Real time footage of aurora in Tromso, Norway
Photographer Alistair Chapman filmed this incredible footage of the Aurora Borealis in real-time during the peak of the Solar Storm on January 24th. This is not time-lapse, this is how the Northern Lights really can dance and move across the sky. The colours are true as well. He even captured a shooting star at 02:30.
Via The Dark Side of the Force
The Sun’s still blasting out flares… BIG ones
On January 27, 2012, the Sun erupted in the biggest flare of the year so far, an X2-class. It was twice the power of the flare earlier in the week, but on the edge of the Sun so it wasn’t aimed at us. We’re in no danger, but it makes for a pretty awesome light show.
Watch the video here.
Credit: NASA/SDO/Helioviewer.org
An ad campaign using intricately cut leaves, indicating their ability to absorb carbon dioxide.
legos in “space” via the guardian, via @timoreilly
.. one of these days… one of these is going to come back with some pretty unexplainable pictures…
Via noosphere
Kepler’s Transiting Multiple-Planet Systems
This video provides an overhead view of the multi-planet star systems discovered by the Kepler mission. According to NASA, all the planets — with the exception of the ones labeled in grey — have been officially confirmed.
This video also serves as an good introduction to an exoplanet-hunting technique you may not be familiar with. First, check out the incredible variation in the planets’ orbital periods (how long it takes each planet to make one complete trip around its sun). Since Kepler detects candidate planets by measuring dips in detectable light as one passes in front of — or “transits” — a distant star, having more than one planet in any given star system can give rise to some pretty crazy measurements.
Planetary Systems video by Dan Fabrycky via NASA
Via like a physicist
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Poland Signs ACTA
Poland’s ambassador to Japan, Jadwiga Rodowicz-Czechowska, signed the controversial ACTA in Tokyo earlier today despite huge demonstrations in Warsaw Street and the hacking of governmental websites since the weekend.
Poland’s Prime Minister Tusk insisted that his government would not “succumb to blackmail”. But over 10,000 have taken the streets Wednesday across the nation to protest against censorship.
Later today, hundreds of people took to the streets of the eastern city of Lublin to express their anger over the treaty.
Young people held banners with slogans such as “no to censorship” and “a free internet”.
Demonstrators fear that Acta, which is to be ratified by the European Union, will be as pernicious as Sopa, the Stop Online Privacy Act which was withdrawn by the White House and the US Senate after a mass protest by hundreds of major user-generated content websites.
NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity celebrates 8 years on Mars! Not bad for something that was supposed to only last a few months.
Science did that. And some damn fine engineering.
(Source: brooklynmutt)
Coronal aurora over Fairbanks, Alaska
Time-lapse movie of the coronal aurora appeared over Fairbanks, Alaska. Red aurora was also captured. (1:44 - 2:11am AKST, January 22, 2012)
Via The Dark Side of the Force
How wings really work
It’s one of the most tenacious myths in physics and it frustrates aerodynamicists the world over. Now, University of Cambridge’s Professor Holger Babinsky has created a 1-minute video that he hopes will finally lay to rest a commonly used yet misleading explanation of how wings lift.
“A wing lifts when the air pressure above it is lowered. It’s often said that this happens because the airflow moving over the top, curved surface has a longer distance to travel and needs to go faster to have the same transit time as the air travelling along the lower, flat surface. But this is wrong,” he explained. “I don’t know when the explanation first surfaced but it’s been around for decades. You find it taught in textbooks, explained on television and even described in aircraft manuals for pilots. In the worst case, it can lead to a fundamental misunderstanding of some of the most important principles of aerodynamics.”
To show that this common explanation is wrong, Babinsky filmed pulses of smoke flowing around an aerofoil (the shape of a wing in cross-section). When the video is paused, it’s clear that the transit times above and below the wing are not equal: the air moves faster over the top surface and has already gone past the end of the wing by the time the flow below the aerofoil reaches the end of the lower surface.
… ok now with sound waves… move it!
Via like a physicist
Whoa.
The SOHO satellite is being inundated with so much radiation right now that it looks like it’s in a snowstorm. Cursed coronal mass ejection!
(via Spaceweather.com)
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