The most excellent Tumblr of the Sunlight Foundation
Creating a mosh pit physics simulator with gas particles as a model
Concert mosh pits are a niche phenomenon even among humans, but researchers at Cornell have found that their movement can be modeled using parameters based on the collision of gas particles.
Heroes of Science Action Figures
DeviantART member datazoid, otherwise known as Russel Gawthorpe, created this collection of science action figures photographically. They are based on Star Trek action figures with details added digitally. Too bad they aren’t available to buy! Datazoid admits there are many other scientists who deserve to be included. He limited them to 20th-century non-medical figures to keep the number manageable.
Quantum Physics Experiment Shows Light Behaving as a Wave and a Particle Simultaneously
Damn you, quantum physics! Just as we got used to the mind-boggling fact that light can act as either a wave OR as a particle, a new quantum physics experiment has shown that it can act like a wave AND a particle at the same time.
these are a few photos from an awesome collection of visualizations of dark matter made by Ralf Kaehler and others at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the visualization facilities at KIPAC, the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology.
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/~kaehler/homepage/visualizations/dark-matter.html
The Elements According to Relative Abundance
Roughly, the size of an element’s own niche is proportioned to its abundance on Earth’s surface, and in addition, certain chemical similarities.
Beeswax as Dental Filling on a Neolithic Human Tooth
Evidence of prehistoric dentistry has been limited to a few cases, the most ancient dating back to the Neolithic. Here we report a 6500-year-old human mandible from Slovenia whose left canine crown bears the traces of a filling with beeswax. The use of different analytical techniques, including synchrotron radiation computed micro-tomography (micro-CT), Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating, Infrared (IR) Spectroscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), has shown that the exposed area of dentine resulting from occlusal wear and the upper part of a vertical crack affecting enamel and dentin tissues were filled with beeswax shortly before or after the individual’s death. If the filling was done when the person was still alive, the intervention was likely aimed to relieve tooth sensitivity derived from either exposed dentine and/or the pain resulting from chewing on a cracked tooth: this would provide the earliest known direct evidence of therapeutic-palliative dental filling.
This 1939 Map of Physics Is an Old-School Mashup of Science and Geography
The journey through Physics can be a treacherous one filled with many setbacks. Thankfully, an enterprising soul decided to sit down in 1939 and draw up a map. The Map of Physics is a “a brief historical outline of the subject as will be of interest to physicists, students, laymen at large,” which organizes the field’s many branches into rivers and tributaries.
Real-time Satellites in Google Earth
This collection by Analytic Graphics Inc. shows real-time positions of 13,000 satellites around the Earth in Google Earth.
Dark matter scaffolding of universe detected for the first time
Scientists have, for the first time, directly detected part of the invisible dark matter skeleton of the universe, where more than half of all matter is believed to reside.The discovery, led by a University of Michigan physics researcher, confirms a key prediction in the prevailing theory of how the universe’s current web-like structure evolved.
Logic blooms with new 11-set Venn diagram
A new rose has blossomed in the garden of mathematics: a flowery Venn diagram for 11 sets of objects.
Why Do Birds Live Longer Than Turtles?
Conventional wisdom in longevity studies used to be that the life span of a creature was roughly proportional to its body mass and heart rate—the big, slow elephant outlives the quick, small mouse. New research, however, presents a more complicated picture. Bats and birds, for instance, are small but tend to live longer than many larger creatures.
A magnetic field visualized
