After a while it is easy to see that these stories are a way of bringing the scientific work that the New England Aquarium does with lobsters to the public’s attention as a form of outreach. Here is a video that explains the chemistry behind the colored shells as well as why they have a lab where they grow different colored lobsters in an effort to understand shell disease.
umbraphile : One who loves eclipses, often travelling to see them.
You are probably hearing a lot about the August 12thsolar eclipse. It’s path of totality will pass over the Arctic Ocean, Greenland, Iceland, Atlantic Ocean, Portugal, and northern Spain.
The National Solar Observatory has created a neat eclipse map that shows the path.
There is one group of people who know this well — they are the Umbraphiles, more commonly known as Eclipse Chasers. They are unique tribe, and their fascination with the celestial event tends to be described in terms outside the realm of science.
Here’s a link to the article about them that actually inspired the title of this post.
If you would like to become an Armchair-Umbraphile, then head on over to YouTube — there are a ton of 360° Videos of Solar Eclipses to enjoy anytime and anywhere.
Here are even more links that might be of interest to Umbraphiles.
umbraphile : One who loves eclipses, often travelling to see them.
You’ve probably heard about the April 8th solar eclipse (Wikipedia), and if you live near the path of totality, then you’ve probably also seen news stories like this one.
Now, you may or may not know, all of the fuss about people in the United States getting to see a total solar eclipse might be just a wee bit overblown. With all the hype about the tourism and special sun glasses, you may have missed a couple of stories pointing out that the event isn’t all that rare. Here’s one of those stories.
There is one group of people who know this well — they are the Umbraphiles, more commonly known as Eclipse Chasers. They are unique tribe, and their fascination with the celestial event tends to be described in terms well outside the realm of science.
Here’s a link to the article about them that actually inspired the title of this post.
So, one way or another, in real life if you’re lucky enough to be in a good place to see the eclipse, or online with NASA at YouTube, enjoy next Monday’s eclipse with safety and awe.
Then if you’re inclined to join the ranks of umbraphiles after that, here’s a handy list from Wikipedia that includes when and where future total solar eclipses will occur.
If you would like to become an Armchair-Umbraphile, then head on over to YouTube — there are a ton of 360° Videos of Solar Eclipses to enjoy anytime and anywhere.
Here are even more links that might be of interest to Umbraphiles.
Finally, if you’re into really rare celestial events, then keep an eye out for a star to appear sometime between now and September. Here’s a NASA story about it that I tripped over while doing research for this post.
Confession — I’m a major space cadet! I mean this in an older, positive sense of the word, which is that I’m a “space enthusiast.”
That’s why I really get into updating the pages on Cosma having to do with space.
Things got a little out of hand this time, though.
I began just like I always do, updating the Mars page, because that’s my favorite one.
Poking around YouTube, looking for new ideas, turned up this 360° video taken by NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover. It is a video with a 2.4 billion-pixel panorama of the Van Zyl Overlook.
Better yet, there’s an interactive version online that’s even more impressive.
I also found an entire YouTube Playlist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory with more than twenty 360° panorama videos of Mars.
Let’s just say all of that exploring Mars took … a few minutes.
Then I came across this YouTube video about something called Eyes on the Solar System from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) that renders scientifically accurate views of the planets and spacecraft from their missions.
Okay, neat! Watching that video, and then playing around with all of it (particuarly the Mars area of Eyes on the Solar System and Mars 2020) didn’t take “much” time at all 😉
I was only a “little” behind schedule.
Then I just had to spend a “little more time” playing around with cool things from NASA/JPL (Experience Insight, Experience Curiosity and Explore with Curiosity). There’s more about them and links to them on Cosma’sMars page along with some other fun stuff.
One problem. I spent all that time on the Mars page, but I hadn’t even touched all of those other pages about space.
Time to get back to work …
… but it wasn’t long before things went awry.
I came across a NASA website called Solar System Treks. It allows you to visualize, explore, and analyze the surfaces of other planets, moons and astroids using real data. You can view the worlds through the eyes of many different instruments, pilot real-time 3D flyovers above mountains and into craters. Here’s a video about it.
The web site opens with a tutorial that takes a few minutes to do, but it is worth it. Of course, I just had to play with that to make sure it worked, right?
So now this was well past when I thought I would have been long done with updating the space related pages on Cosma, but I did eventually get all the way to updating the top Universe page.
All in all, updating the space pages ended up taking ten times longer than I had planned.
So there you have it. I spent the better part of this last week being a real space cadet!
The good news is that I put descriptions and links to all the fun stuff that I found on the pages as I updated them, so you can find them and spend a time becoming a space cadet, too.
You can use the Web World called Space Depot and the Toy World below it called Solar Exremes to get started exploring the updated pages as well as a few other fun experiences.
Touch the 360° image to begin exploring, touch the objects and doors to enter virtual 360° experiences, and touch “i”s to learn about the experiences.
p.s. I confess that I can be a space cadet in the other sense of the word too. I accidentally “re-posted” TRAPPIST-1 a few days ago. If you subscribe to the Cosma blog, then you probably saw it in your email. However, I have trouble feeling bad about it, because the post is an oldie, but goodie. There’s a companion post called Exoplanet Junket still worth a gander.
There’s no denying that it’s been a rough week for many Earthlings.
On the other hand, it’s been a great week for anyone who spends their time more preoccupied with the Moon than with more earthly concerns.
That’s because there’s a treasure trove of news about our lunar realm.
For example, NASA’s Goddard Media Studios released this stunning 4K video that used data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to generate a visualization of what the Apollo 13 astronauts would have seen between the time that they came around from the dark side of the Moon and when they reestablished radio contact with Mission Control.
If you have ever seen the movie Apollo 13, then you appreciate why this particular time frame was so poignant. If you have never seen it, then I highly recommend that you do!
Of course, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is no longer our only source of imagery from the far side of the Moon because China landed their Chang’e-4 spacecraft and Yutu-2 rover there last year, and they’re still there working away. The Chang’e-4’s mission team celebrated the anniversary of their success by releasing some data and images to the public.
You can find out more about Chang’e-4’s moonscapes in this article.
In addition, hot off the press, the Yutu-2 rover’s radar scanned up to 40 meters below the surface of the Moon, and those findings were just published this week as well.
