Watch Astronaut Don Pettit Conduct Cool Experiments Aboard the International Space Station

in Physics, Video - Science | August 8th, 2012

Astro­naut Don Pet­tit is a chem­i­cal engi­neer by train­ing, and he is a man who loves his work. The video above, pro­duced as part of a series called “Sci­ence off the Sphere,” shows an exper­i­ment con­duct­ed aboard the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion. In it, Pet­tit demon­strates the way a water bub­ble reacts to puffs of air in micro­grav­i­ty. The results are fas­ci­nat­ing to watch, made more so by Pettit’s total absorp­tion in the exper­i­ment.

Dur­ing his first six-month stay on the ISS in 2002–3, Pet­tit also exper­i­ment­ed on how flu­ids react in zero-grav­i­ty. He dubbed these ses­sions “Sat­ur­day Morn­ing Sci­ence.” Pet­tit returned to the ISS in Decem­ber of 2011 and is still there, orbit­ing over 240 miles above the earth, con­duct­ing exper­i­ments in his free time and pro­duc­ing “Sci­ence off the Sphere.” Episode 5 of the series (below) is mes­mer­iz­ing, and again, Pettit’s won­der as he nar­rates the exper­i­ment is pal­pa­ble.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Great Cities at Night: Views from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

Drink­ing Cof­fee at Zero Grav­i­ty

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

 

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Carl Sagan Presents Six Lectures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar System … For Kids (1977)

in Astronomy, Physics, Video - Science | August 7th, 2012

The Roy­al Insti­tu­tion Christ­mas Lec­tures for Chil­dren — it’s a tra­di­tion that began back in 1825 when the inven­tor Michael Fara­day orga­nized an annu­al lec­ture series for kids, hop­ing to instill in a younger gen­er­a­tion a love for sci­ence. Almost two cen­turies lat­er, the tra­di­tion con­tin­ues. Emi­nent fig­ures like Sir David Atten­bor­ough and Richard Dawkins (watch here) pre­sent­ed lec­tures to young­sters in 1973 and 1991 (respec­tive­ly). And the great astronomer Carl Sagan took his turn in 1977, offer­ing six lec­tures on our solar sys­tem. The first two talks offer a broad overview of the plan­e­tary sys­tem, set­ting the stage for three pre­sen­ta­tions (see below) ded­i­cat­ed to Mars, a top­ic that holds spe­cial inter­est this week. With NASA just hav­ing land­ed its rover Curios­i­ty on the sur­face of Mars, it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing to watch Sagan talk about the knowl­edge gained from ear­ly NASA orbiters, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Mariner and Viking mis­sions. In a rather time­ly way, Sagan’s lec­tures put the Curios­i­ty mis­sion in a grander his­tor­i­cal con­text, a deep­er his­to­ry of space explo­ration.

Sagan’s talks assume no spe­cial­ized knowl­edge and run rough­ly 60 min­utes each. You can find more Christ­mas lec­tures on the RI web­site here.

The Out­er Solar Sys­tem and Life

The His­to­ry of Mars

Mars Before Viking

Mars After Viking

Plan­e­tary Sys­tems Beyond The Sun

We’ll be adding this course to the Astron­o­my sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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Video: The Minutes Before & After the Landing of the Mars Curiosity Rover

in Astronomy, Video - Science | August 5th, 2012

NASA’s Mars rover, Curios­i­ty, land­ed just min­utes ago. If you did­n’t catch the action live online, you can watch a screen cap­ture of the moments before and after the land­ing. The land­ing itself takes place around the 5:40 mark, but the ten­sion in the mis­sion con­trol room begins in the min­utes before that, when the rover passed through The Sev­en Min­utes of Ter­ror. The joy, the tears, the great sense of accom­plish­ment, the first images from Mars (around 7:30 mark) — they all fol­low. A job well done. A great plea­sure to watch.

If you want to focus on the pride in the mis­sion con­trol room, you can sim­ply watch the video below.

