A Brief, Wondrous Tour of Earth (From Outer Space)

in Astronomy, Video - Science | November 13th, 2011

We have seen sev­er­al time-lapse views of Earth from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, but this may well be the best. Record­ed from August to Octo­ber, 2011, this HD footage has been smoothed, retimed, denoised, deflick­ered, cut, etc, and then cou­pled with music by Jan Jelinek. It gives you a pret­ty splen­did view of the auro­ra bore­alis from orbit (how often have you seen that?), and if you’re won­der­ing just what pro­duces those north­ern lights, you can watch a nice expla­na­tion here (scroll down to the sec­ond video). This video is housed in our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos.

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A Stunning, Chance Encounter With Nature

in Random | November 13th, 2011

Sophie Wind­sor Clive and Lib­er­ty Smith were canoe­ing some­where in Ire­land when they had a chance encounter with one of nature’s great­est and most fleet­ing phe­nom­e­na — a mur­mu­ra­tion of star­lings. The spec­ta­cle is a mag­i­cal case of math­e­mat­i­cal chaos in action. And, it’s all dri­ven by the quest for sur­vival. The Tele­graph has more.…

via Dot Earth

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