When the sun comes up, the flowers come out. Inspired by the design of Arabic windows known as mashrabiya, these 45-foot wide, flower-shaped sunshades "blossom" in minutes to cover the facades of these twin towers designed for two (anonymous!) Middle Eastern media companies.
The Royal Observatory of Greenwich, England, has crafted three simple animations to explain three very complex things: What’s inside a black hole, how do we know the age of the sun—did you know the Sun weighs 4,000 trillion trillion hippopotamuses?—and how big is the Universe.
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A massive solar storm in July 2012 was more intense than thought—and it blasted right through the Earth’s orbit. Luckily for us, we were on the other side of the sun, thus missing the chaos completely. But if that storm had hit this beautiful little blue marble in space? "The solar bursts would have enveloped Earth in magnetic fireworks matching the largest magnetic storm ever reported on Earth, the so-called Carrington event of 1859," Science Daily reports.
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Last week in the California desert, a $2.2 billion solar plant opened that creates electricity by harnessing solar energy. Rather than using traditional solar panels, this facility has hundreds of mirror-like reflectors that shoot the sunlight at a tower filled with water in the center of the mirror arrays.
That water inside the tower is turned into superheated steam by the 1000°F temperatures to turn a steam generator, making electricity. Researchers working on the project said that they expected the heat could result in some dead birds. What they didn’t expect was how many birds would be killed by the massive solar death ray. Unfortunately, dozens of birds with singed and charred feathers have already been recovered at the site.
The birds don’t even have to land on the tower; simply flying through the solar beam will kill them. Researchers are currently conducting a study to determine how to reduce the threat to local avian populations. Until the research is complete, Big Bird should maintain his distance.
[via WSJ]
The European Space Agency’s new solar satellite will be partially shielded using a bone-based pigment found in prehistoric cave paintings. The result will be a surreal cross between the earliest era of human cognition and creativity—that underground cinematic world of flickering animal images found in European caves—and the outer reaches of our current mechanical sciences.
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From microscopic coral to massive planets, the natural world is full of beauty on a scale that can only be seen with the aid of a microscopic or a telescope. Announced today, the winners of the 11th annual International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge—sponsored by the journal Science and the U.S. National Science Foundation—zoom into microscopic scales and zoom out onto planetary scales.
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It’s amazing to see how different the sun looks depending on the filters you use. Here you can see it in ultraviolet light, looking as evil as the darkest pits of Mordor. I imagine those sinuous filaments are nefarious serpents made from the souls of dead evil people.
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It might look more like abstract art than anything else, but you’re actually looking at a series of observations of the Sun.
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Perfect for smokers who live in windy cities, this compact parabolic reflector lets you harness the sun as your own personal lighter—one that’s immune to even the strongest winds.
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Netatmo is slowly creating a reputation for itself of combining smart sensors with neat design, having recently teamed up with Philippe Starck to produce a sleek wireless thermostat
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