January 25, 2013
There’s No Such Thing as Everlasting Love (According to Science)

It is what she calls a “micro-moment of positivity resonance.” She means that love is a connection, characterized by a flood of positive emotions, which you share with another person—any other person—whom you happen to connect with in the course of your day. You can experience these micro-moments with your romantic partner, child, or close friend. But you can also fall in love, however momentarily, with less likely candidates, like a stranger on the street, a colleague at work, or an attendant at a grocery store. Louis Armstrong put it best in “It’s a Wonderful World” when he sang, “I see friends shaking hands, sayin ‘how do you do?’ / They’re really sayin’, ‘I love you.’”
Read more. [Image: Paramount Pictures]

There’s No Such Thing as Everlasting Love (According to Science)

It is what she calls a “micro-moment of positivity resonance.” She means that love is a connection, characterized by a flood of positive emotions, which you share with another person—any other person—whom you happen to connect with in the course of your day. You can experience these micro-moments with your romantic partner, child, or close friend. But you can also fall in love, however momentarily, with less likely candidates, like a stranger on the street, a colleague at work, or an attendant at a grocery store. Louis Armstrong put it best in “It’s a Wonderful World” when he sang, “I see friends shaking hands, sayin ‘how do you do?’ / They’re really sayin’, ‘I love you.’”

Read more. [Image: Paramount Pictures]

January 24, 2013

theatlanticvideo:

A Mesmerizing Time-Lapse of Stars Over the Eureka Valley Sand Dunes

“Armed only with boxed wine, firewood, and our DSLRs,” the filmmakers at Sunchaser Pictures trekked through Death Valley National Park to observe the Geminid meteor shower on December 13.

January 24, 2013

The Never-Before-Told Story of the World’s First Computer Art (It’s a Sexy Dame)

During a time when computing power was so scarce that it required a government-defense budget to finance it, a young man used a $238 million military computer, the largest such machine ever built, to render an image of a curvy woman on a glowing cathode ray tube screen. The year was 1956, and the creation was a landmark moment in computer graphics and cultural history that has gone unnoticed until now.

Using equipment designed to guard against the apocalypse, a pin-up girl had been drawn. 

She was quite probably the first human likeness to ever appear on a computer screen. 

Read more. [Images: Lawrence A. Tipton]

January 23, 2013

When We Blew Up Arizona to Simulate the Moon

Thanks to a well-timed tip from landscape blogger Alex Trevi of PrunedVenue made a detour on our exit out of Flagstaff, Arizona, to visit the old black cinder fields of an extinct volcano—where, incredibly, NASA and its Apollo astronauts once practiced their, at the time, forthcoming landing on the moon.

Read more. [Image: Venue]

3:58pm
  
Filed under: Moon Astronomy Science technology 
January 14, 2013
Why You Can’t Cry in Space

Astronauts can, certainly, tear up — they’re human, after all. But in zero gravity, the tears themselves can’t flow downward in the way they do on Earth. The moisture generated has nowhere to go. Tears, Feustel put it, “don’t fall off of your eye … they kind of stay there.” NASA spacewalk officer Allison Bollinger, who oversaw Feustel’s EVA, confirmed this assessment. “They actually kind of conglomerate around your eyeball,” she said. 
Read more. [Image: Reuters]

Why You Can’t Cry in Space

Astronauts can, certainly, tear up — they’re human, after all. But in zero gravity, the tears themselves can’t flow downward in the way they do on Earth. The moisture generated has nowhere to go. Tears, Feustel put it, “don’t fall off of your eye … they kind of stay there.” NASA spacewalk officer Allison Bollinger, who oversaw Feustel’s EVA, confirmed this assessment. “They actually kind of conglomerate around your eyeball,” she said

Read more. [Image: Reuters]

2:35pm
  
Filed under: Space Astronomy Science Health 
January 10, 2013

theatlanticvideo:

The Perfect Shot: A Man, a Moon, and a Thin Piece of Rope

Moonwalk by Bryan Smith is part of a National Geographic Channel series called The Man Who Can Fly. This particular scene features Dean Potter, a record-breaking climber who lives in Yosemite, walking on a highline between two enormous granite rocks. 

January 8, 2013

As Seen From Space: Photos of the Australian Wildfires

[Images: Chris Hadfield/NASA]

January 3, 2013

A Martian Dream: Here’s What the Red Planet Would Look Like With Earth-Like Oceans and Life

[Images: Kevin Gill]

12:30pm
  
Filed under: Space Science Mars Astronomy 
December 18, 2012

GIFs of Asteroid Toutatis, as It Passed by Earth Last Week

Last week an asteroid known as 4179 Toutatis passed by Earth at a relatively close distance, as far as these things go. As it tumbled in space, getting as near as 4.3 million miles or 18 times the distance from us to the moon, NASA’s 230-foot-wide Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, California, captured radar data that showed the giant rock’s spin. NASA scientists then collected that data into a short film, which we present to you as Tumbling Asteroid GIFs, for your enjoyment and/or terror.

[Images: NASA]

12:04pm
  
Filed under: GIFs Astronomy Science 
December 13, 2012

theatlanticvideo:

NASA Patiently Explains Why the Mayan Apocalypse Is *Definitely* Not Happening

“December 22, 2012. If you’re watching this video, it means one thing: the world didn’t end yesterday,” this video begins. Yes, NASA is so confident the world won’t end that they released the video early. Pretty sassy for a bunch of earnest scientists. 

5:42pm
  
Filed under: Video NASA Science Mayan 
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