side of the moon is many times brighter than we are accustomed to, due to the increased sunlight being reflected from the rings.

From Washington, DC (at 38° latitude), the rings begin to sink below the horizon, though they would still be an awe-inspiring sight as they dominate the sky both day and night.

At the Arctic Circle, the rings barely reach above the horizon. Seen here from Nome, Alaska, the brilliant rings illuminate the barren landscape scarcely more than a full moon would. Unlike the sun or moon, however, the rings neither rise nor set… they are always visible, day or night, always in exactly the same place.