Here’s something you don’t see every night: the far side of the Moon, photographed by one of NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft.

The Moon is “tidally locked” in its orbit around the Earth, meaning its rotational and orbital periods are exactly synchronized. As a result, we always see the same view of the Moon no matter when or where (on Earth) we look at it. In this interesting video, released last week by NASA, we get a rare glimpse of the Moon’s other side, starting with the north pole and moving toward the heavily cratered south.

The video was captured on January 19 by the “MoonKAM” aboard one of a pair of GRAIL spacecraft that were launched last Fall and began orbiting the Moon on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. The primary mission of GRAIL is to study the Moon’s interior structure and to learn more about its thermal evolution.

GRAIL is also the first planetary mission by NASA to carry instruments dedicated solely to education and public outreach. The “KAM” in “MoonKAM” stands for Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students. The program, led by former astronaut Sally Ride, will engage fifth- to eighth-graders from across the country in selecting target areas on the lunar surface to photograph and study. Educators interested in participating can register at the MoonKAM website. To learn more about the video and GRAIL, see the NASA news release.

The Far Side of Moon: A Rare Glimpse from NASA is a post from: Open Culture

Ants never cease to amaze. They navigate the world with internal pedometers. They can build a life raft in 100 seconds flat. And, further demonstrating the remarkable powers of de-centralized intelligence, they can tunnel into the earth and produce sprawling underground colonies, structures equivalent to humans building the Great Wall of China. This clip comes from the documentary Ants: Nature’s Secret Power, which appears below in full. H/T BoingBoing.

The Archaeology of an Ant Colony is a post from: Open Culture

With the largest solar storm since 2005 lighting up the night skies this week after a pair of solar flares sent streams of charged particles hurtling toward the earth, prophets of doom have been lighting up the Internet.

Bob Thiel, a self-described “Church History and End Times Examiner” and author of 2012 and the Rise of the Secret Sect, wrote yesterday: “Worse solar flares will ultimately happen after the ‘Great Tribulation’ begins (Revelation 16: 8-9), and one or more that affect satellites and electricity could happen even today.” Hmm. Interesting.

Although very serious questions do exist about the readiness of our electric power grid and satellite infrastructure to withstand a major solar storm like the one in 1859 that shorted out telegraph wires and caused aurorae so bright a crew of gold miners in Colorado reportedly got out of bed in the middle of the night to cook breakfast, the current increase in solar activity is part of a regular 11-year cycle and poses no special risk, according to NASA heliophysicist Alex Young. (See the video above.) And anyway, Young says, the peak isn’t expected to hit until 2014, well after the Mayan calendar has run its course.

For an interesting discussion about the past week’s solar activity you can listen to Phil Plait, author of Discover Magazine’s “Bad Astronomy” blog, in an interview yesterday with Patt Morrison of Los Angeles public radio KPCC. And for a look at the earth-directed coronal mass ejection of January 22, you can watch another NASA video below.

Apocalypse Not Quite Yet: Why Solar Storms Won’t End the World in 2012 is a post from: Open Culture

Cambridge, Massachusetts is one of the world’s great intellectual crossroads. With Harvard University at one end of town and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the other, many of the most influential thinkers of our time either work there or visit. That gave César Hidalgo an idea.

Hidalgo is a professor at M.I.T., where he studies the relationship between physics, network science and economic development. Building on his own interdisciplinary curiosity, Hidalgo thought it would be interesting to share a little of Cambridge’s intellectual wealth with the outside world, so in October he and the M.I.T. Media Lab launched a series of informal Web interviews called Cambridge Nights: Conversations About a Life in Science.

Cambridge Nights is a little like The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, if Leno talked about things like fractal geometry in the metabolic theory of ecology. That’s the subject of the discussion above featuring the renowned physicist Geoffrey West, professor and past president of the Santa Fe Institute, who gives a fascinating account of the universal scaling laws that pervade all life, from single-celled organisms and complex species to whole ecosystems.

What sets Cambridge Nights apart from other Web forums, like BigThink, is that guests are under no pressure to compress or “popularize” their ideas. “We invite them because we want to hear what they have to say, and we want to give them the time to say it comfortably,” writes Hidalgo. “There are many high-speed formats out there. Cambridge Nights is an alternative where thoughts can be developed and reflected upon without the need to rush.”

In the first season, Hidalgo talks with six scholars from fields spanning the natural and social sciences, including physicist and network scientist Albert-László Barabási, biologist Marc Vidal and international development expert Lant Pritchett. A number of guests are already lined up for Season Two, including experimental psychologist Steven Pinker.

