A Welsh View

Video: DNA Replication

A cool animation showing how DNA replicates.

1 Billion Pixel Image of the Centre of the Milky Way

A huge zoomable 1 billion pixel image of the centre of the Milky Way. The image consists of 1200 individual images and 200 hours total exposure time.

New Hubble Telescope Photos

A selection of stunning photos taken with the newly installed camera in the Hubble Telescope.

Video: Vortex Smoke Ring Collision

Very cool!

A stunning photograph of a volcano erupting on Krakatoa taken from a neighbouring island. Read more.

NASA has released some photos of a volcano erupting in Japan. The images were captured by the crew of the International Space Station 220 miles above a remote Russian island in the North Pacific.

26 photos of Earth from space featuring disasters, natural wonders, cities and landscapes

Great photos as usual from The Big Picture.

The most amazing photo you'll see today.

150 stunning photos taken by the Hubble telescope. It's a pity they are low quality.

This satellite footage of the Earth, if real, appears to show it either 'turning transparent' or reflecting light like a mirror.

Taken from the YouTube post:

Eddy Current Tubes -- Drop the Magnets down the tube. An eddy current is set up in a conductor in response to a changing magnetic field. Lenz's law predicts that the current moves in such a way as to create a magnetic field opposing the change; to do this in a conductor, electrons swirl in a plane perpendicular to the changing magnetic field.

Because the magnetic fields of the eddy currents oppose the magnetic field of the falling magnet; there is attraction between the two fields. Energy is converted into heat. This principle is used in damping the oscillation of the lever arm of mechanical balances.

[via @mattcutts]

According to scienticians, this faint dot is the farthest thing we've ever seen. The light from the star started it's journey 630 million years after the Big Bang! I would try and explain how the scientists worked it out but it's way too complicated to understand. If you're feeling clever, you can read more at Sky and Telescope.

24 stunning photos taken by Cassini courtesy of The Big Picture.

13 things that science cannot explain including the Placebo Effect, the Kuiper Cliff and the Wow Signal. [via]

For the serious cow-tipper who wants to get it right, here's a scientician's guide.

A small bat was spotted hitching a lift on the space shuttle that launched on Sunday.

NASA had hoped the bat would fly away before the spacecraft's Sunday evening liftoff, but photos from the launch show the bat holding on for dear life.

LiveScience has more.

VBS.TV has a three part documentary about the Body Farm field laboratory in Knoxville, TN.

A body farm is a research facility where human decomposition after death can be scientifically studied in a variety of settings. The body farm in Knoxville has been in operation since 1981 and over 700 bodies have entered the facility (Wikipedia entry).

The creator of the body farm, William Bass, wrote a book back in 2004 which I've read and is very interesting (if you're into that kind of thing).

Scientists have conducted a study about how gut instinct works and it appears that it isn't purely based on guesswork but when making a decision we access memories that we aren't even aware we have.

One of the test conducted during the study was related to recognising images. The test found that people were more accurate in selecting an image when they had been distracted than when they had paid full attention. They also were more accurate when they claimed to be guessing than when they registered some familiarity for the image.

Read more at LiveScience.

Analysis of gravity in Super Mario Bros. When Mario falls off an 8.6m ledge in Super Mario 2, he experiences a g-force of 11. That's enough to cause someone blackout. [via]

I never get tired of viewing images like these.

The object in these photos released by NASA in 2004 sure look like a plank of wood but as the Daily Mail points out, we humans are hardwired to recognise familiar objects as a survival technique.

It is more likely to be a case of pareidolia - where a random stimulus is perceived as having significance, be it a symbol seen in a cloud or a face on a piece of toast.

Whether it's a plank or wood or not, it's great material for conspiracy theorists.

Related article

Apparently, this video show the toolbag that was lost outside the Space Station last week.

[via]

Footage from Colorado showing a tornado forming from a waterspout. [via]

If you were lucky enough to have witnessed it, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the world was about to end. [Thanks Adam]

A spacewalking astronaut accidentally let go of her tool bag after a grease gun inside it burst, and watched as the kit floated away.

Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper and Stephen Bowen were taking part in the first of four spacewalks of the Space Shuttle Endeavour's current mission to the International Space Station.

Pictured above is the first image ever taken of the Earth from the Moon. The image was taken in 1966 by Lunar Orbiter 1, about two years before the Apollo 8 crew took this more famous colour photo. [via]

The stats and speeds involved are mind-blowing.

The European Southern Observatory has released a photograph of deep space that shows clusters of stars so old that they're seen "as they were when the universe was only two billion years old".

The stars and galaxies are located in the U-band - the boundary between visible light and ultraviolet.

Due to the Earth's atmosphere, photos of objects of this distance are about the furthest that ground-based telescopes can take. [via]

Pictured above is the first American astronaut to walk in space: Edward White. White is seen floating outside the Gemini 4 capsule in 1965.

That's if you believe it's true, of course.

Scientists have determined the mass of the largest things that could exist in our universe - 50 billion suns!

Based on this self-regulating maximum rate, scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Massachusetts, and the European Southern Observatory, Chile, have calculated an upper limit for these mega-mammoth masses. Fifty billion suns, that's 100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 kg, otherwise known as "ridiculously stupidly big" and triple the size of the largest observed black hole, OJ 287.

Nine years after its discovery in the badlands of southeastern Alberta, Canada, a 75-million-year-old fossil of a pregnant turtle has finally made its public debut.

At 40 centimetres long, its turtle shape is still evident and most of its skeleton is complete but its shell is crushed. The pregnant fossil was found in 1999. Six years later, a fossilized nest of eggs was found from the same species about 50 kilometres away.

Both specimens belong to an extinct turtle called Adocus, a large river turtle that lived with the dinosaurs and resembles today's slider and cooter turtles.

"It is the first fossil of a pregnant turtle found in the world and it's only the second fossil of an animal found in the world that's pregnant," explained Darla Zelenitsky, a University of Calgary scientist whose expertise is fossil nest sites.

View a video here.

From equipment installed backwards to problems with the metric system, NASA's failures can be as fascinating as its successes. Wired discusses some of the more embarrasing mistakes.

The Big Picture at the Boston Globe has posted some stunning photos of Jupiter and its moons. [via]

Popular Mechanics has obtained some exclusive photos of the B-2 Stealth Bomber that crashed in Guam back in February. It's amazing to think that there's over a billion dollars worth of plane sat smouldering on a runway.

This site superimposes the real-time location of the International Space Station on Google Maps. [via]

This is one of the first images captured by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander which landed on the red planet yesterday. It touched down in an arctic region called Vastitas Borealis, at 68 degrees north latitude, 234 degrees east longitude.

The flat landscape is strewn with tiny pebbles and shows polygonal cracking, a pattern seen widely in Martian high latitudes and also observed in permafrost terrains on Earth. The polygonal cracking is believed to have resulted from seasonal freezing and thawing of surface ice.

There's another image here. [via]

A 50-year-study nstudy of 2,000 people born minutes apart has proved what may people have thought for a long time - astrology is rubbish!

The babies were originally recruited as part of a medical study begun in London in 1958 into how the circumstances of birth can affect future health. More than 2,000 babies born in early March that year were registered and their development monitored at regular intervals.

Researchers looked at more than 100 different characteristics, including occupation, anxiety levels, marital status, aggressiveness, sociability, IQ levels and ability in art, sport, mathematics and reading - all of which astrologers claim can be gauged from birth charts.

The scientists failed to find any evidence of similarities between the "time twins", however. They reported in the current issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies: "The test conditions could hardly have been more conducive to success . . . but the results are uniformly negative."

A 19-year-old woman who was appointed as a full-time faculty Professor at Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea has been recognised as the world's youngest professor.

Alia Sabur was enrolled at a university at age 10 and played clarinet with a symphony orchestra at 11.

Sabur was three days shy of her 19th birthday in February when she became a professor at Konkuk University, in Seoul. The previous record was held by a student of physicist Isaac Newton, Colin Maclaurin, who set the mark in 1717.