Pretty much everyone loves bubbles when they are kids, but some grown-ups elevate their passion for them to a whole ’nother level.
For example, a physicist at Emory University named Justin Burton and his team made news by publishing an article in a scientific journal about the ideal recipe for blowing giant soap bubbles. Here are links to the scientific article and the story on Ars Technica where I learned about it.
The video from Emory University that was featured at the bottom of the Ars Technica article was okay, but it didn’t have any narration. I wondered if I could find a better one. Sure enough, there were a ton of them. Here’s a really cute one!
Searching for that video turned out to be quite a rabbit hole. There are hundreds of neat YouTube videos about bubbles, and they definitely aren’t just for kids.
For example, here’s a mesmerizing and informative video from the The Slow Down Show YouTube channel that captures giant soap bubbles bursting in slow motion.
It was fun to see and learn about giant bubbles bursting in a controlled setting, but I found myself more drawn to videos of them floating around in the wild.
Here’s 360° video from Dr Zigs that shows a bubble master at work in a field.
Whilst wandering around in the rabbit hole that is bubbles on YouTube, I also tripped across a brief clip by Kevin Casey Fleming that shows the beauty of a bubble freezing along with its surprising demise.
All that was an amusing diversion, but then I got totally enthralled by an artist named Richard Heeks that’s elevated photographing bubbles to an art form. Here’s a link to his Flicker feed.
Finally, there are a slew of “how to” videos on YouTube for anyone that wants to get more involved with bubbles. Here’s one that starts out by explaining why (sadly) you can’t make heart shaped bubbles. On the up side, it describes how to make other interesting shapes as well as a way to touch and play with bubbles without breaking them.
Cuttlefish are odd creatures, so news stories about them tend to be interesting.
However, a story about them that’s going a bit viral is downright amusing!
As you can see from the image in this video from the Guardian, some scientists wanted to find out whether or not cuttlefish have stereoscopic vision (like humans do), so they strapped some 3D glasses to their faces and showed them some movies.
I found this story refreshing because it was nice to see something about how cuttlefish see things rather than about how other creatures can, or cannot, see them.
Generally stories about cuttlefish and their cephalopod cousins, octopuses and squids, tend to focus on their talent for camouflage. Here’s a link to a video that covers some scientific investigations into their peculiar abilities.
Of course, this post wouldn’t be complete without a peek at what cuttlefish look like in the wild. Here’s a one minute 360° video that I found on YouTube that does the trick.
This is the time of year when you see the words “Best of” quite a lot.
No matter what you care about, someone somewhere is going to publish something about the “best of 2019” or even the “best of the decade” for that thing.
For example, I pay a lot of attention to science, so this article caught my eye.
I assumed that it was going to be an excuse to revisit the *many* stories about slime mold inspired by an exhibit of ‘le blob’ at the Parc Zoologique de Paris earlier this year.
Here’s a video about that, err, dare I say, publicity stunt? Slime molds are certainly interesting creatures, in their own way, but not necessarily to watch in real time.
As it turns out, the article Best Blobs of 2019 didn’t even include anything about ‘le blob,’ but it did include a story about a jellyfish as big as a human that was spotted in Cornwall (UK). Here’s a video from Guardian News about that sighting.
Neat! I wanted to watch a 360° video of that, but I had no luck finding one.
On the other hand, I did find a 360° video from AirPano that was shot off the coast of Cuba. Heck, if you’re going to go swimming with giant jellyfish at this time of year, then water around Cuba is a whole lot more inviting than waters off England anyway. Wouldn’t you agree?
Remember how Icarus wanted to touch the Sun, but met his demise instead?
Well, scientists at NASA wanted to touch the Sun too, but unlike Icarus, they succeeded!
Better yet, they are beginning to share what they learned by doing it!
Before we get into all of that, let’s go back and start at the beginning.
NASA launched a robotic spacecraft called the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) in 2018, and this video describes the probe’s audacious mission to “touch the Sun.”
Then NASA posted this 360° video about the probe’s launch that was narrated by Nicola Fox (Project Scientist at that time and now Director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division).
Since its launch, the probe has done a spectacular job of starting to achieve its scientific goals, and some of the first results were just released this week.
Here’s a quick teaser that NASA posted ahead of a press conference on Wednesday.
Four articles about the results were also posted by the journal Nature ahead of their publication in the print edition on December 12th. This article introduces those articles and has links to them.
It’s awesome to know more about what makes that great glowing ball in the sky tick, but I also found myself a bit sad because the mission’s goals do not include sending back imagery for us Earthlings to enjoy. That means we still don’t know what it looks like to “touch the Sun.”
Perhaps it would look a bit like this 360° video of a simulation of the Sun that was posted by a hearty YouTuber way back in 2016.
That was cathartic to watch, but of course it wouldn’t sound like that because there is no “sound” in space. The actual experience would also be way, way more visually stunning.
We can be certain of that because, while the Parker Solar Probe doesn’t capture imagery, there’s another NASA mission called the Solar Dynamics Observatory that does. It doesn’t capture 360° videos, but what it does capture is far more dynamic than the simulation.
Here’s a video that the Solar Dynamics Observatory captured on June 18, 2015. This isn’t exactly how it would look because it’s been colorized in extreme ultraviolet wavelengths, but it still gives you a sense of the unbelievable majesty of the activity that you would see on the surface of our favorite star if you were able to go there in person.
Kudos to the scientists and engineers at NASA for having the audacity to find ways to go where no one has gone before and for communicating to us what it’s like there, too!
If you want to learn more about the the rest of the Solar System, explore this Toy World!
Click the 360° image below to explore it, click the menu in the upper right for controls and click “i” buttons on/off for links to experiences. Use “portals” to visit otherToy Worlds.
This is just the latest development in a long line of research about the talents of plants.
For example, in 2013 there was a PBS Nature special dedicated to “plant behavior” entitled What Plants Talk About. Since then, once or twice a year, the topic pops up in the media.
Here’s a video published in 2016 by Richard Karban on TED-Ed that gives a very nice summary of some of the research that’s made the news.
That’s nice, but that doesn’t make them all that talented, right?
Well, believe it or not, with a bit of help from their friends, plants can “sing” too, and that shard of news is what actually inspired this very post!
