Laura, 17. Banjoist.
.
I aspire to be an astrophysicist, astronaut, science communicator. Inspired by Carl Sagan. I plan on using this blog to help educate as many people as I can about the wonders of science.
.
This is a personal and science blog.
We never sit here under the weight of all this air, the 5 x 10^18 kg of atmosphere that sits above everyone on Earth, and say “Gosh, that sure is heavy!”
You don’t realize just how powerful that 1 bar (~100 kPa) of pressure is until a train car is filled with steam, allowed to cool, and then implodes ohmygod did that just happen?
For more implosion goodness, check out this awesome video from Veritasium.
Huge Rock Crashes Into Moon, Sparks Giant Explosion
If you were looking up at the Moon on March 17, 2013 at 03:50:55 UTC, you might have seen one of the brightest “lunar flashes” ever witnessed. And it would have been visible with just the naked eye.
“On March 17, 2013, an object about the size of a small boulder hit the lunar surface in Mare Imbrium,” says Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “It exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as bright as anything we’ve ever seen before.”
The scientists estimate that the flash came from a 40 kg meteoroid measuring 0.3 to 0.4 meters wide hitting the Moon, likely traveling about 90,000 km/hr (56,000 mph.) The resulting explosion packed as much punch as 5 tons of TNT.
Lunar meteors hit the ground with so much kinetic energy that they don’t require an oxygen atmosphere to create a visible explosion. The flash of light comes not from combustion but rather from the thermal glow of molten rock and hot vapors at the impact site.
When researchers looked back at their records from March, they found that the moon meteor might not have been an isolated event.
“On the night of March 17, NASA and University of Western Ontario all-sky cameras picked up an unusual number of deep-penetrating meteors right here on Earth” said Cooke. “These fireballs were traveling along nearly identical orbits between Earth and the asteroid belt.”
Though Earth’s atmosphere protected our planet’s surface from being hit by these meteors, the moon has no such luck. Its lack of an atmosphere exposes it to all incoming space rocks, and the NASA monitoring program has spotted more than 300 meteor strikes that reached its surface since 2005.
Part of the motivation for the program is NASA’s eventual intent to send astronauts back to the moon. When they arrive, they’ll need to know how often meteors impact the surface, and whether certain parts of the year, coinciding with the moon’s passage through crowded bits of the solar system, pose special dangers.
“We’ll be keeping an eye out for signs of a repeat performance next year when the Earth-Moon system passes through the same region of space,” Cooke said. “Meanwhile, our analysis of the March 17th event continues.”
The scientists also hope to use NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to photograph the impact site to learn more about how the crash occurred.
Cool!! I wish I had seen it!
Colour chart used by Austrian botanical illustrator Ferdinand Bauer (1760-1826) for his field observations. His technique was to sketch a ‘painting-by-numbers’ in situ, which we he could later add colour to after returning from whichever botanical expedition he was on. The example of his painting shown here is a depiction of Grevillea banksii, named for the great Sir Joseph.
Today’s photo is from the Mongolian highlands. Surreal to see a frozen lake surrounded by sand dunes.
More pieces by artist Heather Ault. You can learn more about 4000 Years for Choice, and check out much more of Heather’s awesome artwork here.
Where have all the women gone in movies?
Despite the success of ‘Bridesmaids’ and other female-driven movies, female representation in films is at its lowest level in five years, a USC report says.
There’s one mountain in Hollywood that even “The Hunger Games’” scrappy heroine Katniss Everdeen hasn’t been able to move: the number of roles for women.
Despite the success of recent female-driven movies such as “Bridesmaids” and the “Hunger Games” and “Twilight” series, female representation in popular movies is at its lowest level in five years, according to a study being released Monday by the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Among the 100 highest-grossing movies at the U.S. box office in 2012, the study reported, 28.4% of speaking characters were female. That’s a drop from 32.8% three years ago, and a number that has stayed relatively stagnant despite increased research attention to the topic and several high-profile box-office successes starring women.
“There is notable consistency in the number of females on-screen from year to year,” said USC researcher Marc Choueiti. “The slate of films developed and produced each year is almost formulaic — in the aggregate, female representation hardly changed at all.”
When they are on-screen, 31.6% of women are shown wearing sexually revealing clothing, the highest percentage in the five years the USC researchers have been studying the issue.
For teen girls, the number who are provocatively dressed is even higher: 56.6% of teen girl characters in 2012 movies wore sexy clothes, an increase of 20% since 2009.
The USC researchers said these trends persist because those working in Hollywood believe attracting a male audience is the key ingredient to box office success.
“Industry perceptions of the audience drive much of what we see on-screen,” said study author Stacy L. Smith. “There is a perception that movies that pull male sell. Given that females go to the movies as much as males, the lack of change is likely due to entrenched ways of thinking and doing business that perpetuate the status quo.”
Female characters are more prevalent — and less likely to be sexualized — in movies written and directed by women, according to Smith.
A study USC released in January in conjunction with the Sundance Institute and Women in Film Los Angeles found that women have made more inroads in those kinds of behind-the-camera jobs in independent film and documentaries than they have in big-budget studio movies.
But it’s typically the studio movies that drive the box office — and shape audiences.
“Some depictions of females on-screen can have unintended and negative consequences for viewers,” Smith said. “Every voice deserves a chance to be heard and every story a chance to be told. At the moment … that does not seem to be the case in popular film.”
Mr Takei, I would marry you in a heart beat
Crowd-Sourcing Helps Map Global Emissions
Climate science researchers from Arizona State Univ. are launching a first-of-its-kind online “game” to better understand the sources of global warming gases. By engaging “citizen scientists,” the researchers hope to locate all the power plants around the world and quantify their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
The game has officially begun and is housed on a website called “Ventus.” Ventus (the Latin word for wind) has a simple interface in which users enter basic information about the world’s power plants. By playing the game, people around the globe can help solve the climate change problem.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/videos/2013/05/crowd-sourcing-helps-map-global-emissionsLooks like a nice project.
sweet dreams are made of this
who am i to disagree
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
The Cycle of Abuse Illustrated Through Single Photos and Multiple Models
Statistics show that 70% of people who are abused as children will grow up into adults who will in turn abuse children. A recent awareness ad campaign by Mexican organization Save the Children shared this fact in single photographs that are both creative and difficult to stomach.
The advertisements were originally published back in May 2012, and were created by Mexican agency Y&R and photographer Ale Burset.Each one uses five models showing one individual at different stages of life. In the foreground, the individual is experiencing abuse as a child. Older versions of the abused child grow up as they walk across the background of the frame, and turn into the original abuser by the time they walk a full circle.
“70% of abused children turn into abusive adults. Donate at savethechildren.mx,” the advertisements say.
