I really dig these Symphony of Science videos.
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
26 February 2010
12 February 2010
Pale Blue Dot
Today is the 20th Anniversary of this photo. That tiny dot is our planet taken from a view no human has ever seen. When the Voyager Spacecraft turned around to take the photo, a reflection on the space craft caused what looks like a ray of sunlight to bath the planet. I think Carl Sagan summed it up best.
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
20 January 2010
The Known Universe
NASA has this wonderful little blog called Astronomy Picture of the Day. The think the name explains the concept pretty straight forward, every day they feature a new Astronomy Picture. Today's is one that I found particularly interesting.
15 January 2010
08 January 2010
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
I came across this great article published on the Huffington Post about Science Denialism. Steve Newton is a project director at the National Center for Science Education and hits it spot on when he says that deniers tend to ignore the facts and refuse to listen to reason. All a scientist ask for is testable provable evidence to back up your claim, which should not be hard if they are as right as they seem to think.
30 November 2009
The Symphony of Science
I think these are the greatest thing done with Autotuning outside of Autotune the News.
You can see the collection of the Symphony of Science here.
You can see the collection of the Symphony of Science here.
25 November 2009
2009 Bioscapes
Olympus has announced their 2009 Bioscapes Photography Contest winners. These are photographs taken at a microscopic level; beautiful, surreal, and awe inspiring.
24 November 2009
The Solar System to Scale
This is a really radical scale model of the Solar System; gives you an idea of just how massive our own backyard is.
23 November 2009
Particle Physics Give Me a Large Hadron
So CERN has the Large Hadron Collider back up and running. Smashing particles together at damn near the speed of light, this giant machine will allow us a better understanding of our Quantum Reality.
Boston.com has a great gallery up featuring some of the damage and other random pictures of this modern wonder.
Boston.com has a great gallery up featuring some of the damage and other random pictures of this modern wonder.
19 November 2009
Richard Dawkins
The Onion AV Club has an excellent interview with Richard Dawkins up. Most famous for his book of The God Delusion, Dr. Dawkins has been at the fore front of the "New Atheist" movement.
You can read the interview here.
You can read the interview here.
06 November 2009
Carl Sagan Day
So tomorrow is the 75th anniversary of Carl Sagan's birth! Dr. Sagan is most famous for his books promoting scientific thought and reasoning and his valiant attempt to popularize science. He is one of my personal heroes.
http://www.carlsaganday.com/
Ahh, the Pale Blue Dot.
http://www.carlsaganday.com/
Ahh, the Pale Blue Dot.
05 November 2009
The Cosmic Perspective
"We are made of star stuff. For the most part, atoms heavier than hydrogen were created in the interiors of stars and then expelled into space to be incorporated into later stars. The Sun is probably a third generation star." - Carl Sagan
The idea of the Cosmic Perspective is the idea of where you fit among the cosmos, the entirety of the universe on a whole. To even begin to think about the size and mass of everything leaves one almost in a state of shock, the vast majority of reality is nothing but cold, dark nothing. The richness of light and life and warmth in our tiny corner of existence is the exception. How is this comforting? Why should we rejoice in the fact our life times are a flash, a blink of the eye in the cosmic time line.
To first get an idea of this prespective, you need to go back, far back, to the beginning. Through our understanding of Einstien's General Realivity and Edwin Hubble's discovery that neighboring Galaxies distance is directly proportional to their Redshift. Basically, what this means, is through observations the human race has concluded that our universe began some finite time ago, believed to be around 13.7 Billion years. Everything you know, everyone you've meet, every event in history, all of it came from this primeval atom that exploded at a speed faster than light. The idea that our reality can be extrapolated back to a singularity, where our understanding of physics breaks down, stretches our imaginations to the fullest.