This week I came across a device on Kickstarter from Data Garden that’s called PlantWave, and it’s designed to let you “listen to the music” of plants!
Of course, now that you know that plants can even “sing,” then it’s only fair to mention that, with a tad more help from their human friends, they can also dance!
Here’s a video of some doing a ballet to Chopin’s Mazurkas, Op. 67.
If you like that, then you will probably enjoy this extremely relaxing seven minute long video of flowers dancing to, appropriately enough, Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers.
So there you have it — the next time you’re surrounded by plants, even if you can’t actually hear them talk and sing or watch them move or dance right then and there, perhaps it may not seem “quite” so quiet 🙂
Here are some further resources about the many “talents” of plants.
Saturday, July 20th is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, and there’s a massive media blitz surrounding the occasion. Pretty much every major news outlet is covering it in some way, and it’s no surprise that NASA is leading the publicity frenzy.
In honor of this momentous occasion, and being the total space buff that I am, I couldn’t resist dipping into my personal trove of “Moon Media” and rummaging around to find a few tidbits that might not show up in mainstream news stories.
The website Virtual AGC — AGS — LVDC — Gemini also has tons of information about computer simulations of the guidance computers used in the Apollo lunar missions.
If you want a glimpse into at least part of the calculations that the Apollo computers had to do to get humans to the moon, then try your hand at the game Lunar Lander. There’s an example of it on the Web thanks to the artist Seb Lee-Delisle who created it as part of his Lunar Trails exhibit. His version is called Moon Lander.
Of course, my archive happens to have a few relevant 360° videos 🙂
My favorite one is this two minute simulation of Apollo 11’s landing and the first moonwalk.
Here’s a link to a more realistic 360° video about Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan’s last walk on the moon in 1972 that has a panorama created from photos that he took at the time.
If you want to experience some more “real” moon imagery, then try out Google Moon!
Hardcore Apollo 11 fans might also enjoy the two plus hours of NASA’s restored video Moonwalk, and NASA even uploaded all of the 9,000 hours of audio from the Apollo 11 mission to the Internet Archive.
Cool stuff!
However, if you’re only looking for a fun way to kick off the weekend, then take a ride on this Space Mountain-esque 360° video complete with audio from the Apollo 11 Mission!
The news is full of stories about how a giant squid was filmed in U.S. waters for the first time. Here’s a link to an article by ABC7 that includes a great clip about it.
The accomplishment was applaudable, but I was a bit disappointed about the clip.
Where were the eyes?
The text in the video said that the giant squid can have eyeballs that measure up to ten inches in diameter — that’s almost a foot! Yet the eyes weren’t actually captured in the video.
Luckily there’s another place where you can see a giant squid’s eyes.
While this was the first time a giant squid was filmed in U.S. waters, it wasn’t the first time that one’s been filmed. That happened back in 2012 when researchers from Japan’s National Museum of Nature and Science filmed one in the Ogasawara archipelago, and that time they did get a fleeting shot of the giant squid’s humongous eyes. Here’s a link to a clip that covers that sighting as well as some background like how giant squids have the largest eyes in the animal kingdom and how sightings of them probably led to the legends about kraken.
When you’re looking eye to eye with a squid or octopus, it’s easy to imagine that they would see you in the same way that you would see them, but that’s not so. Until a couple of years ago, researchers believed that since cephalopods only have a single type of photoreceptor, they would be colorblind. Then in 2016 some researchers suggested that the truth may be more intriguing than that — their eyes may work like a prism. Here’s a video about that and a link to the the research that it was based upon.
Of course, cephalopods aren’t the only creatures in the sea with great eyes. Plenty of marine mammals have wonderful eyes, too. Here’s a lovely video filmed and edited by Sally Bartel for Save The Whales that brings you eye to eye with whales, dolphins and an affectionate manatee who will even come up and give you a smootch!
They were all beautiful, but I must confess to being partial to whale’s eyes. In fact, one of my favorite 360° videos of all time is TheBlu because at one point a blue whale comes up and looks you right in the eye for a bit.
TheBlu is awesome, but it is just an animation. There’s another non-360° video that was posted by Cheesemans’ Ecology Safaris that’s even more impressive — it takes you eyeball to eyeball with a real humpback whale!
Again, since those huge creatures are also mammals, it’s easy to assume that their eyes would see you in much the same way as you would see them. While that’s more true than it is with the cephalopods, it’s still not really the case. Here is a story that will give you sense of how whales might really see you.
Finally, I’ll leave you with this 360° video from the American Museum of Natural History. It’s a bit slow in the middle but features some nice eye to eye shots near the beginning and end.
To paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous words in The Lord of the Rings, “It’s a dangerous business, clicking on a link. You glance at a story, and if you don’t watch out, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
This week I innocently clicked on a link to this story from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Indeed, the articles provided an interesting explanation for those odd polynya phenomena in Antarctica, but it was actually this intriguing image that really grabbed my attention.
Image: Ocean measurements were also collected by seals swimming under the sea ice with temporary satellite tags, showing normal water conditions in the years that did not have large polynyas.
Credit: Dan Costa/University of California, Santa Cruz
Yep, that’s a seal with an antenna on it’s head!
It turns out that the study used data combined from satellite images of sea ice cover, some robotic drifters as well as elephant seals outfitted with sensors.
What’s more, using seals wasn’t a one-off operation. It was part of a program that’s been operating for over a decade according to the Coriolis Operational Oceanography site:
Since 2004, several hundred seals have been equipped with conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) sensors in the Southern Ocean for both biological and physical oceanographic studies. A calibrated collection of seal-derived hydrographic data is now available from Coriolis, currently consisting of more than 300,000 temperature/salinity profiles. — Coriolis
The Coriolis site also has information about a program called Marine Mammals Exploring the Oceans Pole to Pole that provides access to an international database of validated ocean observations collected by marine mammals such as seals, sea lions, and even turtles.
On my journey to learn how scientists have been strapping sensors to seals to find out about what’s going on under the ice in Antarctica, it was impossible to miss stories about other methods they are using.
Yes, you really can go to the MOO site and listen in on some seals and ice for yourself.
After all of this stuff about seals, why stop with listening? Aren’t you itching to see some more?
Here’s a link to a short 360° video that takes you under an iceberg to visit with a crabeater seal along with some gentoo penguins before returning to the surface to share some other views and perspectives about Antarctica.
