Legal
The views expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Adobe Systems Incorporated.
Search
March 14, 2008
Giant lasers, DIY galaxies, and more
In honor of today being Pi Day (mmm, Pi...), it seems appropriate to share a wad of science-y bits:
- Hey baby, "Ever wonder what’s happening under Orion’s belt?" It's among Five terrible fake astronomical pickup lines.
- Flour power: Artist Barry Stone creates galaxies from spilled flour. [Via]
- At age 19 I talked my way into an internship at Jane's Defence Weekly. Among other things, I found myself visiting the National Archives, sifting through then-recently declassified spy photos from the Cuban Missile Crisis. Seeing the first US spy satellite photos makes me feel those cheesecloth gloves all over again. I'm always amazed that the film was snagged in mid-air. Related: these pix of the recent spy satellite shoot-down.
- "If you could hold a giant magnifying glass in space," say researchers at the University of Michigan, "and focus all the sunlight shining toward Earth onto one grain of sand, that concentrated ray would approach the intensity of [the HERCULES laser]." Here's the story. [Via]
- Speaking of giant magnifying glasses in space, check out the Earth & Moon as seen from Mars--at a distance of 142 million kilometers. [Via]
- Core77 features an X-ray of a python that's eaten some golf balls (for a rather interesting reason).
- BibliOdyssey features some great renderings of 19th-century airships.
- Can computer viruses be seen as art?
- True Dimensions features an amazing Lego model of the Discovery from 2001. [Via]
Comments