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Run by Henry Reich, MinutePhysics is a YouTube channel that aims to convey the theories of physics in short, simple, one-minute explanations.
There have been 35 videos thus far and Reich has gotten to grips with interesting issues such as Schrödinger’s Cat, why neutrinos are the vampires of the physics world, and how we use what we can see to observe things that we can’t see. Intrigued? See the answers to those questions in the MinutePhysics videos after the jump.
We’ve seen enough documentaries to know that the universe is rather large. These shows have compared the relative sizes of the planetary bodies in our solar system and taken us on trips to distant worlds in outer space. And projects like THINGS (The HI Nearby Galaxy Survey) have gone to great ends to catalogue the galaxies that have been observed thus far.
The Scale of the Universe is an informative Flash that shows the universe from the tiniest particles at fractions of a yoctometre (10-24 of a metre) to humans to giant nebulas that look like testicles to the very edge of what we can observe, many many gigaparsecs away.
Take that intergalactic trip in fullscreen here.
The animation was created by a 14-year-old Cary Huang, with help from his twin brother Michael.
[via PS3ZA]
Cambridge University’s Under the Microscope series takes a close-up look at the world through the lens of a microscope. The latest video shot by PhD student Alex Ritter captures the showdown between a dangerous cancer cell and a Cytotoxic T cell, a special type of white blood cell that is one-tenth the width of a human hair. Its mission in life is to destroy virally infected cells. Professor Gillian Griffiths of Cambridge University explains:
Cells of the immune system protect the body against pathogens. If cells in our bodies are infected by viruses, or become cancerous, then killer cells of the immune system identify and destroy the affected cells. Cytotoxic T cells are very precise and efficient killers. They are able to destroy infected or cancerous cells, without destroying healthy cells surrounding them. The Wellcome Trust funded laboratory of Professor Gillian Griffiths, at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, investigates just how this is accomplished. By understanding how this works, we can develop ways to control killer cells. This will allow us to find ways to improve cancer therapies, and ameliorate autoimmune diseases caused when killer cells run amok and attack healthy cells in our bodies.”
The video is filmed at 92 times faster than real time.
See more Under the Microscope videos on YouTube.
[via io9]
On December 7th in 1972, far far above our heads, Apollo 17 blasted off from the Earth on its way to the Moon. About five hours into the journey, the spaceship was 45,000 kilometres away and at the point where it was facing the Earth, the astronauts onboard took photos of our planet. One of those photos (AS17-148-22727) which showed a fully-illuminated Earth looked like a glass marble to the astronauts, and is famously called The Blue Marble.
NASA has continued The Blue Marble series with similar photos in 2000, 2002, 2007, 2010, and the two most recent images date from just a few days ago. The initial image was captured by the Earth-observing satellite Suomi NPP and focussed on North and Central America. Due to popular demand NASA released a second image, this time displaying Africa, Saudi Arabia, and India to the east. Have a look at these two amazing images after the jump.
If you enjoyed John Boswell’s Ode to the Brain, you may like this too. Since 2009, the composer has been creating the Symphony of Science set of videos with the aim of teaching the fundamentals of science through the medium of music.
In Onward to the Edge, the twelfth installment in the series, a trio of auto-tuned scientists wax lyrical about space exploration and the wonders of the solar system.
For more info about the project, visit Symphony of Science.
[via Brain Pickings]
Cameramen for BBC One’s seven-part nature series Frozen Planet captured an interesting phenomenon in the freezing waters at Little Razorback Island, in Antarctica. Using a rig of time-lapse equipment, the crew filmed what looks like an icy finger of death as it extended from the ice sheet and touched the sear floor, freezing everything around it.
This icicle of death is called a brinicle. Dr Mark Brandon at the Open University explains how such a brinicle is formed:
In winter, the air temperature above the sea ice can be below -20C, whereas the sea water is only about -1.9C. Heat flows from the warmer sea up to the very cold air, forming new ice from the bottom. The salt in this newly formed ice is concentrated and pushed into the brine channels. And because it is very cold and salty, it is denser than the water beneath.
The result is the brine sinks in a descending plume. But as this extremely cold brine leaves the sea ice, it freezes the relatively fresh seawater it comes in contact with. This forms a fragile tube of ice around the descending plume, which grows into what has been called a brinicle.
See a brinicle forming in this little excerpt from the Frozen Planet series.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMhBuSBemRk
It is the first time that the crew has managed to film a brinicle forming. You can read more about how they captured the footage on the BBC website.
[via +Paul Scott]
Alexander Tsiaras is a whiz at scientific visualization. In his early days, he created lenses for microscopes, most notably for the one that captures the very first images of human eggs in an in vitro fertilisation (IVF) program.
In his presentation from a TED conference in 2010, the scientist talks about how the instruction sets used in creating a human being are so complex that they are beyond our comprehension. It’s mathemagical. He also shows a visualization of the development of the human fetus. See Conception to Birth, Visualized below. Be warned, there are some graphic images of the “expulsion” process.
[via Geeks are Sexy]
Using NASA’s Image Science & Analysis Laboratory as a resource, Vimeo user Michael König compiled footage using photographs taken by the crew on board the International Space Station as the space craft orbited the earth. The video covers the period of August to October, and the shows the flyover over the main continents and a number of aurorae captured over the United States, the south of Australia, and the Indian Ocean.
If you missed all the separate videos (this, that, and the other), here’s a chance to catch König’s compilation that has been refurbished, smoothed, denoised, and deflickered for your viewing pleasure.
[via @paukee]
It’s a city of stars above our heads. The Milky Way is a galaxy that stretches a staggering 600,000 trillion miles from one end to the other. And in this National Geographic TV special, we are taken on a journey through the tumultuous moments in the history of the Milky Way, from the birth of this beautiful spiral galaxy all the way to its eventual death.
One of the images used in the documentary is the 800-million-pixel panorama of the Milky Way created by the Gigagalaxy Zoom project. As grand as the image is, it’s a side-on view of the galaxy that we see and astronomers use all manner of high-tech computer tools to work out what it would like if it were viewed from a bird’s-eye view. Watch part one of Inside the Milky Way below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsSGLmROQUw
Find the other parts after the jump, or you could just buy the blu-ray.
Earlier on this month, YouTube user yesterday2221 used 600 still photos from NASA’s Image Science and Analysis Laboratory and created a time-lapse video of the view from the International Space Station (ISS) as it orbits the Earth at night. If you missed that, refresh your memory.
YouTuber user, isoeph, has collected raw data from the same NASA source to create another time-lapse video, this time of the auroras as they would be as seen from the ISS in its low Earth orbit.
[via PetaPixel]