That video had a nice view of a seal under ice, but now here’s an even better 360° video that get’s you up close and personal with an elephant seal on a beach.
So there you have it. The moral of this story is be careful about what you click on, or you might find yourself on an unexpected virtual journey to learn about seals with sensors, and then end up spending an hour or more exploring the frigid waters under Antarctica.
In case you’ve got a few more minutes and the interest, here are links to two more very nice YouTube videos about the amazingly diverse and beautiful life deep under the Antarctic ice.
Finally, now that I’ve got you down here with me on this unexpected adventure in Antarctica, the trip wouldn’t be complete without some more penguins, right?
Here’s a 360° close-up view of a colony of some Adélies, chinstraps and gentoos — some of them are having a rough time, but nonetheless, they’re all still fun to watch (esp. the chicks).
It’s not often that mice sneak into the news, but they do manage it from time to time.
One story that gotten a lot of attention is about how researchers created “super mice” by injecting nanoparticles into their eyes to give them “night vision.” Here are links to the stories about that research.
In case you’re wondering what that would look like, here’s a link to a 360° video about how animals see the world that will give you a sense of it. The video concludes with segments on how rats see the world normally (2:32) and snakes see the world in the infrared (3:30).
Another story was a bit more entertaining. It involved a critter called Alston’s singing mouse. Here’s a link to a one minute introduction and an article about the talented little guys.
In fact, these mice, and others, actually sing ultrasonic love songs. Here’s a link to a video and some articles about the talented, frisky little guys.
Finally, the most interesting news was about how studying the singing mouse’s serenades could lead to treatments for humans with communication disorders that are a result of things like stroke or autism. Here’s a link to a video and some articles about that research.
So that’s neat stuff, but if you’re sad because you thought this was going to be about a mouse actually singing a song, with words, here’s a link to a clip from Sing to help you feel better.
Lest you believe that caring about such things is for boring old, incredibly geeky grown-ups, here’s a link to a segment from The Ellen Show where a 3-year old shows she knows her stuff.
What I didn’t expect was that a two minute excursion into a cave would turn into a fascinating journey into speleology. One thing just led to another, and that’s what happened.
It all started because the video and story about the cave reminded of my own experiences in Mammoth Cave. It’s in Kentucky, and I grew up in Indy — it wasn’t that far away, so I visited it numerous times over the years.
In case you’ve never been, here’s a link to a quick peek.
Each visit was a bit different, but the one thing that I remember most was that Mammoth Cave was billed as the largest cave on Earth. After many hours of tours, it felt like it, too.
Ha, what I saw hardly scratched the surface, literally and figuratively!
It was a bit mind-bending when they zoomed out to show the true scale of the place. Yet that was nothing compared to what I tripped across next.
It turns out that Mammoth Cave was the largest cave, but it’s not anymore.
That honor belongs to Son Doong Cave in Vietnam. It was “discovered” in 1991, but it wasn’t really explored until 2009. Wow, it’s positively Verne’esque — it even has a jungle!
Here’s a link to a video about how photographer and journalist Martin Edström went on a 360° photo expedition into the cave for National Geographic.
Here’s a 360° video of another ice cave under Pemberton Icefield in British Columbia. Not surprisingly, the lifespan of such wonders in our current climate also comes up in the video.
That was mesmerizing, but there is a Giant Crystal Cave in Mexico made out of gypsum instead of ice that might be even more stunning to see. Unfortunately, you can’t.
Luckily here’s a video that shows a bit of what it looks like as well as explains why you really don’t want to see it in person.
I was bummed that I couldn’t find great footage of Crystal Cave. However, while searching for that, I found this fun 360° video of the Waitomo Glowworm Caves in New Zealand.
Near the end of my unexpected detour into caves, I found this neat 360° video and lesson about ancient cave paintings. It’s about art, creativity and communication. These are all near and dear to my heart, so I couldn’t resist including it.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this speleological detour as much as I did. If you want to continue exploring caves on your own, here are some resources to get you started.
Humans tend to interact with animals as if they see the world in pretty much the same way that we do. However, the more scientists study animal vision, the more they tell us that is just not the way that it is. Furthermore, what scientists know about animal vision goes way beyond the fact that our pet cats and dogs can’t see color the same way that we do.
In fact, what they tell us about what birds can “see” is particularly awesome!
For example, birds can see ultraviolet light, so that means they can essentially see a forth primary color. They also have the bizarre ability to “see” magnetic fields. Here’s a link to a video that includes an explanation of a wide variety of things that birds can see along with some interesting facts about our own vision.
Here are links to articles about how scientists modeled a bird’s ultraviolet vision to show how perceiving ultraviolet light aids them in their navigating through dense forests. There are some neat photos in the article that illustrate the difference between how we and birds would see the leaves of trees.
Lest you be disappointed that the title of the post promised a “bird’s-eye view,” here’s a 360° video that shows an eagle’s point of view while soaring over Dolomites in Italy.
There’s an actual place called Jellyfish Lake on Eil Malk island in Palau where you can swim with hundreds of thousands of the mesmerizing creatures without fear of being stung. Here’s a video with some calming underwater footage.
Of course, you may not have time to jump on a plane to Palau right now. Even if you did, perhaps going for a swim in a sea of jellyfish still doesn’t sound all that relaxing to you?
In that case, perhaps a nice, safe one minute 360° virtual dive with a single jellyfish near the Gardens of the Queen off of the coast of Cuba might do the trick.
Well, it turns out that the National Aquarium also has a live cam of their jellies, and it’s down right hypnotic. Who needs a lava lamp when you can get such awesome, calming nature delivered right to your screen, live!?!
Here’s another great clip from TED-Ed about how jellyfish aren’t just therapeutic to stare at — they also have all sorts of other intriguing properties. Some of them glow, and that helps them contribute to medical research. Others are even “sort of” immortal!
NASA engineers had quite a New Years celebration in 2019 when New Horizons successfully executed a flyby of a tiny object named 2014 MU69 while moving at 32,000 miles per hour.
The planetesimal 2014 MU69 is better known by it’s nickname Ultima Thule, and it’s located way out past Pluto in a region of the Solar System called the Kuiper Belt.
Here’s a link to a video covering the achievement as well as what it has to do with the rock band Queen!