So, we now we've begun to imagine where this all came from, how the cosmic clock was set in motion. Let's go back to the quote at the beginning, the idea that we are from star stuff. All matter and energy in the universe formed within the first few seconds of the big bang (don't worry, I can say it, but it still is hard to comprehend). So, since then this matter has been expanding out into the void, and as it is doing this, it begins to clump together. Fine particles of hydrogen started pack themselves together, denser and denser, until we got nuclear fusion. Nuclear Fusion is a fancy way of saying sunlight, it is the process of hydrogen being burned into helium. So, for billions of years (our sun is about middle aged at 5 billion years) hydrogen is burned into helium, eventually, this hydrogen is burned up. Once this happens, a star similar to our sun will start to expand becoming a red giant, in this process it will burn helium into heavier elements. So in essences all matter outside of Hydrogen are the direct result of the birth and deaths of stars. This means that the Earth, Mars, the Orion Nebula, the Great Galaxy in Andromeda, everything is made from the same thing. We are interconnected on a level so basic and vast it leaves me in awe.
Alright, so we sort of understand how the Universe came into existence, and in that same vain how our sun and planets were formed. So to get an idea of ourselves in all of this, the Earth forms and cools over the course of about a billion years. We start to get some strange chemical reactions, this results in organic molecules springing into microble life. Over the course of the next 3 billion years these mirobes mutate and evolve. These mutations result in us, and our ability to imagine and reason. We began to understand how to create tools, leading to greater and greater wealth of knowledge and ability to survive. Like Carl Sagan has said the understanding of the concept of the number one is such an intellictual feat.
So now we've developed tools to observe and record the natural occuring universe. We have begun to understand the complex language of mathimatics, the inner workings of the clock work of the universe.
So where does that put us, we are a phonemena that allows the cosmos to turn back on itself and understand itself. The pursuit of this knowledge should be at the for front of civilazation and should not be taken lightly. We are gifted mutations in all the cosmos, there are only one specices of humans and we should consider this a blessing.
So let me ask you, what is your Cosmic Perspective?
The idea of the Cosmic Perspective is the idea of where you fit among the cosmos, the entirety of the universe on a whole. To even begin to think about the size and mass of everything leaves one almost in a state of shock, the vast majority of reality is nothing but cold, dark nothing. The richness of light and life and warmth in our tiny corner of existence is the exception. How is this comforting? Why should we rejoice in the fact our life times are a flash, a blink of the eye in the cosmic time line.
To first get an idea of this prespective, you need to go back, far back, to the beginning. Through our understanding of Einstien's General Realivity and Edwin Hubble's discovery that neighboring Galaxies distance is directly proportional to their Redshift. Basically, what this means, is through observations the human race has concluded that our universe began some finite time ago, believed to be around 13.7 Billion years. Everything you know, everyone you've meet, every event in history, all of it came from this primeval atom that exploded at a speed faster than light. The idea that our reality can be extrapolated back to a singularity, where our understanding of physics breaks down, stretches our imaginations to the fullest.
So, we now we've begun to imagine where this all came from, how the cosmic clock was set in motion. Let's go back to the quote at the beginning, the idea that we are from star stuff. All matter and energy in the universe formed within the first few seconds of the big bang (don't worry, I can say it, but it still is hard to comprehend). So, since then this matter has been expanding out into the void, and as it is doing this, it begins to clump together. Fine particles of hydrogen started pack themselves together, denser and denser, until we got nuclear fusion. Nuclear Fusion is a fancy way of saying sunlight, it is the process of hydrogen being burned into helium. So, for billions of years (our sun is about middle aged at 5 billion years) hydrogen is burned into helium, eventually, this hydrogen is burned up. Once this happens, a star similar to our sun will start to expand becoming a red giant, in this process it will burn helium into heavier elements. So in essences all matter outside of Hydrogen are the direct result of the birth and deaths of stars. This means that the Earth, Mars, the Orion Nebula, the Great Galaxy in Andromeda, everything is made from the same thing. We are interconnected on a level so basic and vast it leaves me in awe.
