NASA on Tumblr
(via likeaphysicist)
The orbits of the moons and planets form a 4-dimensional fractal helix in spacetime.
(via staceythinx)
Check out Wired’s gallery In focus: European Southern Observatory celebrates 50-year anniversary for some amazing images from one of the world’s leading astronomical institutions.
(via abluegirl)
DAWN by Yu Yamauchi
About the project:
The artist produced DAWN while he lived in a hut on the summit of Mount Fuji five months a year for four years, representing a total of 600 days. Each photograph shown in the exhibition was captured at dawn from the exact same location. By revealing the essence of an airy mystical place, Yamauchi gives us the rare opportunity to experience the incredible spectacle of Earth waking up from the perspective of one of the planet’s most breathtaking scenic points.
Waylou has found 11 Places That Don’t Look Like They Belong on Planet Earth. Click on the images above to see where these unusual sites are located and visit the gallery for more information on these locations and more odd places.
Photo Stacks by Matt Molloy. These images were created by combining multiple photos into one, many of which were originally captured as time-lapse video.
Some of the Wonderful Terraced Pools Around the World
Why Should You Be Scientifically Literate?
Side Note: With all of these recent scientific discoveries and observations like the Higgs Boson particle being found, or the recent Venus transit that wont occur again until 2117, or fresh news of more evidence towards Dark Matter’s existence and its implications I thought it would be great timing to highlight the importance of science news, information, and being a part of the community as a citizen. Scientific literacy seems all the more important as our technologies become more advanced and scientists alongside their tools begin to find out new groundbreaking things. Provided below are my favorite excerpts from Robert M. Hazen’s ‘Why should you be scientifically literate?’. Give it a read, become aware of one of the duties we as citizens should have taken up long ago, becoming literate in the world of science.
Road to Discovery of Self & Reality
by Robert M. Hazen
Why should you care about being scientifically literate? It will help you
— Understand issues that you come across daily in news stories and government debates
— Appreciate how the natural laws of science influence your life
— Gain perspective on the intellectual climate of our time
We live in an age of constant scientific discovery — a world shaped by revolutionary new technologies. Just look at your favorite newspaper. The chances are pretty good that in the next few days you’ll see a headline about global warming, cloning, fossils in meteorites, or genetically engineered food. Other stories featuring exotic materials, medical advances, DNA evidence, and new drugs all deal with issues that directly affect your life. As a consumer, as a business professional, and as a citizen, you will have to form opinions about these and other science-based issues if you are to participate fully in modern society.
More and more, scientific and technological issues dominate national discourse, from environmental debates on ozone depletion and acid rain, to economic threats from climate change and invasive species. Understanding these debates has become as basic as reading. All citizens need to be scientifically literate to:
— appreciate the world around them — make informed personal choices
It is the responsibility of scientists and educators to provide everyone with the background knowledge to help us cope with the fast-paced changes of today and tomorrow. What is scientific literacy? Why is it important? And how can we achieve scientific literacy for all citizens?
What is scientific literacy?
Scientific literacy, quite simply, is a mix of concepts, history, and philosophy that help you understand the scientific issues of our time.
— Scientific literacy is not the specialized, jargon-filled esoteric lingo of the experts. You don’t have to be able to synthesize new drugs to appreciate the importance of medical advances, nor do you need to be able to calculate the orbit of the space station to understand its role in space exploration.
— Scientific literacy is rooted in the most general scientific principles and broad knowledge of science; the scientifically literate citizen possesses facts and vocabulary sufficient to comprehend the context of the daily news.
— If you can understand scientific issues in magazines and newspapers (if you can tackle articles about genetic engineering or the ozone hole with the same ease that you would sports, politics, or the arts) then you are scientifically literate.
Admittedly, this definition of scientific literacy does not satisfy everyone. Some academics argue that science education should expose students to mathematical rigor and complex vocabulary. They want everyone to experience this taste of “real” science. But my colleagues and I feel strongly that those who insist that everyone must understand science at a deep level are confusing two important but separate aspects of scientific knowledge. As in many other endeavors, doing science is obviously distinct from using science; and scientific literacy concerns only the latter.
Surprisingly, intense study of a particular field of science does not necessarily make one scientifically literate. Indeed, I’m often amazed at the degree to which working scientists are often woefully uninformed in scientific fields outside their own field of professional expertise. I once asked a group of twenty-four Ph.D. physicists and geologists to explain the difference between DNA and RNA — perhaps the most basic idea in modern molecular biology. I found only three colleagues who could do so, and all three of those individuals did research in areas where this knowledge was useful. And I’d probably find the same sort of discouraging result if I asked biologists to explain the difference between a semiconductor and a superconductor. The education of professional scientists is often just as narrowly focused as the education of any other group of professionals, so scientists are just as likely to be ignorant of scientific matters outside their own specialty as anyone else.
Why is scientific literacy important?
Why should we care whether our citizens are scientifically literate? Why should you care about your own understanding of science? Three different arguments might convince you why it is important:
— from civics — from aesthetics — from intellectual coherence
Civics
The first argument from civics is the one I’ve used thus far. We’re all faced with public issues whose discussion requires some scientific background, and therefore we all should have some level of scientific literacy. Our democratic government, which supports science education, sponsors basic scientific research, manages natural resources, and protects the environment, can be thwarted by a scientifically illiterate citizenry. Without an informed electorate (not to mention a scientifically informed legislature) some of the most fundamental objectives of our nation may not be served.