Some scientists may be referred to as “rock stars” from time to time, but it’s seldom literal. It’s also fairly rare for an astrophysicist to be mentioned in Rolling Stone.
Most news stories about Ultima Thule mentioned that it’s the furthest object that’s been photographed. However, New Horizons isn’t the spacecraft that’s the furthest away.
That honor belongs to the twin Voyager spacecraft. In fact, months before New Horizon’s encounter with Ultima Thule, Voyager 2 joined Voyager 1 in interstellar space. Here are a couple of stories abou that feat.
Many stories about the Voyagers mention that they both carry special golden records. Here’s a link to a video that explains how the records were designed to communicate with any aliens that might happen upon them in the distant future.
Believe it or not, there’s even a tie-in with rock ‘n’ roll here, too. The cool scientists that designed the record included a recording of Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode!
There was a lot of news about space rocks closer to home around that time as well. That’s because, not just one, but two spacecraft reached milestones in their respective journeys to explore two asteroids.
The biggest news was that NASA’s OSIRIS-REx entered orbit around asteroid 101955 Bennu on New Years Eve. Among other things, this set records for the smallest body ever orbited by a spacecraft and the closest orbit of a planetary body by any spacecraft.
Here’s a video and press release about this milestone that was posted by the OSIRIS-REx Mission on December 31st.
There are many reasons that Bennu is an interesting object, but one of its biggest claims to fame is that it is a “potentially hazardous object” that is listed on the Sentry Risk Table with the second-highest cumulative rating on the Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale. The only one with a higher rating is asteroid (29075) 1950 DA (JPL/NASA) (Wikipedia). Neither of these asteroids are very likely to hit Earth, but they are the most likely (that we know of, so far).
That holiday season also brought continuing coverage of Japan’s nail-biting Hayabusa2 Mission to asteroid 162173 Ryugu (Wikipedia). The mission is scheduled to collect a sample of Ryugu and return it to Earth in December 2020.
Here’s a fun bit of trivia. Last summer Brian May also created a 3D stereoscopic image of Ryugu using a picture captured by Hayabusa2.
Of course, almost every story takes advantage of the teachable moment to clarify that it should be called the “far side” rather than “dark side” of the Moon, because it isn’t dark there. There are also inevitable references to Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. In fact, when I went searching on YouTube for videos about China’s landing, it served up this trippy 360° video.
I’m sort of sad that it happens to be Pink Floyd’s album that’s getting a bit of play over this, because the more relevant rock music about the Moon is probably David Bowie’s Space Oddity. Notably, astronaut Chris Hadfield paid homage to this by making a music video of it while living on the International Space Station (ISS).
So that’s a wrap up of that wild holiday season in space exploration, and I hope you enjoyed the detours into rock ‘n’ roll, too.
Space Rocks & Happy New Year!
If you want to learn more about the the Solar System, explore this Toy World!
Click the 360° image below to explore it, click the menu in the upper right for controls and click “i” buttons on/off for links to experiences. Use “portals” to visit otherToy Worlds.
Unless you live in an extremely remote area, or you’ve visited one, then you probably haven’t seen our own galaxy, the Milky Way, very well, or at all.
Worse yet, you may not even realize that it’s missing.
You can learn a lot more about the unexpectedly scary effects of light pollution on animals and us humans in a longer, more in-depth video from Seeker.
That viral video was the work of filmmakers Harun Mehmedinovic and Gavin Heffernan, and it was just the latest addition to their Skyglow Project. They were inspired by the Dark Sky Movement, and they’ve published similar videos featuring Los Angeles and other places. Here’s is a link to a video that explains more about their work.
Now, back to how well you have seen the Milky Way.
For that, it is useful to know about the Bortle Dark-Sky Scale (Wikipedia). It’s used to rate the sky’s brightness on a scale of 1 to 9.
Here’s a link to a beautiful film entitled Lost in Light by Sriram Murali that shows the night sky as seen at different levels of the Bortle Dark-Sky Scale. Notice the Milky Way is increasingly prominent as it gets darker.
Now that you know how to quantify what you can or can not see, here’s a Interactive Light Pollution Map where you find out how well you can see the sky from where you are now or where you’ve been. To learn about how it works, check out the Help.
Finally, while I was doing research for this post, I tripped over this folksy music video about light pollution. Enjoy, and don’t forget, turn the lights down, or better yet, off!
If you are a language or communication expert, rock and roll fan or not, you probably have a bit more nuanced response that might begin with the phrase “it depends” and end up including words like perspective and context.
But what do lady bugs think?
Your answer might be who knows … or cares?
Well, it turns out that somebody tried to find out, and the answer is surprisingly relevant as well as entertaining.
Personally, I found it funny that they singled out Willie Nelson as representative of the “not rock and roll” condition. I also couldn’t help but wonder if the ladybugs were just too busy dancing to eat 🙂
Seriously though, the study was actually about an important issue. There really is such a thing as noise pollution, and in some cases, it can be harmful to animals (including us). Here’s a link to an informative video about the impact of noise on humans.
So, that study about ladybugs opinions on rock and roll had a point, albeit an odd one.
However, I’m still not convinced that rock and roll is noise pollution. I lean towards siding with AC/DC on this one, although I must confess to being more on the same page as Joan Jett.
Note: This was posted in 2018 and updated in 2026 in honor of the of the release of Spider-Man: Brand New Day!
Have you ever watched a Spider-Man movie and wondered whether real spiders can do anything remotely like what Spidey does? Well, it turns out that they can. However, not even Spidey, or his friends Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, really knew how. No one did, until recently.
Just over this past week there have been a slew of news stories about an article published in Current Biology by researchers Erica L. Morley and Daniel Robert from the University of Bristol. Here is a cute video narrated by Morley that describes their neat study.
The video makes the phenomena of spider ballooning sound so fascinating, you might even think it would be cool to see it for yourself. However, in reality, very few readers would enjoy an encounter with the real thing.
Every few years a story comes along about it happening somewhere in the world, and those descriptions generally sound a lot less entertaining. For example, here’s a quick video and some stories about an incident of “spider rain” in South Australia in 2015.
Yuck. Seeing spider rain is definitely NOT on my bucket list.
