Quadrillion

Photo

Fri, 24 May 2013 17:29:16 -0400

theclearlydope: I want to go through my Facebook timeline and...

Fri, 24 May 2013 16:34:25 -0400

I want to go through my Facebook timeline and do this with every duck face photo but I fear that my Photoshop would catch on fire.

ratsoff:

How to deal with Duck Face: Just Add Spaghetti

(via robotindisguise.)

Photo

Fri, 24 May 2013 15:38:54 -0400

lepostitjaune: HARRY BERTOIA Untitled (cloud) 1955 | via

Fri, 24 May 2013 14:44:05 -0400

lepostitjaune:

HARRY BERTOIA Untitled (cloud) 1955 | via

-vvaste: Magical Arctic (by Mathias Kellermann (as Titus1st))

Fri, 24 May 2013 13:48:21 -0400

-vvaste:

Magical Arctic (by Mathias Kellermann (as Titus1st))

Photo

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:53:07 -0400

danielpetzold: touch the sky on Flickr.

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:57:53 -0400

danielpetzold:

touch the sky on Flickr.

andrewharlow: Garth WeiserThe gutter is so nasty, 2013Copper...

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:02:54 -0400

andrewharlow:

Garth Weiser
The gutter is so nasty, 2013
Copper leaf, acrylic, and dimensional fabric paint on canvas

allthingseurope: Prague’s Roofs (by DoctorNo_34)

Fri, 24 May 2013 10:07:34 -0400

allthingseurope:

Prague’s Roofs (by DoctorNo_34)

eliego: untitled by disconnecta on Flickr.

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:12:23 -0400

eliego:

untitled by disconnecta on Flickr.

wandrlust: New Haven Parking Garage, Paul Rudolph, New Haven,...

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:17:15 -0400

wandrlust:

New Haven Parking Garage, Paul Rudolph, New Haven, CT, 1962 — Ezra Stoller

the-science-llama: Super Moon— June 23, 2013Be sure to look out...

Fri, 24 May 2013 07:21:57 -0400

the-science-llama:

Super Moon
— June 23, 2013

Be sure to look out for the Moon these next few months as it approaches Perigee, because the full moons during these times will appear exceptionally large. The Moon will be at its Perigee, or closest approach, in July 23 and it will reach full moon only a few minutes after it passes this point in its orbit.

These ‘super moons’ not only appear larger because they are physically closer but, combined with a full moon, the mind can play tricks on you to think they are much larger. This phenomena is called the Moon Illusion. Try to catch these full moons as they rise/set because the illusion works when there is an object in the foreground, like a tree, building or mountains.

Stargazing Events for 2013

arpeggia: Diana Thater - From China to Shilo, Part 1, 1995

Fri, 24 May 2013 06:26:57 -0400

arpeggia:

Diana Thater - From China to Shilo, Part 1, 1995

areaofinterest: Michael Chase

Fri, 24 May 2013 05:31:19 -0400

areaofinterest:

Michael Chase

ethertune: to snowy area (By Takechan-400)

Fri, 24 May 2013 04:36:16 -0400

ethertune:

to snowy area (By Takechan-400)

diagramism: gods, pen, pencil and watercolour on paper by...

Fri, 24 May 2013 03:41:21 -0400

diagramism:

gods,
pen, pencil and watercolour on paper

by diagramism,

nevver: Michał Karcz

Fri, 24 May 2013 02:45:53 -0400

nevver:

Michał Karcz

subtilitas: Andrew Burns - Fugitive structure/Crescent house at...

Fri, 24 May 2013 01:50:47 -0400

subtilitas:

Andrew Burns - Fugitive structure/Crescent house at SCAF, Sydney 2012. photos (C) Brett Boardman.

thenewenlightenmentage: What is a Magnetar? A magnetar is a...

Fri, 24 May 2013 00:55:22 -0400

thenewenlightenmentage:

What is a Magnetar?

A magnetar is a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field, the decay of which powers the emission of high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma rays.¹

History

On March 5, 1979, several months after dropping probes into the toxic atmosphere of Venus, two Soviet spacecraft, Venera 11 and 12, were drifting through the inner solar system on an elliptical orbit. It had been an uneventful cruise. The radiation readings on board both probes hovered around a nominal 100 counts per second. But at 10:51AM EST, a pulse of gamma radiation hit them. Within a fraction of a millisecond, the radiation level shot above 200,000 counts per second and quickly went off scale.

Eleven seconds later gamma rays swamped the NASA space probe Helios 2, also orbiting the sun. A plane wave front of high-energy radiation was evidently sweeping through the solar system. It soon reached Venus and saturated the Pioneer Venus Orbiter’s detector. Within seconds the gamma rays reached Earth. They flooded detectors on three U.S. Department of Defense Vela satellites, the Soviet Prognoz 7 satellite, and the Einstein Observatory. Finally, on its way out of the solar system, the wave also blitzed the International Sun-Earth Explorer.

The pulse of highly energetic, or “hard,” gamma rays was 100 times as intense as any previous burst of gamma rays detected from beyond the solar system, and it lasted just two tenths of a second. At the time, nobody noticed; life continued calmly beneath our planet’s protective atmosphere. Fortunately, all 10 spacecraft survived the trauma without permanent damage. The hard pulse was followed by a fainter glow of lower-energy, or “soft,” gamma rays, as well as x-rays, which steadily faded over the subsequent three minutes. As it faded away, the signal oscillated gently, with a period of eight seconds. Fourteen and a half hours later, at 1:17AM on March 6, another, fainter burst of x-rays came from the same spot on the sky. Over the ensuing four years, Evgeny P. Mazets of the Ioffe Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia, and his collaborators detected 16 bursts coming from the same direction. They varied in intensity, but all were fainter and shorter than the March 5 burst.

Astronomers had never seen anything like this. For want of a better idea, they initially listed these bursts in catalogues alongside the better-known gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), even though they clearly differed in several ways. In the mid-1980s Kevin C. Hurley of the University of California at Berkeley realized that similar outbursts were coming from two other areas of the sky. Evidently these sources were all repeating unlike GRBs, which are one-shot events [see “The Brightest Explosions in the Universe,” by Neil Gehrels, Luigi Piro and Peter J. T. Leonard; Scientific American, December 2002]. At a July 1986 meeting in Toulouse, France, astronomers agreed on the approximate locations of the three sources and dubbed them “soft gamma repeaters” (SGRs). The alphabet soup of astronomy had gained a new ingredient.

Another seven years passed before two of us (Duncan and Thompson) devised an explanation for these strange objects, and only in 1998 did one of us (Kouveliotou) and her team find remains of a star that exploded 5,000 years ago. Unless this overlap was pure coincidence, it put the source 1,000 times as far away as theorists had thought—and thus made it a million times brighter than the Eddington limit. In 0.2 second the March 1979 event released as much energy as the sun radiates in roughly 10,000 years, and it concentrated that energy in gamma rays rather than spreading it across the electromagnetic spectrum.²

About 26 magnetars are known (see here).

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar

2 http://solomon.as.utexas.edu/~duncan/sciam.pdf

laughingsquid: Jack Black & Kyle Gass of Tenacious D Report...

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:05:10 -0400

laughingsquid:

Jack Black & Kyle Gass of Tenacious D Report the Morning Weather in New Zealand