"He's in every calculus textbook there is," she said. "When I found out about it, I thought, 'I can't replace him.' But it's been 300 years and someone had to replace him, so why not me?"

She will be doing some classroom instruction, but mostly will focus on research into developing nanotubes for use as cellular probes, which could help discover cures for diseases such as cancer, she said.

Down the road, she would like to develop a noninvasive blood-glucose meter for people with diabetes, she said. Her mother, Julia, and her father, Mark, both have diabetes.

Sabur said classroom teaching in Seoul will be challenging because she doesn't speak Korean. "I can speak math and music," she said.

Link

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a computer-generated picture that shows Earth surrounded by thousands and perhaps millions of pieces of space junk.

ESA says the number of objects in Earth's atmosphere has risen steadily increasing by 200 per year on average and that there are now 600 working satellites.

Collisions, explosions and lost or discarded material from space flights and rockets has resulted in the atmosphere resembling a junk yard with potentially millions of pieces of metal travelling in permanent orbit 20,000 miles above the Earth.

Link

A BMW forum has posted a great set of photos showing the Space Shuttle gets assembled and makes its way to the launch pad. [via]

Japanese scientists and origami masters are hoping to launch a paper airplane from space and learn from its trip back to Earth.

Shinji Suzuki, a professor at Tokyo University's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, believes that a successful flight from space by an origami plane could have far-reaching implications for the design of re-entry vehicles or space probes for upper atmospheric exploration.

In a test outside Tokyo in early February, a prototype about 2.8 inches long and 2 inches wide survived Mach 7 speeds and broiling temperatures up to 446 degrees Fahrenheit in a hypersonic wind tunnel — conditions meant to approximate what the plane would face entering Earth's atmosphere.

Having survived the 12-second test with no major damage or burns, the tiny plane theoretically could get back to Earth because re-entry from outer space involves passing through several layers that last only a few seconds each, said Osamu Imamura, a scientist who works with Suzuki.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, accepted it Wednesday for three years of feasibility studies and promised up to $300,000 in funding per year.

[via]

Seven 100-million-year-old feathers have been found perfectly preserved in amber in western France.

The feathers have features of both feather-like fibers found with some two-legged dinosaurs known as theropods and of modern bird feathers and they could fill in a key gap in the puzzle of how dinosaurs gave rise to birds.

The find provides a clear example "of the passage between primitive filamentous down and a modern feather," said team member Didier Néraudeau of the University of Rennes in France.

The study team isn't sure yet whether the feathers belonged to a dino or a bird.

But fossil teeth from two dino families thought to have been feathered were excavated from rocks just above the layer that contained the amber, Perrichot said.

"It is entirely plausible that the feathers come from a dinosaur rather than from a bird," he said.

Link

This photograph of the Earth and Moon was taken by the HiRISE telescope from a distance of 142 million kilometres. The HiRISE camera is the most powerful telescope to have left Earth orbit. [via]

"On May 4th, 2007, we asked internet users to help isolate Michael Jackson's white glove in all 10,060 frames of his nationally televised landmark performance of Billy Jean. 72 hours later 125,000 gloves had been located."

One of the results of this project is the Giant White Glove video in which Michael Jackson's glove has been enlarged. For most of the video it does actually look like he is wearing a giant glove. Read more about the project here.

Wired has posted 10 amazing chemistry videos.

Erupting Volcano on Krakatoa

A stunning photograph of a volcano erupting on Krakatoa taken from a neighbouring island. Read more.

Erupting Volcano Viewed Space

NASA has released some photos of a volcano erupting in Japan. The images were captured by the crew of the International Space Station 220 miles above a remote Russian island in the North Pacific.

Time To Run?

26 Outstanding Photos Of Earth From Space

26 photos of Earth from space featuring disasters, natural wonders, cities and landscapes

Hubble's Final Servicing Mission

Great photos as usual from The Big Picture.

STS-125 Atlantis Solar Transit

The most amazing photo you'll see today.

150 Hubble Photos

150 stunning photos taken by the Hubble telescope. It's a pity they are low quality.