To view all six videos from Season One, and to learn more about the project, visit the Cambridge Nights website.

Courses from MIT can be found in our collection of 400 Free Courses Online.

via The New York Times

Cambridge Nights: Late Night TV-Style Show Takes Deep Look at Scientific Thinking is a post from: Open Culture

Two weeks ago, we featured Harvard Thinks Green, a series of six TED-style lectures presented by Harvard experts, each focusing on the environment and strategies for reversing climate change. One thing Harvard Thinks Green didn’t offer was a primer on climate change itself, a good scientific explanation of the underlying problem. Enter Global Warming (YouTube – iTunes – Web Site), a 23-lecture course presented by David Archer, a professor in the Department of The Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. The first half of the class explains climate physics and how the climate works; the second half shows how human activity and ever-increasing carbon levels disrupt the equilibrium of the environment, creating a very uncertain future for generations to come. The first, short lecture above outlines the scope of the class.

Originally presented at UChicago in Fall 2009, Archer’s course was geared to non-science majors and taught in conjunction with his textbook, Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast, which happens to be available on Amazon here. Global Warming (YouTube - iTunes - Web Site) is now listed in our collection of 400 Free Courses Online.

Global Warming: A Free Course from UChicago Explains Climate Change is a post from: Open Culture

Last fall, we featured a talk by the hot-shot theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, “A Universe from Nothing,” which answered some big enchilada questions: What is our current understanding of the universe? When did the universe begin? What came before it? How could something come from nothing? And what will happen to the universe in the future?

The lecture gave a snapshot of the thinking laid out in Krauss’ newly-released book by the same title: A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing. The book just hit the stands, and right now it’s #51 on the Amazon bestseller list. Not bad for a text that delves into the complex mysteries of dark matter, quantum mechanics and cosmology.

In case you missed the original lecture, we have posted “A Universe from Nothing” below for your viewing pleasure. (It has racked up over a million views on YouTube.) And you can catch the video trailer for Krauss’ new book right above. Find more great physics videos in our collection of Free Online Courses and Great Science Videos.

Physicist Lawrence Krauss Explains How Everything Comes from Nothing is a post from: Open Culture

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Countries and Coastlines: A Dramatic View of Earth from Outer Space is a post from: Open Culture

On December 8th, six “all-star environmental professors” came together at an event called “Harvard Thinks Green” and presented short, TED-style talks about the environment and strategies for reversing climate change. The event started with James McCarthy (Professor of Biological Oceanography) asking the question (see above), “Is it too late to avoid serious impacts of climate change?” A good question to ask given that 2010 witnessed the biggest annual jump in global carbon emissions—5.9%. This set the stage for Richard Lazarus (Professor of Law) to discuss ways that our political system could become more responsive to the crisis. (Did you know that Barack Obama only mentioned climate change once in public last year? Just once?) And then Rebecca Henderson (Co-Director of the Business and Environment Initiative) tries to make the difficult case that money-making and saving the world can go hand-in-hand — that capitalism can become environmentally sustainable. You can watch the remaining talks online here, or on iTunes here.

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Harvard Thinks Green: Big Ideas from 6 All-Star Environment Profs is a post from: Open Culture

What is nano? And how will nanoscience (the study of phenomena and manipulation of materials at the nanoscale) shape our future, from the way we build houses to how we cure diseases? It’s all explained in a snappy 17 minute video narrated by Stephen Fry (British writer, actor and director). Produced in partnership with Cambridge University, NANO YOU was named the best short film at the Scinema Science Film Festival in 2010. You can now find this clip in our collection of Great Science Videos.

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Stephen Fry Introduces the Strange New World of Nanoscience is a post from: Open Culture

Saharan desert ants are known to wander great distances in search of food. Twisting and turning on their way, the ants manage to return to their nests along surprisingly direct paths. They sense direction using light from the sky, but how do they judge distance? By counting steps, apparently.

As National Public Radio science correspondent Robert Krulwich explains in this engaging little cartoon, a group of German and Swiss scientists have discovered that by manipulating the stride of the ants halfway through their trip–by either lengthening or shortening their legs–the ants would invariably overshoot or undershoot their return destination. As Princeton biologist James Gould told NPR, “These animals are fooled exactly the way you’d expect if they were counting steps.”

The experimental results were originally published in 2006. You can listen to Krulwich’s radio report on the research here.

via Philosophy Monkey

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Can Ants Count? Do They Have Built-In Pedometers? Animated Video Explains is a post from: Open Culture