On the other hand, seeing Spider-Man fly in fiction is fine. While writing this post, I tripped across a 360° Video of Spidey flying.
It was fun to watch, and it also struck me as funny. I think it’s a good thing that Stan Lee wasn’t too accurate in his depiction of how spiders fly. Don’t you agree?
NASA’s new experience includes a feature that let’s you download snazzy travel posters for each of the planets, and those posters have a backstory of their own. Here’s a Buzz 60 story about three of the posters in the new project.
Here’s a Slate article with some more background on the Work Projects Administration (WPA) See America poster series that inspired the style of NASA’s travel posters.
This isn’t the first time that NASA has dabbled in publishing travel posters. The three exoplanet posters featured in the video are actually a subset of fifteen posters that NASA released in 2016 as a series entitled Visions of the Future.
Of course, the timing of the release of the Exoplanet Travel Bureau is no coincidence — it’s neatly timed to coincide with last month’s launch of NASA’s planet hunting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Here’s a short one minute explanation from NASA Goddard about what TESS will be doing.
Did you hear the one about the octopuses from space?
It sounds like the title of a cheesy sci-fi movie, doesn’t it?
But it isn’t, this time, or at least, yet. Instead, it’s actually an oddball theory that’s been put forth in a recently published “scientific” article that’s getting quite a lot of buzz in the media lately.
First, let’s start with the particular article about octopuses that is causing all of the fuss.
It appeared in the journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, and it was published with a list of an 33 co-authors.
One can’t help but wonder if there was a share the blame scenario going on. It’s not even the theory that is suspect. The problem is in the scientific aspects of the work. Even the sensationalist article in Newsweek politely described most responses from the scientific community as “critical.”
Personally, I checked to see if the article was published on April 1st — that would’ve been a bit o’ fun, but it wasn’t. Perhaps they submitted it on April 1st, though?
Anyway, all joking aside, the core of the article is based on an old and relatively well established theory about how life began on Earth. The theory is known as panspermia, and it really has been discussed by serious scientists.
Panspermia is a hypothesis proposing that microscopic life forms that can survive the effects of space, such as extremophiles, become trapped in debris ejected into space after collisions between planets and small Solar System bodies that harbor life. Some organisms may travel dormant for an extended amount of time before colliding randomly with other planets or intermingling with proto-planetary disks. Under certain ideal impact circumstances (into a body of water, for example), and ideal conditions on a new planet’s surfaces, it is possible that the surviving organisms could become active and begin to colonize their new environment. — Wikipedia
Here is a link to a video segment that covers the scientific basis of the panspermia theory relative to Mars, and an article from Scientific American that goes into more depth about various discussions about it among well known scientists.
Of course, the usual biological suspects mentioned are those cute little water bears, but this is not the first time octopuses have been included in the list of suspects.
Given the recent understanding of the necessary conditions for life existing on large ocean moons of Jupiter and Saturn, the theory that octopuses are from elsewhere in our solar system isn’t quite as crazy as it might sound.
If you listen to the whole story, you will hear that some scientists tend to believe that it is actually Jupiter’s moon Europa that is the older, and thus the more likely candidate to harbor ocean life beyond Earth. This has been reinforced by a study just published in Nature this month that shows reanalysis of old data gathered by NASA’s Galileo probe back in the 1990s provided unexpected evidence of salt water plumes on Europa.
Unfortunately, the scientific basis of the particular article in the news about a life form on Earth being from space, while not as nutty as it might sound, has serious flaws. Here are two articles that are far more elaborate about the criticisms being waged against the article.
Still, you can kind of see why they would think that octopuses, in particular, are alien. They are indisputably the weirdest, intelligent life form on Earth. That much is pretty much hard to deny. Here’s a link to a lovely video that goes into just some of the reasons that is the case.
Okay, this could go on and on. I’ve got videos of these creatures escaping from a jar, going through holes the size of a quarter, stealing crabs from fisherman, using shells to hide from prey, walking on land to hunt and a ton of other absurd things that they can do that you don’t exactly expect from a lump of flesh with some eyes and suckers. You can see them all on the octopus page if you like.
However, one of the most bizarre things about them turns out to be their DNA. Here are some videos and links that show how Ragsdale Lab at the University of Chicago found out some extremely surprising truths about octopus DNA that explains their amazing powers of camouflage, dexterity and deception.
So octopuses are impressively weird, and they are wicked smart too. That doesn’t make them “aliens,” right?
Well, hold on to your brains, because that isn’t even the strangest thing about them. New research has shown that they can even edit their own RNA! Here’s a link to a video about this along with some supporting sources.
In the end, octopuses really are relatively alien, whether or not they’re from space. The thing is, even if they are from Earth, which honestly, they probably are, then that means some core things emerge, independently, in entirely different biological milieus.
That’s kind of awesome news, when you think about it!
Who knows? Maybe water bears really are from Mars and octopuses are from Jupiter, or well, Europa specifically. There is also that pesky little problem of that unexplained methane on Mars, so who knows?
We could by now, but we don’t.
Specific theories about octopuses and water bears aside, there are serious scientists that do believe that life on Earth may have come from space in general, and that said life might still be out there elsewhere in our solar system right now. We also have the technology that we need to find out what is, or is not, lurking about on other planets and moons. The real question is whether or not it will happen, soon, perhaps in some of our lifetimes, or at all, in the future history of humanity.
Traditional news stories usually cover a single subject or the straightforward relationship between two subjects. However, every once in awhile, a story comes along that crams a deceptive number of subjects and interesting relationships into a tiny space. Exploring stories like that can be an adventure. Here’s a link to a wonderful, five minute video that’s like that.
One of my favorite parts of the clip was the analogy about the rainforest as a system.
In an airplane, there are a lot of redundant screws. Maybe you don’t need every single one to fly the plane, but at some point, if they keep dropping off of the machine, it’s not going to work anymore.
Nicely said. So now, let’s unpack the story.
The most obvious thing to do is find out more about the main character in the story, Dr. Meg Lowman. It turns out she is widely known as “Canopy Meg,” she also bills herself as an “Arbornaut,” and she’s been involved in some “interesting” research.
Here’s a clip that shows more about how she was involved with some researchers who explored the canopy using hot air balloons and, incredibly, a luge. Yes, a sled, and even more oddly, they also used a raft! It’s hard to imagine — you’ve got to watch it!