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The Benefits of Being Awestruck

in Psychology, Science, Video - Science | July 31st, 2012

http://vimeo.com/46264514

In Decem­ber 1972, astro­nauts aboard the Apol­lo 17 space­craft snapped a pho­to­graph of our Earth from an alti­tude of 45,000 kilo­me­tres. The pho­to­graph, known as “The Big Blue Mar­ble,” let every­one see their plan­et ful­ly illu­mi­nat­ed for the first time. The pic­ture, show­ing the Earth look­ing iso­lat­ed and vul­ner­a­ble, left every­one awestruck. And “The Big Blue Mar­ble” became the most wide­ly-dis­trib­uted image of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Now, less than a half cen­tu­ry lat­er, pic­tures of our plan­et bare­ly move us. And we hard­ly bat an eye­lash at videos giv­ing us remark­able views from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion.

We’re los­ing our sense of awe at our own per­il, how­ev­er. The title of a new Stan­ford study tells you all you need to know: Awe Expands People’s Per­cep­tion of Time, Alters Deci­sion Mak­ing, and Enhances Well-Being. Appar­ent­ly, watch­ing awe-inspir­ing vidoes makes you less impa­tient, more will­ing to vol­un­teer time to help oth­ers, more like­ly to pre­fer expe­ri­ences over mate­r­i­al prod­ucts, more present in the here and now, and hap­pi­er over­all. (More on that here.) All of this pro­vides film­mak­er Jason Sil­va the mate­r­i­al for yet anoth­er one of his “philo­soph­i­cal shots of espres­so,” The Bio­log­i­cal Advan­tage of Being Awestruck. It’s the first video above.

Find more awe in our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos.

 

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The Science of the Olympic Flame; Ancient Style Meets Modern Technology

in History, Science, Video - Science | July 26th, 2012

For all the recent scan­dal and the trau­ma of past Games, the Olympics remain a pageant of grandeur and glo­ry, and there is no greater sym­bol of its ideals than the Olympic Flame. The video above, from the Ontario Sci­ence Cen­tre, explains the evolv­ing tech­nol­o­gy that keeps the flame burn­ing from its light­ing to the clos­ing cer­e­monies. It’s a pret­ty cool sto­ry, set to a bom­bas­tic sound­track wor­thy of its sub­ject and car­ried by an ani­mat­ed run­ner who just peeled him­self off of an ancient Athen­ian vase.

Intro­duced in the 1928 Sum­mer Olympics in Ams­ter­dam, the flame revives a sym­bol from antiq­ui­ty, com­mem­o­rat­ing Prometheus’s audac­i­ty and remind­ing war­ring city states to put aside hos­til­i­ties for as long as it burned. In the mod­ern Olympics, between the light­ing and the open­ing cer­e­monies, the flame, in its styl­ized torch, makes a pil­grim­age to the host city via relay, a prac­tice that began with the 1936 games in Berlin. This year’s relay start­ed on May 19th in Land’s End in Corn­wall and ends this Fri­day, the 27th at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny in Lon­don. The torch will have trav­eled through 1,000 places in the UK, cov­ered a total of 8,000 miles (and pass­ing through 8,000 hands), mov­ing over land, air, and water, with­out once hav­ing to be relit.

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

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

in Astronomy, Video - Science | July 25th, 2012

As every­one sure­ly knows by now, Sal­ly Ride died this past Mon­day at age 61 from pan­cre­at­ic can­cer. An astro­naut, physics pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, and bene­fac­tor of young stu­dents, Ride ded­i­cat­ed her life to sci­ence edu­ca­tion. In the video above, from NASA’s Jet Propul­sion Lab­o­ra­to­ry, she describes how the shut­tle pro­gram she was so much a part of helped pro­vide evi­dence for what sci­en­tists now describe as cli­mate change.

Ride entered the space pro­gram in 1978 and made her first space flight in 1983 and her sec­ond in 1984, becom­ing the first woman to do a space­walk. As the Smithsonian’s trib­ute to Sal­ly Ride points out, what made her flight dif­fer­ent from that of the first Sovi­et woman in orbit twen­ty years ear­li­er is that she was the first in “a steady queue of women going to work in space.” She did not take the hon­or of being a “first” light­ly: after her retire­ment from NASA in 1987, she found­ed her own com­pa­ny, Sal­ly Ride Sci­ence, to moti­vate young peo­ple, espe­cial­ly young girls, to pur­sue careers in math, sci­ence, and tech­nol­o­gy.