Video: Earth Viewed From A Satellite Appears 'Transparent'

This satellite footage of the Earth, if real, appears to show it either 'turning transparent' or reflecting light like a mirror.

Video: Eddy Current Tubes

Taken from the YouTube post:

Eddy Current Tubes -- Drop the Magnets down the tube. An eddy current is set up in a conductor in response to a changing magnetic field. Lenz's law predicts that the current moves in such a way as to create a magnetic field opposing the change; to do this in a conductor, electrons swirl in a plane perpendicular to the changing magnetic field.

Because the magnetic fields of the eddy currents oppose the magnetic field of the falling magnet; there is attraction between the two fields. Energy is converted into heat. This principle is used in damping the oscillation of the lever arm of mechanical balances.

[via @mattcutts]

The Farthest Thing Ever Seen

According to scienticians, this faint dot is the farthest thing we've ever seen. The light from the star started it's journey 630 million years after the Big Bang! I would try and explain how the scientists worked it out but it's way too complicated to understand. If you're feeling clever, you can read more at Sky and Telescope.

Cassini's Continued Mission

24 stunning photos taken by Cassini courtesy of The Big Picture.

13 Things That Don't Make Sense

13 things that science cannot explain including the Placebo Effect, the Kuiper Cliff and the Wow Signal. [via]

How To Tip A Cow

For the serious cow-tipper who wants to get it right, here's a scientician's guide.

Bat Hung On For a Ride Into Space

A small bat was spotted hitching a lift on the space shuttle that launched on Sunday.

NASA had hoped the bat would fly away before the spacecraft's Sunday evening liftoff, but photos from the launch show the bat holding on for dear life.

LiveScience has more.

Video: Take a Tour of the Body Farm

VBS.TV has a three part documentary about the Body Farm field laboratory in Knoxville, TN.

A body farm is a research facility where human decomposition after death can be scientifically studied in a variety of settings. The body farm in Knoxville has been in operation since 1981 and over 700 bodies have entered the facility (Wikipedia entry).

The creator of the body farm, William Bass, wrote a book back in 2004 which I've read and is very interesting (if you're into that kind of thing).

Study Suggests Why Gut Instincts Work

Scientists have conducted a study about how gut instinct works and it appears that it isn't purely based on guesswork but when making a decision we access memories that we aren't even aware we have.

One of the test conducted during the study was related to recognising images. The test found that people were more accurate in selecting an image when they had been distracted than when they had paid full attention. They also were more accurate when they claimed to be guessing than when they registered some familiarity for the image.

Read more at LiveScience.

Measuring Gravity In The Super Mario Bros

Analysis of gravity in Super Mario Bros. When Mario falls off an 8.6m ledge in Super Mario 2, he experiences a g-force of 11. That's enough to cause someone blackout. [via]

10 Stunning Images Taken By The Hubble Telescope

I never get tired of viewing images like these.

Is There Wood On Mars?

The object in these photos released by NASA in 2004 sure look like a plank of wood but as the Daily Mail points out, we humans are hardwired to recognise familiar objects as a survival technique.

It is more likely to be a case of pareidolia - where a random stimulus is perceived as having significance, be it a symbol seen in a cloud or a face on a piece of toast.

Whether it's a plank or wood or not, it's great material for conspiracy theorists.

Video: Astronaut Invents Novel Way To Drink Coffee In Space

Related article

Video: Lost Toolbag Spotted By Observer

Apparently, this video show the toolbag that was lost outside the Space Station last week.

Video: Stunning UltraSlow Motion Water Droplet

[via]

Video: Birth Of A Tornado

Footage from Colorado showing a tornado forming from a waterspout. [via]

Video: Meteor Crashes In Canada

If you were lucky enough to have witnessed it, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the world was about to end. [Thanks Adam]

Video: Spacewalker Drops Tool Bag

A spacewalking astronaut accidentally let go of her tool bag after a grease gun inside it burst, and watched as the kit floated away.

Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper and Stephen Bowen were taking part in the first of four spacewalks of the Space Shuttle Endeavour's current mission to the International Space Station.