I couldn’t help but wonder if Canopy Meg’s experiences in the Amazon served as the basis for Medicine Man with Sean Connery and Lorraine Bracco. If you’ve never seen it, then here’s a trailer about the scientific side of the plot.
Trying to understand more about what Ferguson and his colleagues were doing, as well as what Canopy Meg mentioned about pharmaceuticals in the first clip, led to an unexpected detour into Ethnobotany, Ethnobiology, Ethnomedicine and Ethnopharmacology.
Finally, what about those “cute” little water bears that Canopy Meg mentioned? Well, they may or may not be all that cute, but they sure are tough little buggers.
They’re SO fascinating, I decided to create a whole new page dedicated to water bears.
Maybe water bears aren’t so “cute” afterall, but if you want to see something really cute, then be sure to check out this absolutely adorable little video from David Williams.
If you have been Yellowstone National Park, then you know it is a vast, beautiful place with some fairly odd geologic features that smell bad, like rotten eggs. If you’ve never been there, then you might just have a fairly apocalyptic view of it because of the supervolcano under it that has been featured in disaster movies.
Here’s a link to a short short introduction about what is above and below the surface.
Sometimes exploring news about Yellowstone can be interesting in unexpected ways. For example, I triped across a story about how studying life in Yellowstone’s toxic soup could help us find out if there’s life on Mars!
April 22nd is Earth Day! In honor of that, here are some great ways to see the honoree.
First, you can get a nice view from this neat 360° video from Seeker. It essentially shows you what it would feel like if you could just fly straight up and see the Earth from space.
For a really, really extreme wide shot of Earth, there’s a relatively hot off the press snap from New Horizons. It was taken from about 3.79 billion miles away. Not surprisingly, this is the record for the furthest away a picture of Earth has ever been taken, and this video covers both the shot as well as some interesting context about how it was taken.
Of course, the video paid a humble tribute to the iconic Pale Blue Dot (Planetary Society) image taken by Voyager 1 that was then made famous by this commentary by Carl Sagan.
Those are certainly some awe inspiring views of Earth! Along the way it is hard not to notice that NASA has a lot to do with all of those long shots.
As great as it is to have the pictures and the knowledge from the missions, it turns out that NASA keeps pretty busy taking care of our home planet, too. Here’s a lovely article that Forbes published for Earth Day that highlights the many ways that NASA is working to save the Earth.
That’s cool news for dinosaur lovers, but it’s not all that geeky.
Before we dive into the really geeky stuff, check out this 360° video from the American Museum of National History in which Mike Novacek describes how Roy Chapman Andrews led an expedition to the Gobi Desert back in the 1920s.
You can find out a ton more about the expeditions and dinosaurs in general on the American Museum of National History YouTube Channel series Dinosaurs Explained.
That’s probably the kind of methodology that you think of when you think about paleontology. Paleontologists do still use those traditional field methods, but they also use some fairly geeky technology these days. Here’s a video in which paleontologist Ken Lacovara explains how his field uses laser scanning and 3D modeling.
Doesn’t all that talk about 3D dinosaur parts make you just itch to see a complete one?
Here’s a 360° video in which paleontologist Dr. Ken Lacovara “shows” us a giant dinosaur called Dreadnoughtus while he explains how it was discovered. If you have a powerful computer, change the quality setting on the video to 1080s for a more impressive experience.
This wasn’t the first neat 360° video about dinosaurs. Over a year ago Sir David Attenborough worked with BBC One to make a 360° video to introduce the biggest dinosaur ever discovered. Here’s a link to that video, and again, increase the video quality for a better experience.
Finally, I saved the geekiest stuff for last. If you crave realistic extinct creatures, how about some real ones? Impossible, you think? Not necessarily! De-extinction is a real thing that is being actively explored, and while true dinosaurs are still far fetched, species that only went extinct within the last 500 years or so are not all that far out of reach.
Here’s a link to a video and news story about the state of the art in resurrecting extinct species as well as the complex pros and cons of doing so.
The other day I was grabbing a snack at a local pub when I noticed what struck me as an odd scene on one of the TVs. At first glance it looked like a couple of people encouraging a large, mobile Pet Rock to win a race. Of course, the sport was Curling, and it was an Olympic Qualification Event. I had “heard of” curling, but I had never seen it played.
It turns out that there is more to the sport than meets the eye. More about that in a minute, but first, for the uninitiated such as myself, it is always good to start with finding out the basics. Here’s a fun little two minute video from Curling Canada that does the job nicely.
Entertaining, but that video doesn’t really explain why the sport’s nickname is “Chess on Ice.” Here’s a video that explains more about curling and mentions the nickname.
There is even a whole Chess on Ice YouTube channel that explains the sport in great detail. Here’s a short introductory video from the channel that starts to give a sense of the complexities of curling strategy.
Better yet, the sport is the subject of a debate among physicists, and there are even scientific papers about it. Here’s a video about the controversy.
Last week NASA released this fascinating video entitled Our Living Planet based upon 20 years of data from satellites that observe all plant life at the surface of the land and ocean.
Of course, releasing fantastic imagery like this is nothing new for NASA — they have a long and illustrious history of sharing iconic imagery to amaze and inspire people around the world.
The most famous image NASA ever shared is the photo known as Earthrise. It was taken by astronaut Bill Anders in 1968 during the Apollo 8 mission, and it was the first time a human ever saw the whole earth from space. Here is a video about the image that was released in 2013 on the image’s 45th anniversary.
The next most famous image from NASA is probably The Blue Marble. It was taken from Apollo 17 in 1972. Here is a NASA video from 2015 that discusses the original image as well as newer imagery captured by the Deep Space Climate Observatory.
These two images may be the most famous, but thanks to Carl Sagan, none has been more inspirational than the Pale Blue Dot. It was captured by Voyager 1, and here is a video of Sagan unveiling the photo in 1990.
Of course, NASA continues to share awesome imagery from time to time. For example, back in 2012 they released Earth at Night. It is also sometimes called “The Black Marble,” and it is an animation of Earth’s city lights assembled from data from the Suomi NPP satellite.
NASA has already released numerous 360° Videos related to other planets, so it is only a matter of time before they release an explorable 360° image or video of Earth. In the meantime you can enjoy this 360° Video created by the Opaque Media Group to promote their VR application Earthlight.
