minusmanhattan:

This time-lapse video of Earth from the International Space Station is the best time-lapse I’ve ever seen.

Full screen and watch it now, it’s absolutely breathtaking. 

Images courtesy: Image Science & Analysis Laboratory,NASA Johnson Space Center, The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. This version put together by Knate Myers. 

prostheticknowledge:

Piksel Bacteria 

iOS Augmented Reality game where red pixel bacteria feed on edges, and is based on a scientific discovery from playing an Atari game:

PikselBacteria is an augmented reality game for iPhone/iPad. It focuses on the bacterium pikselum. The bacterium was discovered in 1985 in the USSR by the scientist Lars Rodkov. He first thought he found a glitch in a bootleg of river raid (an atari 2600 game). But then he discovered, that it was a bacterium living in displays. PikselBacteria are feeding on pixel-edges. They are very rare. Therefore Rodkov developed an attractor to approach and cultivate these bacteria.

Based on his research, And-or developed a game in which you may grow these short-lived bacteria with your camera.

You breed the short-lived bacteria with your camera. Give them food by taking them to an edge and start moving the camera along this edge - and the bacteria will breed instantly and take you to the edge.

Gain research points in growing the bacteria as long as you can! Your highscore shows that you are an avid researcher and observer. Press the icon in the lower right corner of the display and send a picture of the sighted bacteria to the website! Or store it in your photo album for proof.

More information, and links to download the free game, can be found on the project’s website here

(via gamefreaksnz)

Source: pikselbacteria.ch

wired: Future extraterrestrial rovers may be powered remotely by high-energy laser beams shot through miles of thin fiber-optic cables. This new technology could allow robotic probes to penetrate thick layers of ice to explore Antarctic lakes or the subterranean oceans on icy moons like Europa or Enceladus, and even power a new kind of rocket into space. “Our modest goal over the next three years is to use a 5,000-watt laser to send a cryobot through up to 250 meters of ice,” inventor and explorer Bill Stone, who presented the new concept today at NASA’s Astrobiology Science Conference in Atlanta, told Wired. “All the data show there are no show-stoppers for doing that. But from my standpoint, this is child’s play compared to what we could do.” LASERS drilling into SPACE?! YES, THAT IS CHILD’S PLAY INDEED.
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wired:

Future extraterrestrial rovers may be powered remotely by high-energy laser beams shot through miles of thin fiber-optic cables. This new technology could allow robotic probes to penetrate thick layers of ice to explore Antarctic lakes or the subterranean oceans on icy moons like Europa or Enceladus, and even power a new kind of rocket into space.

“Our modest goal over the next three years is to use a 5,000-watt laser to send a cryobot through up to 250 meters of ice,” inventor and explorer Bill Stone, who presented the new concept today at NASA’s Astrobiology Science Conference in Atlanta, told Wired. “All the data show there are no show-stoppers for doing that. But from my standpoint, this is child’s play compared to what we could do.”

LASERS drilling into SPACE?!

YES, THAT IS CHILD’S PLAY INDEED.

futurejournalismproject:

Friend Him: Isaac Newton is now Online

The University of Cambridge has  begun the process of posting its Sir Isaac Newton collection online. The digital library includes his college notebooks to later sketches, musings and drawings from his work on gravity, mathematics and optics.

Via the University of Cambridge:

The project aims to make Cambridge a digital library for the world and will move on from Newton to some of the University Library’s other world-class collections in the realms of science and faith. These include the archive of the celebrated Board of Longitude and the papers of Charles Darwin…

…Launching the website with more than 4,000 pages of its most important Newton material, the University Library will upload thousands of further pages over the next few months until almost all of its Newton collection is available to view and download anywhere in the world…

…In opening up Newton’s papers to the eyes of the world, the newly digitised archive reveals that not all his peers would have approved of his output being shared quite so openly.

Several of the manuscripts in the collection contain the handwritten line ‘not fit to be printed’, scrawled by Thomas Pellet, a Fellow of the Royal Society, who had been asked to go through Newton’s papers after his death and decide which ones should be published.

Of course, if Newton and Pellet knew then what we know now, nothing created quite remains private.

Cambridge Digital Library | Flickr

newsflick: Authorities near Penipe, Ecuador upgraded a possible eruption warning from yellow to orange on Nov. 28, 2011, as the activity of the Tungurahua volcano raised suddenly. Ecuador’s Geophysical Institute says increased activity that began Sunday is billowing columns of ash, sending superheated clouds of gas down the slopes and cascading hot rocks from the summit. (AFP)
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newsflick:

Authorities near Penipe, Ecuador upgraded a possible eruption warning from yellow to orange on Nov. 28, 2011, as the activity of the Tungurahua volcano raised suddenly. Ecuador’s Geophysical Institute says increased activity that began Sunday is billowing columns of ash, sending superheated clouds of gas down the slopes and cascading hot rocks from the summit. (AFP)