Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ Re-Created by Astronomer with 100 Hubble Space Telescope Images

in Art, Harvard, Science, Technology | August 20th, 2013

rsz_starrynight_hst001

Last week, I trav­eled to New York City to gaze into The Star­ry Night. Obvi­ous­ly I’m not talk­ing about the skies above Man­hat­tan, not when my hotel was based in Times Square. No, I’m talk­ing about Vin­cent van Gogh’s post-impres­sion­ist mas­ter­piece that hangs in the MoMA on 53rd Street. Although van Gogh seem­ing­ly felt ambiva­lent about his 1889 paint­ing, many now con­sid­er it one of the most impor­tant works of art pro­duced in the 19th cen­tu­ry. And like any oth­er great paint­ing, it has become a fetishized object, some­times in ways that we can find endear­ing. Take this lit­tle project for exam­ple. Last year, Alex Park­er, a post-doc­tor­al fel­low at the Har­vard-Smith­son­ian Cen­ter for Astro­physics, cre­at­ed a mosa­ic of Star­ry Night using 100 Hub­ble pho­tos. He down­loaded the pho­tos from the Euro­pean Space Agency’s web­site, popped them into a free dig­i­tal art soft­ware pack­age called AndreaMo­sa­ic and, voila, pro­duced the image above. You can — and should — view it in a larg­er, high-res for­mat here.

H/T Robin and Wired

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Simon Schama Presents Van Gogh and the Begin­ning of Mod­ern Art

Per­pet­u­al Ocean: A Van Gogh-Like Visu­al­iza­tion of our Ocean Cur­rents

Van Gogh to Rothko in 30 Sec­onds

 

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Slick Data Visualization Reveals Scientific Collaborations Taking Place Around the Globe

in Science | August 15th, 2013

scientific mapsA few years ago, dig­i­tal human­ists at Stan­ford mapped the Repub­lic of Let­ters, care­ful­ly detail­ing the social net­works that con­nect­ed thinkers dur­ing the Enlight­en­ment of the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry. Now Olivi­er Beauch­esne, a data sci­en­tist in Cana­da, has used data visu­al­iza­tion tech­niques to map out a more mod­ern set of rela­tion­ships — col­lab­o­ra­tions tak­ing place among sci­en­tists across the globe.

science metrix visualization

What’s an exam­ple of such a col­lab­o­ra­tion? Beauch­esne writes: “If a UCLA researcher pub­lished a paper with a col­league at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tokyo, this would cre­ate an instance of col­lab­o­ra­tion between Los Ange­les and Tokyo.” By check­ing out this cool zoomable map, you can see thou­sands of these col­lab­o­ra­tions tak­ing place world­wide between 2005 and 2009, and pret­ty soon you real­ize the extent to which mod­ern sci­ence is an inter­na­tion­al affair. The data was pulled from Sci­ence-Metrix data­base.

H/T Pavel

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Data Visu­al­iza­tion: How to Tell Com­plex Sto­ries Through Smart Design

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy Visu­al­ized

Visu­al­iz­ing WiFi Sig­nals with Light

New MOOC Intro­duces You to the Won­der­ful World of Info­graph­ics & Data Visu­al­iza­tion

Watch a Cool and Creepy Visu­al­iza­tion of U.S. Births & Deaths in Real-Time

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Neil deGrasseTyson Receives Irate Mail from Kids After Pluto Gets Booted from List of Planets

in Astronomy, Random, Science | August 5th, 2013

Pluto hatemailIn the late 1990s, Neil deGrasse Tyson and his col­leagues redesigned the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um and, with­out much com­ment, they cre­at­ed a mod­el of the solar sys­tem that ban­ished Plu­to from the list of plan­ets. Dur­ing the fol­low­ing year, no one said very much. But then The New York Times pub­lished an arti­cle (Jan­u­ary 22, 2001) called “Plu­to’s Not a Plan­et? Only in New York,” and all hell broke loose, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the ele­men­tary schools. School kids were incensed, and the let­ters of com­plaint rolled in. You can find one such exam­ple from “Emer­son” above. Five oth­er let­ters can be found over at Men­tal Floss.