First Image Of The Earth From The Moon

Pictured above is the first image ever taken of the Earth from the Moon. The image was taken in 1966 by Lunar Orbiter 1, about two years before the Apollo 8 crew took this more famous colour photo. [via]

Space Shuttle Endeavor Night Time Launch

The stats and speeds involved are mind-blowing.

Ancient Galaxies

The European Southern Observatory has released a photograph of deep space that shows clusters of stars so old that they're seen "as they were when the universe was only two billion years old".

The stars and galaxies are located in the U-band - the boundary between visible light and ultraviolet.

Due to the Earth's atmosphere, photos of objects of this distance are about the furthest that ground-based telescopes can take. [via]

Photo Of The First American To Walk In Space

Pictured above is the first American astronaut to walk in space: Edward White. White is seen floating outside the Gemini 4 capsule in 1965.

That's if you believe it's true, of course.

50 Billion Suns! -The Biggest Single Object in the Universe

Scientists have determined the mass of the largest things that could exist in our universe - 50 billion suns!

Based on this self-regulating maximum rate, scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Massachusetts, and the European Southern Observatory, Chile, have calculated an upper limit for these mega-mammoth masses. Fifty billion suns, that's 100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 kg, otherwise known as "ridiculously stupidly big" and triple the size of the largest observed black hole, OJ 287.

75 Million-Year-Old Fossilised Pregnant Turtle Unveiled

Nine years after its discovery in the badlands of southeastern Alberta, Canada, a 75-million-year-old fossil of a pregnant turtle has finally made its public debut.

At 40 centimetres long, its turtle shape is still evident and most of its skeleton is complete but its shell is crushed. The pregnant fossil was found in 1999. Six years later, a fossilized nest of eggs was found from the same species about 50 kilometres away.

Both specimens belong to an extinct turtle called Adocus, a large river turtle that lived with the dinosaurs and resembles today's slider and cooter turtles.

"It is the first fossil of a pregnant turtle found in the world and it's only the second fossil of an animal found in the world that's pregnant," explained Darla Zelenitsky, a University of Calgary scientist whose expertise is fossil nest sites.

View a video here.

NASA's Most Embarrassing Mistakes

From equipment installed backwards to problems with the metric system, NASA's failures can be as fascinating as its successes. Wired discusses some of the more embarrasing mistakes.

Views Of Jupiter

The Big Picture at the Boston Globe has posted some stunning photos of Jupiter and its moons. [via]

B-2 Stealth Bomber Crash Scene Photos

Popular Mechanics has obtained some exclusive photos of the B-2 Stealth Bomber that crashed in Guam back in February. It's amazing to think that there's over a billion dollars worth of plane sat smouldering on a runway.

Real-Time Tracking Of The International Space Station

This site superimposes the real-time location of the International Space Station on Google Maps. [via]

Phoenix Opens Its Eyes

This is one of the first images captured by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander which landed on the red planet yesterday. It touched down in an arctic region called Vastitas Borealis, at 68 degrees north latitude, 234 degrees east longitude.

The flat landscape is strewn with tiny pebbles and shows polygonal cracking, a pattern seen widely in Martian high latitudes and also observed in permafrost terrains on Earth. The polygonal cracking is believed to have resulted from seasonal freezing and thawing of surface ice.

There's another image here. [via]

Researchers - Astrology Is Bunk

A 50-year-study nstudy of 2,000 people born minutes apart has proved what may people have thought for a long time - astrology is rubbish!

The babies were originally recruited as part of a medical study begun in London in 1958 into how the circumstances of birth can affect future health. More than 2,000 babies born in early March that year were registered and their development monitored at regular intervals.

Researchers looked at more than 100 different characteristics, including occupation, anxiety levels, marital status, aggressiveness, sociability, IQ levels and ability in art, sport, mathematics and reading - all of which astrologers claim can be gauged from birth charts.

The scientists failed to find any evidence of similarities between the "time twins", however. They reported in the current issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies: "The test conditions could hardly have been more conducive to success . . . but the results are uniformly negative."

19-Year-Old Is World's Youngest Professor

A 19-year-old woman who was appointed as a full-time faculty Professor at Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea has been recognised as the world's youngest professor.

