If this doesn’t fit on your blog, you’re doing it wrong.
I never knew how much I wanted this. When I inevitably teach a lot of high school science courses I must use this gif.
I fucking love this
wow this is the best thing ive ever seen
Methane butane propane ethane woooh
Oh guys, the original video this came from… the whole thing is just as fab.
:3
nevermind that this is a bill for 10million currency units, but damn, why can’t USican money be this pretty?
via wolveswolves:
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WOLVES AND RAVENS
Ravens and wolves form social attachments with each other and take huge advantage of each other.
Both animals eat meat. When wolves killed a prey, ravens eat from the left over cadaver and scavenge it. Also, ravens lead wolves to preys or cadavers. The ravens fly and the wolves follow. Ravens also alert wolves to dangers.
They also play with each other. For example the ravens dive at the wolves and then speed away or peck their tails to try to get the wolves to chase them, or
Dr. L. David Mech wrote in ‘The Wolf: The Ecology and Behaviour of an Endangered Species’: “It appears that the wolf and the raven have reached an adjustment in their relationships such that each creature is rewarded in some way by the presence of the other and that each is fully aware of the other’s capabilities.”
Some videos:
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- - Crow teasing a wolf
(Picture by Michael S. Nolan)
Hints of Lost Continent Found Beneath Indian Ocean
Geological detectives are piecing together an intriguing seafloor puzzle. The Indian Ocean and some of its islands, scientists say, may lie on top of the remains of an ancient continent pulled apart by plate tectonics between 50 million and 100 million years ago. Painstaking detective work involving gravity mapping, rock analysis, and plate movement reconstruction has led researchers to conclude that several places in the Indian Ocean, now far apart, conceal the remnants of a prehistoric land mass they have named Mauritia. In fact, they say, the Indian Ocean could be “littered” with such continental fragments, now obscured by lava erupted by underwater volcanoes.
The Seychelles, an archipelago of 115 islands about 1500 kilometers east of Africa, are something of a geological curiosity. Although a few of Earth’s largest islands, such as Greenland, are composed of the same continental crust as the mainland, most islands are made of a denser, chemically distinct oceanic crust, created midocean by magma welling up beneath separating tectonic plates. Geologists think they separated from the Indian subcontinent 80 million to 90 million years ago.
But those islands might not be so unique. Researchers from Norway, Germany, and Britain, writing in Nature Geoscience, now suggest that the Indian Ocean is harboring other fragments of ancient continental crust. Those fragments, the researchers say, lie buried beneath more recent oceanic crust erupted by underwater volcanoes.
Dolphins may assign themselves their own names
What might dolphins be saying with all those clicks and squeaks? Each other’s names, suggests a new study of the so-called signature whistles that dolphins use to identify themselves.
Whether the vocalisations should truly be considered names, and whether dolphins call to compatriots in a human-like manner, is contested among scientists, but the results reinforce the possibility. After all, to borrow the argot of animal behaviour studies, people often greet friends by copying their individually distinctive vocal signatures.
“They use these when they want to reunite with a specific individual,” said biologist Stephanie King of Scotland’s University of St Andrews. “It’s a friendly, affiliative sign.”
Full article.
How to Collect Micrometeorites in Your Backyard
Meteors rain down on the earth every hour of every day. Most of these are hardly larger than a grain of rice or a pea. The majority are little more than particles of dust, 10 to 40 micrometers (0.0004-0.0016 inch) in size. The average one is scarcely a quarter of the width of a human hair. The atmosphere makes short work of the larger ones. The remainder of these small meteors—-called “micrometeorites”—-are perpetually sifting down to the surface. Ten thousand tons of them every day.
Watch this airplane photobomb the Sun
via itscolossal:
Amateur solar astronomer Andrew Devey was filming the surfacing of the sun when an airplane shot through his field of view. Incredible.
Amateur solar astronomer Andrew Devey has been making daily records of solar activity since 2005. His website, The Solar Explorer, could well be the most extensive roundup of jaw-dropping solar GIFS on Earth. Featured here is one of our favorites from his browser-crashing collection. “I was filming a large active region,” Devey writes, “when a plane shot through my field of view.”
via io9.
Not Only Can Plants Talk to Each Other, They Listen More Closely to Their Relatives
In a new study by University of California, Davis entomologist Richard Karban and colleagues, says New Scientist, the scientists found that plants—in this case, big sagebrush—don’t just listen in on each others’ conversations, they pay more attention to the plants most closely related to them.
Archaeological News: A fragile Buddhist treasure
via archaeologicalnews:
The oldest surviving Buddhist texts, preserved on long rolls of birch-tree bark, are written in Gandhari, an early regional Indic language that is long extinct. The scrolls originate from the region known in ancient times as Gandhara, which lies in what is now Northwestern Pakistan.
For researchers interested in the early history of Buddhism, these manuscripts represent a sensational find, for a number of reasons.
The first is their age. Some of the documents date from the first century BC, making them by far the oldest examples of Indian Buddhist literature. But for the experts, their contents are equally fascinating. The texts provide insights into a literary tradition which was thought to have been irretrievably lost, and they help researchers to reconstruct crucial phases in the development of Buddhism in India. Furthermore, the scrolls confirm the vital role played by the Gandhara region in the spread of Buddhism into Central Asia and China.
via jtotheizzoe:
The oldest portrait of a woman ever found, dating from 26,000 years ago, carved in mammoth ivory and proving that even our early ancestors could capture the expressive nature of the human face in a style that was uniquely meaningful to them.
Read more about how researchers are studying artifacts like these through the lens of art rather than solely through anthropology at Short Sharp Science.
That’s just amazing. I’m so glad that we can keep finding ancient art, and realizing that we’ve been creative people, for so long (maybe forever).
Genomics: Panda blood could hold the secret to the next generation of antibiotics(via @io9)
Pandas aren’t exactly renowned for their health and hardiness — if anything, they’ve earned a reputation as a fragile, sex-averse species that needs constant human conservation just to keep from going extinct.
Why was Heisenberg’s wife unsatisfied?
When he had the time he didn’t have the energy, and when he had the position, he didn’t have the momentum.
i believe this belongs to my blog, it’s a princess bubblegum thing.
SCIENCE
Science! But what IS that stuff???
Stephen didn’t explain, in the episode, what the red sand that floats is made of, but he did explain that the blue sand was treated with that Scotch Gaurd spray-on waterproofing stuff you can buy for shoes.
A quick googley yeilds several videos demonstrating how to make your own, like this one.
And really, watch QI (if you don’t yet), its both hysterically funny and often insightful.
Today in Fandom Ruins Science Forever…
Paleontologists find 6.5-foot tall penguin fossils in Antarctica
via expositionfairy:
Argentine experts have discovered the fossils of a two-meter (6.5 foot) tall penguin that lived in Antarctica 34 million years ago.
Paleontologists with the Natural Sciences Museum of La Plata province, where the capital Buenos Aires is located, said the remains were found on the icy southern continent.
“This is the largest penguin known to date in terms of height and body mass,” said researcher Carolina Acosta, who noted that the record had been held by emperor penguins, which reach heights of 1.2 meters (4 feet) tall.
That’s right, folks: they found H.P. Lovecraft’s giant penguins.
Well shit.
