Saturday, February 25, 2012

To Understand is to Perceive Patterns

Brilliant. Can we just have this guy stand up in the dome and talk a lot with the video going in the background?  It's just...awesome.

<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/34182381?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/34182381">TO UNDERSTAND IS TO PERCEIVE PATTERNS</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/jasonsilva">Jason Silva</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>

post from joe

Galaxy and Dark Matter Distribution

These will do nicely for what I'm thinking are two layers of the network isomorphism.  There is even video that I think we can up-rez to dome size.  With something as abstract as this, distorting to fill the dome shouldn't be an issue.
If we choose to use stills instead, they are available here in multiple resolutions as well, all of which have high-res versions suitable for full-screen in the dome.

http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/virgo/millennium/

Pale Blue Dot

Carl Sagan & Flying Lotus animated type mash up.
Narration by Carl Sagan's from his book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994).
Song "Zodiac Shit" by Flying Lotus from the album Cosmogramma (2010).
Footage from Koyaanisqatsi (1982), Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980), Life on Earth (1979) and various other composited clips and stills.

POST LINK FROM MICHELLE

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Not Scientifically Accurate, but still Beautiful...

A Tornado On The Sun



Here's something you don't see every day: a tornado on the surface of the sun. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory posted this stunning video, which shows the sun's plasma sliding and spinning around in the star's magnetic fields for 30 hours earlier this month.

Terry Kucera, a solar physicist with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, told Fox News that the tornado might be as large as the Earth itself and have gusts up to 300,000 miles per hour. By comparison, the strongest tornadoes on earth, F5 storms, clock wind speeds at a relatively paltry (though incredibly destructive) 300 mph.

The sun is an extremely active star, regularly spitting radiation and atomic particles into space. This space weather has direct impacts here on Earth, like forcing the rerouting of planes and lighting up the auroras.

Our friends at the 13.7 blog dive into how solar weather works, and if you're looking for some more stellar images of the sun, head over to the Solar Dynamic Observatory's Pick of the Week