Our Galaxy’s Magnetic Field From Planck Https://go.nasa.gov/2quwDLs

Adjustable Wood Lamp ‘Goldberg’

The adjustable ‘Goldberg’ lamp by Atelier Akerboom is a handmade wooden lamp. By adjusting the 31 openings of the lamp you can control how much light it gives out in any direction. The lamp can be used as a hanging (pendant) lamp or as table or floor lamp. The lamp is available in different colors (see information sheet) and in two sizes (30cm or 50cm diameter).

This special design is named after Michael Goldberg (1902-1990) who described the Goldberg polyhedron – a convex polyhedron made from hexagons and pentagons – first in 1937.

https://www.etsy.com/de/listing/267492092/adjustable-lamp-goldberg?ref=shop_home_active_2

Cindermedusae - making generative creatures

Unusual fluid behavior observed in microgravity

Normally when a liquid is heated above its boiling point, it evaporates, turning into a vapor. But when scientists recently performed an experiment on the International Space Station (ISS), they observed that the vapor near a heat pipe condensed into a liquid even when the temperature was 160 K above the substance’s normal boiling point. The results show that microgravity significantly alters the processes of evaporation and condensation, but the scientists do not yet have a complete explanation for the phenomenon.

The research team, consisting of scientists from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the NASA Glenn Research Center, have published a paper on the surprising observations in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.

This is not the first time that unexpected behavior in heat pipes, which are devices used to cool components of a spacecraft, has been observed in microgravity. In 2015, many of the same researchers made a related, counterintuitive observation during experiments conducted on the ISS.

At that time, the researchers observed that increasing the heat input to a heat pipe did not cause the device to dry out near the heated end as it does on Earth, but instead it caused liquid accumulation there. At the time, the processes responsible for this phenomenon were not completely understood.

Read more.

Ask Ethan: Does Dark Energy Mean We’re Losing Information About The Universe?

“The universe’s expansion means our visible horizon is retreating; things faraway are vanishing continuously. (Albeit slowly, right now.) This would seem to imply we are losing information about the universe. So why is it the idea of losing information in a black hole’s event horizon is so controversial, if we’re constantly losing information to another horizon?”

As you look to greater and greater distances, you’re looking back in time in the Universe. But thanks to dark energy, what we can see and access today isn’t always going to be accessible. As galaxies grow more distant with the accelerated expansion of the Universe, they eventually recede faster than the speed of light. At present, 97% of the galaxies in the Universe aren’t reachable by us, even at the speed of light. But that isn’t the same as losing information. As a galaxy crosses over the horizon, its information never disappears from the Universe connected to us entirely. Instead, it gets imprinted on the cosmic horizon, the same way that information falling into a black hole gets imprinted on its event horizon. But there’s a fundamental difference between a black hole’s decaying horizon to the cosmic horizon’s eternal persistence, and that makes all the difference.

Come learn why even with dark energy, we don’t lose information about the Universe, but why the black hole information paradox is real!

https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/05/08/hubble-views-the-final-frontier-for-dark-matter/&refURL=&referrer=

Let it go ❄

(snowflake designs by Tomoko Fuae, Joseph Wu, Shuzo Fujimoto, and Dennis Walker)

#snowflakes #origami #paperart #papercraft #paper #art #craft #design #sculpture #daily #illustration #instaart #instaartist #snow #snowflake #winter #ice #frozen #elsa #papersnowflakes

Another Ferrofluid representation

2015 Roundup

Previous years: 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010. Cool things hopefully coming to this space in 2016. In the meantime, SCIENCE!

Ghost particles.

The McGurk effect is an audiovisual illusion that works even when you know how it works. It shows that understanding speech is visual as well as auditory.

True-color composite of Pluto and its moon Charon.

Jamais vu, the evil twin brother of deja vu.

A few amusing math terms, including surreal numbers and the Cox-Zucker Machine.

The solar eclipse of March 20, 2015. Wow, has it been that long already?

How many words for snow do the Eskimos have? Answer: not as many as you think.

God’s number and the Rubik’s Cube.

Trading in futures in a feudal Japanese rice market.

Quite a few of you have been messaging me using the new messaging system on Tumblr. I can’t respond to all of you if all you say is “hi”–honestly, what did you expect? But if you have any feedback on what you’d like to see here, feel free to do so. See you in 2016, may it be another great year for science!

two patterns