NASA’s Stunning Tour of the Moon

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | April 2nd, 2012

On 18 June 2009, NASA launched the Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter (LRO) from Cape Canaver­al to con­duct inves­ti­ga­tions that would pave the way for future lunar explo­ration. The main objec­tives? To scout for safe and pro­duc­tive land­ing sites, locate poten­tial resources (with spe­cial atten­tion to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of water ice) and char­ac­ter­ize the effects of pro­longed expo­sure to lunar radi­a­tion. All along, the LRO has col­lect­ed sci­en­tif­ic data about the moon’s topog­ra­phy and com­po­si­tion, result­ing in some of the most spec­tac­u­lar images ever tak­en of the moon. NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter has assem­bled some of these images into a won­der­ful ani­mat­ed tour of the moon.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Richard Dawkins Rallies for Reason in Washington DC

in Current Affairs, Religion, Science | March 27th, 2012

This week­end, an esti­mat­ed 20,000 agnos­tics, athe­ists and ardent sec­u­lar­ists gath­ered on the Nation­al Mall in rainy Wash­ing­ton DC. They were attend­ing the first Rea­son Ral­ly, an event intend­ed to “uni­fy, ener­gize, and embold­en sec­u­lar peo­ple nation­wide, while dis­pelling the neg­a­tive opin­ions held by so much of Amer­i­can soci­ety… and hav­ing a damn good time doing it!” Lawrence Krauss, Michael Sher­mer, Eddie Izzard — they all spoke to the crowd. And then came Richard Dawkins, the high priest of rea­son, the author of The Self­ish Gene, who spent decades teach­ing evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy at Oxford. In the mid­dle of his 16 minute talk, he tells the audi­ence, “We’re here to stand up for rea­son, to stand up for sci­ence, to stand up for log­ic, to stand up for the beau­ty of real­i­ty, and the beau­ty of the fact that we can under­stand real­i­ty.” I’m with you Richard on that. But then comes the scorn we’re now so accus­tomed to (“I don’t despise reli­gious peo­ple; I despise what they stand for.”), and my guess is that chang­ing per­cep­tions of agnos­tics, athe­ists and sec­u­lar­ists will need to wait for anoth­er day.

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Filmmaker James Cameron Going 36,000 Feet Under the Sea

in Film, Science | March 23rd, 2012

This week, film­mak­er James Cameron (Titan­ic, Avatar, The Abyss) hopes to go where only two men have gone before, div­ing 36,000 feet beneath the sea, to the Mar­i­ana Trench, the deep­est known place on Earth. It’s basi­cal­ly Mount Ever­est in the inverse. Cameron plans to make the his­toric solo jour­ney in The Deepsea Chal­lenger, a 24-foot-long ver­ti­cal tor­pe­do, built secret­ly in Aus­tralia over the last year eight years. (More on that here.) And when he reach­es his des­ti­na­tion, he’ll spend six hours shoot­ing 3‑D video of the trench and col­lect­ing rocks and rare sea crea­tures with a robot­ic arm. Or so that’s the plan.

Above, James Cameron describes his mis­sion in a Nation­al Geo­graph­ic video. Below, you’ll find an ani­ma­tion of the Mar­i­ana Trench dive cre­at­ed by The Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion (NOAA). You can track Cameron’s voy­age on the Nat­Geo web­site and find a detailed descrip­tion of the actu­al dive right here.

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Astronaut Films Auroras from Above

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | March 20th, 2012

As the sun’s 11-year cycle of mag­net­ic storms moves clos­er to peak inten­si­ty some­time ear­ly next year, peo­ple who live at high­er lat­i­tudes can expect to see col­or­ful auro­ras light­ing up the night sky. But what would it be like to look down at the auro­ras, or to move through them? In these strik­ing images from NASA, we find out. Astro­naut Don Pet­tit has been orbit­ing the Earth since Decem­ber, as a Flight Engi­neer for Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion Expe­di­tion 30, and while up there he’s been tak­ing advan­tage of the increased solar activ­i­ty by film­ing some of the fire­works in the Earth­’s mag­ne­tos­phere. “We can actu­al­ly fly into the auro­ras,” Pet­tit says in this NASA Sci­ence­Cast. “It’s like being shrunk down and put inside of a neon sign.” To learn more, you can read the arti­cle at NASA Sci­ence News, and to watch oth­er episodes in the series, vis­it the Sci­ence­Casts home page. Find more excel­lent clips in our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos.

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Albert Einstein Archive Now Online, Bringing 80,000+ Documents to the Web

in Physics, Science | March 20th, 2012

It’s not hard to jump online and learn about Albert Ein­stein’s intel­lec­tu­al con­tri­bu­tions. Thanks to Yale, you can get a 60 minute primer on Ein­stein’s the­o­ret­i­cal work. It’s called Ein­stein for the Mass­es. Or you can embark upon a longer, 10-lec­ture explo­ration of Ein­stein’s ground­break­ing ideas (iTunes – YouTube) with Leonard Susskind, a Stan­ford pro­fes­sor known for his own ground­break­ing work on String The­o­ry.