Aesthetics
The argument from aesthetics is less concrete, but is closely related to principles that are often made to support liberal education. According to this view, our world operates according to a few over-arching natural laws. Everything you do, everything you experience from the moment you wake up in the morning to the moment you go to bed at night, conforms to these laws of nature. Our scientific vision of the universe is exceedingly beautiful and elegant and it represents a crowning achievement of human civilization. You can share in the intellectual and aesthetic satisfaction to be gained from appreciating the unity between a boiling pot of water on a stove and the slow march of the continents, between the iridescent colors of a butterfly’s wing and the behavior of the fundamental constituents of matter. A scientifically illiterate person is effectively cut off from an immensely enriching part of life, just as surely as a person who cannot read.
Intellectual Coherence
Finally, we come to the third argument — the idea of intellectual coherence. Our society is inextricably tied to the discoveries of science — so much so that they often play a crucial role in setting the intellectual climate of an era. For example, the Copernican concept of the heliocentric universe played an important role in sweeping away the old thinking of the Middle Ages and ushering in the Age of Enlightenment. Similarly, Charles Darwin’s discovery of the mechanism of natural selection at once made understanding nature easier. And in this century the work of Freud and the development of quantum mechanics have made our natural world seem (at least superficially) less rational. In all of these cases, the general intellectual tenor of the times — what Germans call the Zeitgeist — was influenced by developments in science. How can anyone hope to appreciate the deep underlying threads of intellectual life in his or her own time without understanding the science that goes with it?
(Source: kenobi-wan-obi, via scinerds)
Claytronics
Claytronics is a future concept that combines nanoscale robotics and computer science to create individual nanometer-scale computers called claytronic atoms, or catoms, which can interact with each other to form tangible 3-D objects that a user can interact with. This idea is more broadly referred to as programmable matter.Claytronics has the potential to greatly affect many areas of daily life, such as telecommunication, human-computer interfaces, and entertainment.
Imagine a bracelet or watch that changes into something else when you take it off. Perhaps it becomes a cell phone, or laptop computer. Although this scenario may seem like science fiction, this and much more will soon become reality with a ground-breaking new technology known as claytronics.
Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and Intel Research Labs Pittsburgh are just a few years away from bringing to life a futuristic simulation system that can morph nearly any object imagined into another object with different size, shape, color and function.
The building units that make this amazing system possible include tiny micro robots called claytronic atoms, or ‘catoms’, which interact with each other. They behave like atoms in the sense that they become the basic building blocks of the objects they are programmed to form. Each component becomes part of a computerized network of objects and identifies itself based on function; for example, a catom might see itself as part of a human body. On command, millions, or even billions of catoms working together would fall in place to create, in this case, a replicate of a live person.
With claytronics, matter can be transformed into any shape for any purpose. Furniture could change shape; blank walls could grow doors or windows. Catoms could form into people that we would find difficult to discern from the real person. They would appear as an actual physical being, not a hologram.
On command, walls in our homes could light up with a radiant glow; TVs would look less like moving pictures and more like 3-D windows; and as wild as this may sound, we could actually move doors and windows to different walls. There is almost no end to the magic that this technology could create.
—Shape-Shifting Robots: Forget Nanotech; Think Claytronics (via myserendipities)
(via myserendipities)
Andrew McAfee: Are Droids Taking our Jobs?
Robots and algorithms are getting good at jobs like building cars, writing articles, translating — jobs that once required a human. So what will we humans do for work? Andrew McAfee walks through recent labor data to say: We ain’t seen nothing yet. But then he steps back to look at big history, and comes up with a surprising and even thrilling view of what comes next.
(by TEDtalksDirector)
Canon camera factories to phase out all human workers.
In an effort to cut costs, Canon Inc. has announced they are working towards full automation of digital camera production. The move is likely to be completed by 2015.
While many human jobs will be replaced by robots, a company spokesman maintains that workers won’t be made redundant and can be transferred to different work, although it’s not clear exactly what that would be.
(Source: TIME, via futurescope)
The Next Wave of Factory Robots
Robots designed to work safely alongside humans could change the way we think of manufacturing.
Full Story: Technology Review
(via futurescope)
Agricultural Robots are Already Among Us
A driverless tractor that adapts to terrain conditions and adjusts its speed and turning radius automatically could help farmers cope with skilled labor shortages. - K.U. Leuven
Mowing grass, spraying pesticides and monitoring crops. For example, instead of regularly dousing an entire apple orchard with chemicals, towed sensors find diseases or parasites with infrared sensors and cameras, and spray only the affected trees. But could a robot wholly replace a migrant worker? The idea appeals to farmers, because temporary labor can arrive one season but go elsewhere the next, leaving tons of fruits and vegetables to wither. Relying on illegal immigrants can also be a legal liability. Harvesting is the most labor-intensive activity for many crops, but even advocates say that no one has built a machine that comes close to matching the sensory motor control of humans. That is poised to change as sensors and software become cheaper and more advanced. “In the next five years or so, we’ll see robots out in the field,” says Tony Stentz, associate director of Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center. “And they’ll lose their novelty. To the farmers, it’ll just be another tractor, with no one in the cab.”
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