The Triple Point Of Water

One of the challenges in studying tornadoes is being in the right place at the right time. In that regard, storm chaser Brandon Clement hit the jackpot earlier this week when he captured this footage of a tornado near Sulphur, Oklahoma from his drone. He was able to follow the twister for several minutes until it apparently dissipated. 

Scientists are still uncertain exactly how tornadoes form, but they’ve learned to recognize the key ingredients. A strong variation of wind speed with altitude can create a horizontally-oriented vortex, which a localized updraft of warm, moist air can lift and rotate to vertical, birthing a tornado. These storms most commonly occur in the central U.S. and Canada during springtime, and researchers are actively pursing new ways to predict and track tornadoes, including microphone arrays capable of locating them before they fully form. (Image and video credit: B. Clement; via Earther)

This image shows something spectacular: a massive galaxy cluster that it is warping the space around it! The cluster, whose heart is at the centre of the frame, is named RCS2 J2327, and is one of the most massive clusters known at its distance or beyond.

Massive objects such as RCS2 J2327 have such a strong influence on their surroundings that they visibly warp the space around them. This effect is known as gravitational lensing. In this way, they cause the light from more distant objects to be bent, distorted, and magnified, allowing us to see galaxies that would otherwise be far too distant to detect.

Credit: ESO, ESA/Hubble & NASA

““The reason T-Rex’s have no love life [they have short arms and can’t hold hands] is the same reason second row elements can’t make pi bonds with third row elements [not enough orbital overlap].””

— Organic chemistry prof

If you’re not amazed by the stars on a clear night then we won’t work.

Leidenfrost drops – liquid drops that levitate on a layer of their own vapor over a hot surface – have been all the rage in recent years. We’ve seen how they can be guided, trapped, and self-propelled. What you see here is a bit different. This is a droplet of room-temperature ethanol deposited on a bath of liquid nitrogen. What levitates the droplet in this case is vaporous nitrogen evaporating from the bath. 

The droplet is quickly cooling down; it freezes after its second or third bounce off the side walls of the beaker. What causes the droplet to self-propel is an asymmetry of the thin vapor layer beneath the droplet. As soon as some instability causes a slight difference in the thickness of the vapor layer, that triggers the propulsion, which the drop maintains even after freezing. (Image and research credit: A. Gauthier et al.)

In “Float” artist Susi Sie uses water and oil to create a whimsical landscape of bubbles and droplets. Coalescence is a major player in the action, though Sie uses some clever time manipulations to make her bubbles and droplets multiply as well. Watching coalescence in reverse feels like seeing mitosis happen before your eyes. (Video and image credit: S. Sie)

SNR 0509-67.5: a remnant from a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Team/Kevin M. Gill