And then there’s this: Start­ing this week, the Hebrew Uni­ver­si­ty of Jerusalem is bring­ing online an exten­sive archive of papers and let­ters belong­ing to the great human­ist and sci­en­tist. The col­lec­tion cur­rent­ly fea­tures 2,000 doc­u­ments and will even­tu­al­ly sur­pass 80,000. And it all gives a round­ed view of Ein­stein’s life and work. The doc­u­ments shed light on his per­son­al rela­tion­ship with his moth­er, wife and many mis­tress­es; his views on the Arab-Israeli con­flict; and his work on physics itself. A quick way to sam­ple the archive is to enter this gallery, where, among oth­er things, you’ll find Ein­stein’s man­u­script intro­duc­ing his famous equa­tion, e=mc2.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sir Isaac Newton’s Papers & Anno­tat­ed Prin­cip­ia Go Dig­i­tal

Roy­al Soci­ety Opens Online Archive; Puts 60,000 Papers Online

Free Physics Cours­es: 28 Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties

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ParaHawking in Nepal: What It’s Really Like to Fly with Birds

in Life, Random, Science | March 19th, 2012

We’ve always had the desire to leave our earth-bound bod­ies and take flight with the birds. We achieved the mir­a­cle of flight over a cen­tu­ry ago. But only recent­ly did we cre­ate a robot that can mechan­i­cal­ly repro­duce the beau­ty of birds in flight. And now we’ve tak­en the next step, actu­al­ly join­ing birds high in the air. Above you can watch Para­Hawk­ing in action, a fusion between fal­con­ry and paraglid­ing that lets you inter­act with birds of prey in their own envi­ron­ment. It all takes place in Nepal. And it’s all part of an effort to con­serve Asi­a’s threat­ened vul­ture pop­u­la­tion. Learn more about these con­ser­va­tion efforts and Para­Hawk­ing itself at, of course, Parahawking.com.

And if you want to see what hap­pens when a paraglid­er (not affil­i­at­ed with this project) acci­den­tal­ly runs into an eagle, watch below:

H/T Metafil­ter

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson: ‘How Much Would You Pay for the Universe?’

in Astronomy, Science | March 19th, 2012

“Nobody’s dream­ing about tomor­row any­more,” says astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson in this com­pelling lit­tle video on the decline of the Amer­i­can space pro­gram. “After we stopped going to the moon, it all end­ed. We stopped dream­ing.” The video was put togeth­er by Evan Schurr with mate­r­i­al from var­i­ous sources. In it, Tyson asks us to imag­ine the pos­si­bil­i­ties for tomor­row if NASA’s bud­get were increased to just one pen­ny for every tax dol­lar. It’s a point he raised ear­li­er this month before a U.S. Sen­ate com­mit­tee (read the full tes­ti­mo­ny here), when he said:

The 2008 bank bailout of $750 bil­lion was greater than all the mon­ey NASA had received in its half-cen­tu­ry his­to­ry; two years’ U.S. mil­i­tary spend­ing exceeds it as well. Right now, NASA’s annu­al bud­get is half a pen­ny on your tax dol­lar. For twice that–a pen­ny on a dollar–we can trans­form the coun­try from a sullen, dispir­it­ed nation, weary of eco­nom­ic strug­gle, to one where it has reclaimed its 20th cen­tu­ry birthright to dream of tomor­row.

via The Dai­ly Beast

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Autonomous Flying Robots Play the Theme From the James Bond Movies

in Music, Science, Technology, TED Talks | March 16th, 2012

Yes­ter­day we fea­tured a video of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alaba­ma” being played on a pair of Tes­la coils. Today we keep the music going with some­thing per­haps even more amaz­ing: a swarm of autonomous fly­ing robots play­ing the theme from the James Bond movies.

The robots were devel­oped at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s Gen­er­al Robot­ics, Automa­tion, Sens­ing and Per­cep­tion (GRASP) lab by grad­u­ate stu­dents Daniel Mellinger and Alex Kushleyev, founders of KMel Robot­ics, under the super­vi­sion of Pro­fes­sor Vijay Kumar. The researchers are work­ing to devel­op agile, autonomous fly­ing robots that can mim­ic the swarm­ing behav­iors of birds, fish and insects. In the video above, which was cre­at­ed spe­cial­ly for Kumar’s Feb­ru­ary 29 TED talk, a swarm of nine quadro­tor heli­copters play musi­cal instru­ments. An arti­cle on the UPenn web­site explains:

In this demon­stra­tion, the “stage” is in a room fit­ted with infrared lights and cam­eras. The nano quads all have reflec­tors on their struts, which allows the cam­era sys­tem to plot their exact posi­tion and relay that infor­ma­tion wire­less­ly to each unit.

Lab mem­bers can then assign each unit a series of way­points in three-dimen­sion­al space that must be reached at an exact time. In this case, those times and places trans­late into notes on a key­board or a strum of a gui­tar. Fig­ur­ing out how to get from way­point to way­point most effi­cient­ly and with­out dis­turb­ing their neigh­bors is up to the robots.

The robots are remark­ably agile, and may some­day be use­ful for a wide vari­ety of appli­ca­tions. To learn more, watch Kumar’s 17-minute TED talk, below, which includes sev­er­al aston­ish­ing video demon­stra­tions of the robots in action.

via Cos­mic Vari­ance

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