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This clip is filmed at 2000 frames a second and shows an up-close, slo-mo view of a match being lit. The match head takes two minutes to fully ignite, check it out below.
I wonder what would happen if a million match heads were lit up? The Mythbusters have been there, exploded that. It was part of their YouTube special in 2009. You can find that video after the jump.
Nikon’s “Small World” is an international photomicrography competition. A photomicrograph (or micrograph) is an image that is taken through a microscope, and Small World has been celebrating the professional researchers and the part-time hobbyists who have dedicated their time to taking these amazingly minuscule photos. The competition is in 36th year now and Nikon has just released its 2010 winners list.
The top prize in photomicroscopy went to Mr Jonas King at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, USA who photographed a mosquito’s heart at 100x magnification. The vibrant photograph is created using a technique that tags a specific part of the subject with fluorescent molecules, and when the subject is illuminated with light of a certain colour, the fluorescent molecules emit a color that is different to light that was previously absorbed. The result is seen below.
See the top five Small World photomicrographs after the jump.
If you watched the 10 best jumps ever compilation, you may have marvelled at Joseph Kittinger’s most amazing high altitude jump. Kittinger holds records for the highest parachute jump (31,300 m), longest freefall (4 minutes, 36 seconds), and fastest speed achieved by a human being through the atmosphere (988 km/h). 50 years on and a challenger enters.
Ace BASE jumper Felix Baumgartner has teamed up with Red Bull and the Kittinger himself in attempt to make history. The mission is called Red Bull Stratos and would have Baumgartner ascending to a height of 36,600 m above the earth and jumping off the gondola. His stratospheric freefall jump would then beat Kittinger’s record and would make Baumgartner first human to break the speed of sound with his own body.
Red Bull Stratos was announced in January of this year and the record-breaking attempt will take place between September 20th and December 31st. Check out this little clip as they prepare for their mission to the edge of space.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyGmTV0q2kY
More info about the mission can be found at Red Bull Stratos.
[via The Awesomer]
Douglas Adams once said, “Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the drug store, but that’s just peanuts to space.” We’re discovering new spacey things all the time as seen in this fantastic visualization that captures in time-lapse the asteroid discoveries over the past 30 years. It starts off with slow with less than 10000 discoveries in the early 80s but more waves become visible with technological advances in the decades that follow.
As asteroids are discovered, they are highlighted white and change colour depending on whether their orbit crosses that of Earth (called “earth crossers” and shown in red) or approaches Earth (shown in yellow). All other asteroids are highlighted in green.
See Asteroid Discovery From 1980 – 2010 below.
[via Buzzfeed]
In 1968, astronaut William Anders aboard the Apollo 8 mission took a image of the Earth as their spacecraft orbited the moon. Officially known as NASA image AS8-14-2383, the famous image came to be called an earthrise. 40 years later, a Japanese lunar orbit spacecraft called SELENE captured high-definition video of an earthrise. Check out the beautiful scene below.
In 2007, the same orbiter captured an earthset.
If you liked that, you might also enjoy a time-lapse video of a day to night Earth cycle as seen from the International Space Station. See that video after the jump.
Nick Veasey isn’t a traditional photographer. In the same vein as microscopist Alan Jaras who uses a scanning electron microsope to create a story about exploration, Veasey also makes uses of medical equipment to produce some unconventional art.
Veasey left the world of standard photography behind when he was asked to X-ray a cola can for a television show. Since then he has created X-ray photographs of everyday objects from mp3 players, toys, and clothes to all manner of plant life and animals. His experimentation has led to view the innards of larger subjects like motor vehicles, an office building, and even to capture the anatomy of a Boeing 777!
Veasey uses industrial x-ray machines and in the case of the airplane, 500 individual films were processed and then joined together on the computer to create the composite shot. For his “human” subjects, he has the option of using skeletons in rubber suits or cadavers. He reportedly has eight hours in which to pose and photograph the cadaver before rigor mortis sets in. I don’t know about you, but I find that a little macabre. In any case, the results are amazing to see. This is what he has to say about his art:
My work is real. X-Ray is an honest process. It shows things for what they are, what they are made of. I love that. It balances all that glossy, superficial bollocks. I’m real and straightforward. And so is my work.
Have a look at some of this most fascinating x-ray photographs after the jump.
Black Rain is a short film by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt from the art duo, Semiconductor. They sourced the images from the satellites used in NASA’s STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) mission that traced the flow of energy and matter from the Sun to Earth.
Working with STEREO scientists, Semiconductor collected all the HI image data to date, revealing the journey of the satellites from their initial orientation, to their current tracing of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Solar wind, CMEs (coronal mass ejections), passing planets and comets orbiting the sun can be seen as background stars and the milky way pass by.
Have a look at Black Rain below.
[via CreativeApplications]
Launched on April 5th and having landed on April 20th, Discovery’s flight STS-131 marks the longest mission for the orbiter. During the six week that photographers Scott Andrews, his son Philip Scott Andrew, and Stan Jirman spent in and around the Orbiter Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, they took thousands of photos of the staff preparing Discovery for the mission.
The photographers condensed their shots into a glorious four-minute time-lapse video that chronicles Discovery’s trip from the processing facility to the pad, and eventually to the launch itself. It’s quite amazing to watch – there isn’t any audio on the clip,so we’d suggest Black Sabbath’s Into the Void as a good accompaniment. Check out Go For Launch! below.
BONUS: While we’re on on the topic of NASA, two of their satellites have been monitoring the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The movement of the spill has been captured in images which since been compiled into a time-lapse video. See that after the jump.
Teachers around the world, you best avert your eyes. We know at times science can be difficult to understand at times, and a Tumblr blog called Fake Science is attempting to take a little of the confusion out of the subject by giving you trivia that is outrageously false but so very amusing. The misleading factoids cover a variety of topics such the key ingredients of volcanic explosions to how fish breathe underwater to the amazing tech behind 3D glasses.
Have a look at some of these factoids after the jump.
On February 11th, NASA launched the the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), a spacecraft designed to study our sun. It’s on a five-year mission gathering data that will aid scientists to better understand how solar activity affects our climate and our lives. The highly advanced SDO is said to take images that are 10 times better than current HD TVs and will be sending back a whopping 1.5 terabytes of data back to Earth each and every each day!
The solar-observing spacecraft has been beaming back early images and videos and they look quite amazing. Have a look for yourself, after the jump.
