If this image makes you think of the Northern Lights, you shouldn’t be surprised. Because this is in fact a planeterrella: a large glass dome containing spheres and charged particles, which mimics the auroral glows present within our solar system.
A Periodic Table of Booze
Posted in: Today's ChiliYou can fit an awful lot of information into the classic Periodic Table—and here, Brazil-based designer and illustrator mayra.artes has taken advantage of it to communicate the contents of… booze.
Give a national museum a 3D scanner and it’ll archive its entire collection. Give it an X-ray machine though, and it’ll show you the innards of a space suit. As part of its Suited for Space exhibit, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum ran a series of astronauts’ work-wear through a CT scanner. The results (above and below) are more than a little haunting, with all manner of hidden buckles, straps and sensors exposed against ghostly transparent fabrics. Why X-rays? Because according to Wired, the Smithsonian wanted to see how the suits were put together, but deconstructing them without damage wasn’t exactly feasible. Seeing the level of detail required to keep our spacewalkers safe on the job via online pictures is one thing, but scoping it out in person is likely much cooler. If you want an up-close look for yourself, you have until December 1st to make the trip to Washington, D.C.
Via: The Verge
Source: Wired, Smithsonian
Today I found out that the soft drink 7 UP used to include a psychiatric medication as one of its ingredients.
Gravity’s often assumed to be constant across the entire planet, but because the Earth varies in shape and density, that’s not really the case. Now, this super-accurate gravity map reveals that the fluctuations are even more extreme than scientists previously thought.
A team of US researchers has finally worked out how reproduce ball lightning—sometimes referred to as St. Elmo’s fire—in the lab.
Okay, so, um, here’s your perception warping, good times stomping news of the day: Finding Nemo is a damn lie. Not in a oh fish can talk sort of harmless lie but in an oh my god Nemo would grow up to bone his dad sort of awful lie. The Fisheries Blog broke down the science of Finding Nemo and pretty much exposed that Nemo’s mom would die, Nemo’s dad would switch sex and Nemo would eventually mate with his female dad.
A new study suggests that kinetin, a chemical frequently used in anti-aging creams, could be used to develop a treatment for Parkinson’s Disease. Forget regenerating your youthful skin—this chemical could be used to reverse the cell-death that causes, the deadly disorder which afflicts more than a half-million people in the United States.
With the fall term gearing up, you’ve got precious little time left to hang out with your kids before they’re trundled off to school. Entertain the ankle-biters and get their brains primed for learning with these amazing scientific food hacks.