Charles O’Rear is the photographer who took Bliss, the image that became the desktop of every single Windows XP computer in the world. Billions saw it and probably think the photo is so perfect and colorful that it is computer generated—or at least Photoshopped. O’Rear reveals the origin of the photo in this video.
I love to see talented people crafting objects. This is a good example: How to make a dragon egg from Game of Thrones "using the technique of repousse, chasing and metal spinning." Mesmerizing.
Scientists have found a way to use the Hubble Space Telescope as an extremely precise galactic tape measure, multiplying our previous capabilities by 10. This increase will result in a more accurate understanding of the size of the observable Universe. plus new insight into the mysterious force known as dark energy.
From this perspective and in their fully folded stow position, the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey looks like a some weird spaceship concept. It’s amazing how these things fold. It’s fully automatic too. Here’s a video showing the process:
We Will Live Again is a fascinating documentary on the Cryonics Institute, the place where 99 dead human bodies are stored at freezing temperatures in hopes that they’ll be able to be revived and live again in another life. It’s crazy and bizarre and eerie in all the right ways.
Vsauce’s Michael Stevens answers a great question with the help of Yeti Dynamics: What if the moon was a disco ball? The answer is sad: The mirrors’ specular surface would make the moon almost invisible. However, things really get groovy if you put the disco moon at the same distance as the International Space Station.
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This is a really unusual weather situation, according to the National Weather Service: Three low pressure systems in line over the entirety of North America. NASA Goddard describes them as "three atmospheric dragons." They do look like dragons! It must be a Game of Thrones’ marketing ploy.
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Is it worth investing a few weeks of your life in Battlestar Galactica? What about Game of Thrones? Or Deadwood? Here’s a graphical tool that maps all the Internet Movie Database’s ratings for every episode of every TV series—a scientific method to pick the next show that is going to make you lose countless hours of sleep.
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At 2,197 meters (7,208 feet) the Krubera cave is the deepest on Earth. Located in the Arabika Massif, of the Western Caucasus in Abkhazia, Georgia, it extends for 13.432 kilometers (8,346 miles.) I would love to get inside, but I know the fear would paralyze me. I love to go through its complete (so far) map, though.
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Defense technology blog Ares reports on a mysterious flying object—most certainly a military classified aircraft—flying over the skies of Amarillo, Texas, on March 10. Aviation Week’s defense expert Bill Sweetman says this is unprecedented but he’s convinced it’s real.
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