Alia Sabur was enrolled at a university at age 10 and played clarinet with a symphony orchestra at 11.

Sabur was three days shy of her 19th birthday in February when she became a professor at Konkuk University, in Seoul. The previous record was held by a student of physicist Isaac Newton, Colin Maclaurin, who set the mark in 1717.

"He's in every calculus textbook there is," she said. "When I found out about it, I thought, 'I can't replace him.' But it's been 300 years and someone had to replace him, so why not me?"

She will be doing some classroom instruction, but mostly will focus on research into developing nanotubes for use as cellular probes, which could help discover cures for diseases such as cancer, she said.

Down the road, she would like to develop a noninvasive blood-glucose meter for people with diabetes, she said. Her mother, Julia, and her father, Mark, both have diabetes.

Sabur said classroom teaching in Seoul will be challenging because she doesn't speak Korean. "I can speak math and music," she said.

Link

Space Junk Map

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a computer-generated picture that shows Earth surrounded by thousands and perhaps millions of pieces of space junk.

ESA says the number of objects in Earth's atmosphere has risen steadily increasing by 200 per year on average and that there are now 600 working satellites.

Collisions, explosions and lost or discarded material from space flights and rockets has resulted in the atmosphere resembling a junk yard with potentially millions of pieces of metal travelling in permanent orbit 20,000 miles above the Earth.

Link

How The Space Shuttle Is Assmebled

A BMW forum has posted a great set of photos showing the Space Shuttle gets assembled and makes its way to the launch pad. [via]

Japanese Scientists, Origami Masters Hope to Launch Paper Airplane From Space

Japanese scientists and origami masters are hoping to launch a paper airplane from space and learn from its trip back to Earth.

Shinji Suzuki, a professor at Tokyo University's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, believes that a successful flight from space by an origami plane could have far-reaching implications for the design of re-entry vehicles or space probes for upper atmospheric exploration.

In a test outside Tokyo in early February, a prototype about 2.8 inches long and 2 inches wide survived Mach 7 speeds and broiling temperatures up to 446 degrees Fahrenheit in a hypersonic wind tunnel — conditions meant to approximate what the plane would face entering Earth's atmosphere.

Having survived the 12-second test with no major damage or burns, the tiny plane theoretically could get back to Earth because re-entry from outer space involves passing through several layers that last only a few seconds each, said Osamu Imamura, a scientist who works with Suzuki.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, accepted it Wednesday for three years of feasibility studies and promised up to $300,000 in funding per year.

[via]

Video: Take A Ride On A Space Shuttle

Dino-Era Feathers Found Encased in Amber

Seven 100-million-year-old feathers have been found perfectly preserved in amber in western France.

The feathers have features of both feather-like fibers found with some two-legged dinosaurs known as theropods and of modern bird feathers and they could fill in a key gap in the puzzle of how dinosaurs gave rise to birds.

The find provides a clear example "of the passage between primitive filamentous down and a modern feather," said team member Didier Néraudeau of the University of Rennes in France.

The study team isn't sure yet whether the feathers belonged to a dino or a bird.

But fossil teeth from two dino families thought to have been feathered were excavated from rocks just above the layer that contained the amber, Perrichot said.

"It is entirely plausible that the feathers come from a dinosaur rather than from a bird," he said.

Link

The Earth and Moon as Seen From Mars

This photograph of the Earth and Moon was taken by the HiRISE telescope from a distance of 142 million kilometres. The HiRISE camera is the most powerful telescope to have left Earth orbit. [via]

The White Glove Tracking Project

"On May 4th, 2007, we asked internet users to help isolate Michael Jackson's white glove in all 10,060 frames of his nationally televised landmark performance of Billy Jean. 72 hours later 125,000 gloves had been located."

One of the results of this project is the Giant White Glove video in which Michael Jackson's glove has been enlarged. For most of the video it does actually look like he is wearing a giant glove. Read more about the project here.

Top 10 Amazing Chemistry Videos

Wired has posted 10 amazing chemistry videos.