In the video, Ride’s qui­et opti­mism shines through her dis­cus­sion of a phe­nom­e­non that can seem dire. While she faults our tech­nol­o­gy for caus­ing glob­al cli­mate shifts, she was opti­mistic that sim­i­lar appli­ca­tions of tech­nol­o­gy can help us, as she puts it above, “solve the prob­lem we cre­at­ed for our­selves.”

NASA’s web­site has a detailed trib­ute to Sal­ly Ride, includ­ing a short video in which she dis­cuss­es both of her shut­tle mis­sions.

For more infor­ma­tion about the sci­ence of cli­mate change, see this exten­sive free course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go.

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NASA’s Van Gogh Sun

in Art, Astronomy, Video - Science | July 24th, 2012

Late last year, NASA released Per­pet­u­al Ocean, a remark­able three minute, Van Gogh-like video show­ing ocean cur­rents swirling around the globe between June 2005 and Decem­ber 2007. Now, the NASA team returns with Van Gogh Sun, a clip demon­strat­ing a new tech­nique cre­at­ed by Nic­holeen Viall, a solar sci­en­tist at the God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter, who spe­cial­izes in cre­at­ing images that demys­ti­fy “the mech­a­nisms that dri­ve the tem­per­a­ture and move­ments of the sun’s atmos­phere, or coro­na.” The video above gives you the quick overview; this NASA web page (where you can also down­load the video) takes you deep­er into Vial­l’s world.

If you ask me, Per­pet­u­al Ocean cer­tain­ly calls to mind Van Gogh’s Star­ry Night. When it comes to these coro­na images, it’s Van Gogh’s Sun­flow­ers at close range.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

 

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Professor Ronald Mallett Wants to Build a Time Machine in this Century … and He’s Not Kidding

in Physics, Video - Science | July 20th, 2012

Time trav­el. Since Ein­stein for­mu­lat­ed his spe­cial the­o­ry of rel­a­tiv­i­ty, we have known that it is the­o­ret­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble, even if pop­u­lar notions of time trav­el have dete­ri­o­rat­ed slight­ly from the august H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine to… well, Hot Tub Time Machine. Which is to say that few people—lay or professional—take the con­cept very seri­ous­ly any­more. But Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut Pro­fes­sor Dr. Ronald Mal­lett still believes, and he has sought to real­ize his dream of mak­ing time trav­el pos­si­ble in this cen­tu­ry by infil­trat­ing the sci­en­tif­ic pro­fes­sion, becom­ing a respect­ed the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist, then brav­ing the ridicule and oppro­bri­um, or at least dis­agree­ment, of his col­leagues to begin work on a time machine.

In the video above, Dr. Mal­lett describes his expe­ri­ence of “risk­ing pro­fes­sion­al sui­cide,” and phys­i­cal pain, to work out his ideas. Since com­ing out, so to speak, as a pro­po­nent of time trav­el, Mal­lett pub­lished a mem­oir in 2006, Time Trav­el­er: A Scientist’s Per­son­al Mis­sion to Make Time Trav­el a Real­i­ty. It’s both a descrip­tion of his fifty years of sci­en­tif­ic work toward his project Space-time Twist­ing by Light (STL) and a mov­ing per­son­al nar­ra­tive of grow­ing up under seg­re­ga­tion, los­ing his father at a young age, and becom­ing one of the first African Amer­i­can the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cists.

Spike Lee has acquired the film rights to his mem­oir (though the project seems to be stalled), and Mal­lett has told his sto­ry on This Amer­i­can Life, CNN, and in speak­ing tours around the coun­try. Whether Mallett’s enthu­si­asm will trans­late into real­i­ty remains to be seen, but his pas­sion for Einstein’s pre­dic­tions is infec­tious and illu­mi­nat­ing.

The video comes from a new series from THNKR called EPIPHANY, a “dai­ly series invit­ing impas­sioned thought lead­ers across all dis­ci­plines to reveal the inno­v­a­tive, the improb­a­ble, and the unex­pect­ed of their worlds.” Each week is devot­ed to a new “thought leader.” Vis­it the EPIPHANY chan­nel to view the rest of Dr. Mallett’s “rev­e­la­tions.”

Anoth­er online source for infor­ma­tion, the Cas­siopeia Project, claims to “make sci­ence sim­ple.” In the video below, learn the basics of time trav­el and spe­cial rel­a­tiv­i­ty.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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