hatemail5

Of course, we all know how this sto­ry ends. In 2006, the Inter­na­tion­al Astro­nom­i­cal Union offi­cial­ly exiled Plu­to from the “pan­theon of plan­ets,” and lat­er Tyson wrote a book recount­ing his role in the messy affair, The Plu­to Files: The Rise and Fall of Amer­i­ca’s Favorite Plan­et.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Deliv­ers the Great­est Sci­ence Ser­mon Ever

Stephen Col­bert Talks Sci­ence with Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

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How Climate Change Is Threatening Your Daily Cup of Coffee

in Environment, Food & Drink, Science | August 4th, 2013

Per­haps this will final­ly get your atten­tion. In Ethiopia, glob­al warm­ing is putting the cul­ti­va­tion of cof­fee at risk, to the point where the indige­nous Ethiopi­an cof­fee plant, Cof­fea ara­bi­ca, could go extinct with­in 70 years. That’s no laugh­ing mat­ter, espe­cial­ly if you con­sid­er that cof­fee orig­i­nat­ed in Ethiopia, and the coun­try remains an epi­cen­ter of cof­fee pro­duc­tion today. That’s the depress­ing … and per­haps moti­vat­ing … upshot of an oth­er­wise art­ful­ly-pro­duced film by The Roy­al Botan­ic Gar­dens (aka Kew Gar­dens) in Eng­land.  If you want to dig into the research show­ing the impact of cli­mate change on cof­fee, see the report pub­lished in Novem­ber, 2012 called: The Impact of Cli­mate Change on Indige­nous Ara­bi­ca Cof­fee (Cof­fea ara­bi­ca): Pre­dict­ing Future Trends and Iden­ti­fy­ing Pri­or­i­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

132 Years of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in 26 Dra­mat­i­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed Sec­onds

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

This is Cof­fee!: A 1961 Trib­ute to Our Favorite Stim­u­lant

New­ly added to our list of 750 Free Online Cours­es:

Intro­duc­tion to Lit­er­a­ture and the Envi­ron­ment — YouTube — iTunes Video — Ken Hilt­ner, Prince­ton

How Cli­mate Works — YouTube — iTunes Video — Mul­ti­ple Profs, Prince­ton

 

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132 Years of Global Warming Visualized in 26 Dramatically Animated Seconds

in Science | August 1st, 2013

Cour­tesy of NASA comes a visu­al­iza­tion show­ing how glob­al tem­per­a­tures have changed since 1880. Accord­ing to NASA’s web site, this “col­or-cod­ed map shows a pro­gres­sion of chang­ing glob­al sur­face tem­per­a­tures from 1884 to 2012. Dark blue indi­cates areas cool­er than aver­age. Dark red indi­cates areas warmer than aver­age.”  And the dif­fer­ence between dark blue and dark red is about 7.2 degrees fahren­heit. NASA sci­en­tists note that “2012 was the ninth warmest of any year since 1880, con­tin­u­ing a long-term trend of ris­ing glob­al tem­per­a­tures. With the excep­tion of 1998, the nine warmest years in the 132-year record all have occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 rank­ing as the hottest years on record.” Copies of the video above and still shots can be freely down­loaded from the NASA web site. To deep­en your under­stand­ing of cli­mate change, spend some time with Glob­al Warm­ing, a free online course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. 

via @SteveSilberman/Wash­Po

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

Per­pet­u­al Ocean: A Van Gogh-Like Visu­al­iza­tion of our Ocean Cur­rents

Sal­ly Ride Warns Against Glob­al Warm­ing; Won­ders If Tech­nol­o­gy Can Save Us From Our­selves

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The Origins Project Brings Together Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Bill Nye, Ira Flatow, and More on One Stage

in Media, Science | August 1st, 2013

It often seems, at least to me, that our cul­ture is slow­ly slid­ing back­ward when it comes to sci­ence edu­ca­tion. As a human­i­ties per­son, my obser­va­tions may not count for much, but I do find myself get­ting nos­tal­gic for pop­u­lar sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tors like Carl Sagan and Richard Feyn­man; peo­ple who could appear in America’s liv­ing room and enthrall even the most hard­ened and recal­ci­trant of minds. Sagan’s influ­ence peaked at the dawn of the cul­ture wars, and it doesn’t seem like any­one could fill his shoes.