Leonardo da Vinci sure gets press for a gentleman who hasn’t been around for five centuries! That’s not to say that it’s not well deserved. Here’s a brief video that gives just a glimpse of why he was such an amazing guy.
Of course, one perennial reason for Leonardo’s popularity is the never ending fascination with how he achieved Mona Lisa’s smile. This video is about just one study about it.
Here’s a link to a video that further explains the fantastic techniques that Leonardo used to create the illusions that make the painting so enigmatic.
Unfortunately, it’s hard for an average person to actually experience the effect for themselves. In case you’ve never been to the Louvre and tried to see the original, here’s a 360° Video that will give you a sense of what you will probably encounter (skip to 2 minutes into video).
It is probably no coincidence that Isaacson’s book was timed to coincide with the auction of Leonardo’s last painting in private hands — the Salvator Mundi was auctioned at Christie’s.
The painting ended up going to Saudi Arabian Prince Badr bin Abdullah, and the Wikipedia page about it keeps tabs on its whereabouts and exhibition status.
Good news — Leonardo as Leonardo may be coming to a screen near you! Leonardo DiCaprio, who is named after da Vinci, is going to be starring in a movie about his namesake, and it will be based upon Isaacson’s book.
Given what Leonardo da Vinci himself documented about his own exotic exploits, well, that should be “interesting” — it would be hard to be boring. Okay, it has the potential to be pretty gruesome, but fascinating nonetheless.
If you want to know about Leonardo da Vinci, but can’t wait for the movie, here’s a link to an older documentary.
If you would like a more in-depth explanation of the science that earned the Nobel Prize, here’s a video of Walter Issacson interviewing Kip Thorne that covers the fascinating story of how LIGO helped prove something predicted by Einstein a century ago.
Of course, Kip Thorne isn’t new to the public eye. If he looks a bit familiar to you, it could be because you saw him on TV back in 2014 during numerous interviews where he explained the awesome contributions that he made to the movie Interstellar. Here’s a link to a short clip from the Interstellar Featurette that explains how he helped make the movie spectacular to watch and contributed to a better understanding of physics too!
Today’s physics is “probably” not the kind of thing that you, or at least your parents and grandparents, learned about in school (unless you happen to be a Physicist). Even the most casual science buff knows that today it’s all about exotic stuff like dark matter (NASA), ghost particles (FermiLab) and “spooky action at a distance” (MIT).
There’s been a lot of developments on all of these fronts, so here are some intriguing updates from the cutting edge of physics.
Dark
One big story that made the news is that the Dark Energy Survey has released a new “Dark Matter Map of the Universe.” Of course, by definition, that’s pretty hard to do, but they did it.
The Dark Energy Survey used good old astronomy to find dark matter, but Motherboard did a fantastic feature on an underground science laboratory called SNOLAB that takes a very different approach to finding dark matter and pesky things like neutrinos.
Scientists from University of Chicago’s Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics announced a new development in the search for the the elusive, ghostly neutrinos. The first link is to a video that provides an overview of what they did, and the second link to a video and accompanying story from the University of Chicago gives more background.
One of the big science stories in the news now is that Earth’s Moon has more water than scientists expected. Here is a link to just one of the hundreds of stories flooding news feeds.
A story about unexpected amounts of water on our Moon is certainly noteworthy, but it’s not the first time that a slew of news stories have heralded an unexpected abundance of water on the moon. In fact, it’a almost becoming a yearly ritual during the Northern Hemisphere’s late spring to mid-summer sluggish news season (probably not coincidentally, also highly correlated with summer vacation season).
For example, this article from Science Magazine about water in volcanic materials on the Moon made the rounds of news media throughout the first half of summer of 2011.
NASA’s Goddard Space Center posted this video about the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s (NASA) findings regarding water on the Moon in June, 2013. Predictably, the story made the rounds that summer.
Of course, “scientific knowledge for the sake of knowledge” is wonderful stuff, but the real kicker to all of the stories is that unexpectedly high amounts of water on the Moon means that humans are much more likely to be able to establish viable bases there, and so plans for Colonization of the Moon are rendered far more realistic.
So walking on the Moon “may” become less the stuff of hypothetical dreams than it has been since the Apollo 17 astronauts were last there back in 1972. Something to look forward to, right? Well, at least it is if you happen to be an astronaut or have mega bucks, but that’s another story…
In the meantime, us Earth-bound folk are going to have to continue to make do with a combination of real recordings and simulated experiences. Here’s a link to a great two minute 360° video that does a fine job of combining both types of experiences.
You’ve probably heard that NASA has found a trove of “Earth-like” planets circling the TRAPPIST-1 system roughly 40 light years away, but just in case you haven’t, here’s a short video from NASA/JPL about the discovery.
Most entertainingly, here’s a 360° YouTube video published by NASA/JPL that let’s you experience an artist’s conception of the view from the 4th planet in the system.
This 360-degree panorama depicts the surface of a newly detected planet, TRAPPIST-1d, part of a seven planet system some 40 light years away. You can explore this artist’s rendering of an alien world by moving the view using your mouse or your mobile device. The depiction is based on the latest scientific data about this planetary system, and this world’s sister planets can be seen as bright points of light in a dark sky. Each world is roughly in Earth’s size range, in terms of both mass and diameter. Further observations will be needed to determine whether any or all of these worlds might be habitable.
There are even some augmented reality apps out there that go a step further and let you experience your own world “through the eyes” of animals (Android, iOS).
Is “animal vision” a killer app for AR? Probably not, but still, it’s pretty cool!
If you really get into this stuff, there’s a ton of “traditional” media about it.
For example, here’s a link to a video that covers the science behind how we know how animals like bees, reptiles, cats, fish and insects see the world.
Molecular machines have been around for a while, but these little wonders are getting the public’s attention today because a trio of scientists were just awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their progress in the area. Here’s a link to a video and other resources about this neat development.
The “Little Mission that Could” has come to an end, but what a mission it was to watch! In honor of the success, here are some videos and articles about the many, many accomplishments.
Note This content is not very elaborate as well as a bit dated, but it is important for historical purposes. It was the first adventure (a.k.a. Post) on this iteration of the Cosma website way back in September 15, 2016.
