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A gorgeous photograph by astrophotographer Dave Lane shows the Milky Way galaxy over Devils Tower in Wyoming. The photograph was featured recently as NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, complete with an annotated version highlighting some of the nebulas in the photograph.
photos via Dave Lane
In the TED-Ed lesson “How Do the Lungs Work?,” beautifully animated by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club and scored by Dave Feddock, educator Emma Bryce explains how the body uses a complex system to transport oxygen triggered solely through the simple act of breathing.
Breathing, in other words, keeps the body alive. So, how do we accomplish this crucial and complex task without even thinking about it? The answer lies in our body’s respiratory system. Like any machinery, it consists of specialized components, and requires a trigger to start functioning. Here, the components are the structures and tissues making up the lungs, as well as the various other respiratory organs connected to them. And to get this machine moving, we need the autonomic nervous system, our brain’s unconscious control center for the vital functions.
“A Brief History of Graphics” is a five-part video series by Stuart Brown of XboxAhoy that examines the history of graphics in video games from pixels to polygons and beyond.
Pixel Pioneers: A Brief History of Graphics, Part One
Sprite Supreme: A Brief History of Graphics, Part Two
Polygon Realm: A Brief History of Graphics, Part Three
Voodoo Bloom: A Brief History of Graphics, Part Four
Future Crisis: A Brief History of Graphics, Part Five
via Digg
A look at the sound design of Interstellar, including some of the cool rigs they built to record sounds for the movie, including a truck driving through a corn field, sand hitting the outside of a car, and robots walking.
(via devour)
Geneva-based artist Chaotic Atmospheres imagines the geometric insect residents of a “polygonic planet” in his fantastic digital art series Biotop from Polygonia. He has created more than 100 insects for the series, divided into various terrestrial and winged species and subspecies. The series is available in its entirety on the digital art collecting site NeonMob.
images by Chaotic Atmospheres
via Ian Brooks
Workers clear a mosaic depicting the nine Muses
The Zeugma excavation project conducted by Oxford Archaeology and supported byPackhard Humanities Institute and the Ministry of Culture of Turkey has recently unearthed three ancient Greek mosaics in the Turkish city of Zeugma. Zeugma had received some press and support in 2000 after flooding caused by construction began to bury and damage artifacts in the region.
The mosaics, created in the 2nd century BC, are constructed of boldly colored glass and are being covered for protection until excavation is complete. The head of the project, Professor Kutalmis Görkay, recently gave the Hurriyet Daily News more details about the plan for the future of the excavation.
From now on, we will work on restoration and conservation. We plan to establish a temporary roof for long-term protection. We estimate that the ancient city has 2,000-3,000 houses. Twenty-five of them remain under water. Excavations will be finished in the Muzalar House next year.
The muse Thalia
Ocean and Tithys
The Centro di Conservazione Archeologica created this video about the flooding and excavation projects at Zeugma.
photos via Greek Reporter
via Greek Reporter
If we go by the words of the biggest chocolate-maker, then we are in serious trouble. If you like chocolate, that is.
Chocolate deficits, whereby farmers produce less cocoa than the world eats, are becoming the norm. Already, we are in the midst of what could be the longest streak of consecutive chocolate deficits in more than 50 years. It also looks like deficits aren’t just carrying over from year-to-year—the industry expects them to grow. Last year, the world ate roughly 70,000 metric tons more cocoa than it produced. By 2020, the two chocolate-makers warn that that number could swell to 1 million metric tons, a more than 14-fold increase; by 2030, they think the deficit could reach 2 million metric tons.
The Great War is a video documentary series on YouTube that covers World War I. The series will air each week over the next four years with each 6-10 minute episode covering a week’s worth of the war 100 years after it happened.
Even though 200,000 people have (supposedly) signed up as potential volunteers on a one-way trip to Mars, there are still frightfully few details about how the mission will be accomplished. From the article:
[Astronaut Chris Hadfield] says that Mars One fails at even the most basic starting point of any manned space mission: If there are no specifications for the craft that will carry the crew, if you don’t know the very dimensions of the capsule they will be traveling in, you can’t begin to select the people who will be living and working inside of it. “I really counsel every single one of the people who is interested in Mars One, whenever they ask me about it, to start asking the hard questions now. I want to see the technical specifications of the vehicle that is orbiting Earth. I want to know: How does a space suit on Mars work? Show me how it is pressurized, and how it is cooled. What’s the glove design? None of that stuff can be bought off the rack. It does not exist. You can’t just go to SpaceMart and buy those things.”
The author concludes that the Mars One Project is “…at best, an amazingly hubristic fantasy: an absolute faith in the free market, in technology, in the media, in money, to be able to somehow, magically, do what thousands of highly qualified people in government agencies have so far not yet been able to do over decades of diligently trying, making slow headway through individually hard-won breakthroughs, working in relative anonymity pursuing their life’s work.”
This weekend, Germany will observe the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) began erecting the barrier in 1961, building on existing checkpoints, and fortified it over nearly 30 years.
In Focus has a photo retrospective of the Berlin Wall, 25 years after it fell. This is one of the most iconic photos, depicting East German border guard Conrad Schumann leaping over the Wall during the early days of construction, when it was only barbed wire.
After the fall of the Wall he said, “Only since 9 November 1989 [the date of the fall] have I felt truly free.” (via InFocus)