But sev­er­al influ­en­tial sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tors have made sig­nif­i­cant strides in bring­ing sci­ence to a pop­u­lar audi­ence in the past few decades. Among them is the very affa­ble astro­physi­cist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who takes Sagan’s man­tle in the Cos­mos reboot on Fox next year. There are media fig­ures like NPR’s Ira Fla­tow, Bill Nye the Sci­ence Guy, sci-fi author Neal Stephen­son, and Emmy-award-win­ning Tra­cy Day, co-founder of the World Sci­ence Fes­ti­val. Physi­cist and pop­u­lar sci­ence writer Bri­an Greene has done excel­lent work for NOVA, and sci­en­tif­ic heavy­weights Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins reach mil­lions with pop­u­lar books and media appear­ances.

Now imag­ine all these peo­ple on the same stage togeth­er, trad­ing sto­ries, jam­ming, riff­ing like great jazz musi­cians, like some Jus­tice League of 21st cen­tu­ry sci­ence lovers. Well, you don’t have to, because this hap­pened, not on prime­time tele­vi­sion (alas), but at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty under the aegis of their “Ori­gins Project,” whose mis­sion is to fos­ter inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research, build sci­en­tif­ic part­ner­ships, and “raise the pro­file of ori­gins-relat­ed issues and broad­en sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­cy.” Ori­gins Project direc­tor Lawrence Krauss MC’ed the March 30th event, and the pan­el filled a 3,000-seat audi­to­ri­um for a two-hour ses­sion that focus­es on “the sto­ry­telling of sci­ence” (part one at top, part two above).

The event har­ness­es the slick, enter­tain­ing for­mat of TED Talks to demon­strate how cut­ting-edge research can reach a wide audi­ence eager for a fuller under­stand­ing of the phys­i­cal uni­verse. The first video up top opens with a quote from Michael Sher­mer: “Humans are pat­tern-seek­ing sto­ry-telling ani­mals, and we are quite adept at telling sto­ries about pat­terns, whether they exist or not.” The sto­ries that the mem­bers of this excit­ing pan­el dis­cus­sion tell are con­nect­ed to phys­i­cal real­i­ty through sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence that—without art­ful and com­pelling narrative—can seem bewil­der­ing­ly com­plex.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Unveils a Daz­zling Pre­view of the New Cos­mos

Richard Dawkins Makes the Case for Evo­lu­tion in the 1987 Doc­u­men­tary, The Blind Watch­mak­er

The Unbe­liev­ers, A New Film Star­ring Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Wern­er Her­zog, Woody Allen, & Cor­mac McCarthy

Bill Nye, The Sci­ence Guy, Says Cre­ation­ism is Bad for Kids and America’s Future

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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New Archive Reveals How Scientists Finally Solved the Vexing “Longitude Problem” During the 1700s

in Archives, Astronomy, Education, History, Science | July 31st, 2013

For cen­turies, sea­far­ing explor­ers and mer­chants reck­oned with the lon­gi­tude prob­lem. It was rel­a­tive­ly easy to fig­ure out a ship’s loca­tion on a north-south axis, but near­ly impos­si­ble to deter­mine how far east or west it was. And the stakes were high. Sail too far astray and your ship (and men) could end up so far afield that get­ting home before the food and water ran out might be impos­si­ble. The sail­ing world need­ed bet­ter tools to deter­mine loca­tion at sea.

In 1714 the British gov­ern­ment estab­lished the Board of Lon­gi­tude, offer­ing a cash prize to any­one who could fig­ure out how to detect how far east or west a ship was at sea. The Board was abol­ished in 1828, but only after fos­ter­ing inno­v­a­tive tech­niques that would for­ev­er change the nature of marine nav­i­ga­tion.

Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty and the Nation­al Mar­itime Muse­um at Green­wich recent­ly released an archive mak­ing all of the let­ters, objects, and doc­u­ments relat­ed to the Board’s work avail­able, along with a spiffy set of videos that brings the Board’s his­to­ry and achieve­ments to life.

Dur­ing the Board’s tenure, clock­mak­er John Har­ri­son fig­ured out that sailors could find out their loca­tion if they knew local time at sea and com­pared that to the time at a com­mon ref­er­ence point. The moon was seen as a giant clock, and its posi­tion rel­a­tive to stars was record­ed in the Nau­ti­cal Almanac, giv­ing sailors the data to com­pare against the time at sea. One of the inno­va­tions vet­ted by the Board of Lon­gi­tude is John Harrison’s Sea Clock. Also dur­ing that time, Green­wich became the prime merid­i­an.