Alright, so we sort of understand how the Universe came into existence, and in that same vain how our sun and planets were formed. So to get an idea of ourselves in all of this, the Earth forms and cools over the course of about a billion years. We start to get some strange chemical reactions, this results in organic molecules springing into microble life. Over the course of the next 3 billion years these mirobes mutate and evolve. These mutations result in us, and our ability to imagine and reason. We began to understand how to create tools, leading to greater and greater wealth of knowledge and ability to survive. Like Carl Sagan has said the understanding of the concept of the number one is such an intellictual feat.
So now we've developed tools to observe and record the natural occuring universe. We have begun to understand the complex language of mathimatics, the inner workings of the clock work of the universe.
So where does that put us, we are a phonemena that allows the cosmos to turn back on itself and understand itself. The pursuit of this knowledge should be at the for front of civilazation and should not be taken lightly. We are gifted mutations in all the cosmos, there are only one specices of humans and we should consider this a blessing.
So let me ask you, what is your Cosmic Perspective?
11 September 2009
2001: A Space Odyssey
By far, the greatest Science Fiction movie ever created is 2001: A Space Odyssey. The story of man kind finding tools from such advance species and trying to figure out their purpose. Its a reminder that we are only a small part of these ever expanding universe, that our roll is still not come into full definition. As we try to explore such a wondrous object as the Monolith we learn that our own tools are primitive in comparison.
Moments like Hal 9000's malfunction due to improper impute of data only shows the sharp mind of Arthur C Clarke. An AI designed to only serve humans and never distort data is told to lie and keep a secret from other crew members its solution to the problem is to eliminate the problem. Such an excellent scene where David Bowman sets down with Hal and they talk about rumors circulating about their mission. The scene where Bowman 'kills' HAL is maybe one of the most disturbing moments in cinema history, evoking a strong sense of sympathy for a computer is a powerful statement in story telling ability.
The final scene where David Bowman overcomes all odds and enters the Monolith is most amazing. To have such a man of intelligence, resolve and courage be the judging of all of our species is quite the trip. As the Monolith pulls him in, it shows him the history of the species who created it, brought it to earth and began the process of evolution that culminated in the moment David Bowman said "My God, its full of stars!"
The movie is a great example of the visual telling of a story. Combined with the book it becomes one of the greatest examples of speculative fiction to ever be conceived. To think, that in 1968 they would see the Computer take such a prominent roll in our lives, and how we would rapidly advance into the Space Age. Unfortunately Geopolitics stopped the Space Race in the late 70's.
Moments like Hal 9000's malfunction due to improper impute of data only shows the sharp mind of Arthur C Clarke. An AI designed to only serve humans and never distort data is told to lie and keep a secret from other crew members its solution to the problem is to eliminate the problem. Such an excellent scene where David Bowman sets down with Hal and they talk about rumors circulating about their mission. The scene where Bowman 'kills' HAL is maybe one of the most disturbing moments in cinema history, evoking a strong sense of sympathy for a computer is a powerful statement in story telling ability.
The final scene where David Bowman overcomes all odds and enters the Monolith is most amazing. To have such a man of intelligence, resolve and courage be the judging of all of our species is quite the trip. As the Monolith pulls him in, it shows him the history of the species who created it, brought it to earth and began the process of evolution that culminated in the moment David Bowman said "My God, its full of stars!"
The movie is a great example of the visual telling of a story. Combined with the book it becomes one of the greatest examples of speculative fiction to ever be conceived. To think, that in 1968 they would see the Computer take such a prominent roll in our lives, and how we would rapidly advance into the Space Age. Unfortunately Geopolitics stopped the Space Race in the late 70's.
10 September 2009
Science is Real
I've always been a huge fan of They Might Be Giants, and I will admit that in recent years I have not stayed the course and followed any of their new music. I recently came across this video for the song Science is Real off of Here Comes Science. Leave it to TMBG to combine music and science in such a catchy way.
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