What do you have here? Lava flow­ing from a deep-ocean seafloor vol­cano, explod­ing into 35 foot long streams with bub­bles as much as 3 feet across. This kind of action has nev­er been wit­nessed before. (Some­what sur­pris­ing, no?) This clip comes out of The Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton. And the real action, which takes place near Amer­i­can Samoa, begins at the 1:28 mark.

In Novem­ber 2007, Japan’s Kaguya space­craft orbit­ed the moon with a high-def cam­era onboard. You can see the first HD footage of an “earth­rise” and “earth­set” by check­ing out these still images (Earth­rise and Earth­set). The video above gives you a good look at what an “Earth­rise” looks like from out­er space.

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The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny has post­ed online a free video lec­ture that focus­es on what hap­pens in our brain when we learn — some­thing that should pique the inter­est of pret­ty much any read­er here. (Just what hap­pens with those synaps­es when you come here every day?) The lec­ture (watch here) comes from a larg­er course called Under­stand­ing the Brain and is pre­sent­ed by Jeanette Nor­den, a pro­fes­sor in Cell and Devel­op­men­tal Biol­o­gy at Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty.

Side Note: The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny is also offer­ing free access to anoth­er lec­ture (this one in audio) that sur­veys the “Mas­ter­pieces of Clas­si­cal Hol­i­day Music,” includ­ing Bach’s Christ­mas Ora­to­rio of 1734, Handel’s Mes­si­ah of 1741; and Tchaikovsky’s Nut­crack­er Suite of 1892. Lis­ten or down­load here.

What do nat­ur­al mag­net­ic fields look like? This extra­or­di­nary footage from NASA’s Space Sci­ences Lab­o­ra­to­ry (UC Berke­ley) gives you a glimpse and reveals their “chaot­ic, ever-chang­ing geome­tries.”