All of this work led to more accu­rate maps. The Board spon­sored jour­neys, includ­ing some aboard Cap­tain Cook’s ships with portable obser­va­to­ries for map­mak­ers to sketch and use tri­an­gu­la­tion to deter­mine accu­rate loca­tion on voy­ages, includ­ing one to the North­west­ern Unit­ed States.

You can start rum­mag­ing through the fas­ci­nat­ing archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Caught Map­ping: A Cin­e­mat­ic Ride Through the Nit­ty Grit­ty World of Vin­tage Car­tog­ra­phy

Play Cae­sar: Trav­el Ancient Rome with Stanford’s Inter­ac­tive Map

Cut­ting-Edge Tech­nol­o­gy Recon­structs the Bat­tle of Get­tys­burg 150 Years Lat­er

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Fol­low her on Twit­ter @mskaterix or vis­it her on the web at .

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Nobel Laureates Draw Playful Pictures of Their Discoveries

in Art, Creativity, Photography, Science | July 29th, 2013

nobel soccer 3

As an arty, unath­let­ic only child in the 70s, I refused to buy into the idea that sci­ence could be fun. This despite a wealth of zip­py edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming, and the efforts of at least two cute young teach­ers whose hands-on approach includ­ed throw­ing eggs off of a rail­road tres­tle, demol­ish­ing tooth­pick bridges and dip­ping things into liq­uid nitro­gen for the sheer plea­sure of see­ing them explode when they hit the wall. Nice try. As far as I was con­cerned, those dullsville black-and-white films from the ’50s embod­ied the sub­jec­t’s gen­er­al vibe far more hon­est­ly than any attempt to force it down our throats with a fash­ion­able Hon­ey­comb Kids-style spin.

Hav­ing by now met dozens of sci­en­tists and sci­ence enthu­si­asts who are left cold by the arts, I’m not ashamed to be plain­spo­ken here.  I cer­tain­ly don’t begrudge them their pas­sion, and appre­ci­ate it when they don’t belit­tle mine. Dif­fer­ent strokes, you know?

Still, it’s nice to stum­ble across com­mon ground and for me, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Volk­er Ste­gerfor’s Nobel lau­re­ate por­traits pro­vides acreage on the order of Jim Otta­viani and Leland Myrick­’s graph­ic biog­ra­phy of Richard Feyn­man. I may be hard pressed to artic­u­late what the peo­ple in the por­traits are famous for, but I appre­ci­ate their will­ing­ness to be a play by the artist’s rules. (By his esti­mate, the decline rate is some­where around 4. 29%)

Ste­gerfor’s method for cap­tur­ing big brained inno­va­tors in a light frame of mind resem­bles a well run exper­i­ment. His unsus­pect­ing spec­i­mens were appre­hend­ed at Ger­many’s annu­al Lin­dau Nobel Lau­re­ate Meet­ing. Thus secured, they were led one at a time into a tem­po­rary stu­dio where each was invit­ed to draw what­ev­er it was that had earned him or her the Nobel prize. The results weren’t much as art, but they’re unmis­tak­ably play­ful, bristling with arrows, excla­ma­tion points, smi­ley faces, and word bub­bles. The pho­tog­ra­ph­er let his sub­jects pick the pose, at which points things did become art.

I’m going to award 1996 Chem­istry lau­re­ate Sir Harold Kro­to Best in Show for his well war­rant­ed action pose. Appar­ent­ly, his dis­cov­ery’s mol­e­c­u­lar struc­ture looks like a soc­cer ball.

It’s not exact­ly Break­ing Bad, but it does bring Chem­istry alive for me as a sub­ject oth­ers might find enjoy­able in the empir­i­cal sense.

View a gallery of Volk­er Ste­gerfor’s Sketch­es of Sci­ence. If you’re real­ly into it, the Nobel Muse­um is herald­ing a trav­el­ing exhi­bi­tion of Ste­gerfor’s work with audio record­ings of the sci­en­tists on the sub­ject of their dis­cov­er­ies.

via The Smith­son­ian blog

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is slat­ed to direct the world’s first bio-his­tor­i­cal musi­cal in Novem­ber. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

 

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