Our solar system is a fantastically bizarre place. There are worlds as varied as our imagination can grasp — in fact, they exhibit features we never imagined before we saw them up close. Storms larger than planets, moons with undersurface oceans, lakes of methane, worldlets that occasionally swap places… |
… and that’s just at Saturn. But of all these, if I had to pick, I’d say the strangest place in the entire solar system would be the ringed planet’s distant moon Hyperion. |
Why? Well, maybe this will help: in September, when the Cassini spacecraft was within just 88,000 km (54,000 miles) of the weird little moon, it snapped this picture: |
Just looking at it, you get a sense of strangeness, don’t you? It’s little, only about 270 km (170 miles), but packed into that tiny moon is a Universe of weird. It looks like a sponge! Or more like a piece of packing foam that’s been pinged by a BB gun. It has a very low density — about half that of liquid water, even less dense than water ice, indicating it must not be entirely solid. It’s porous, like a sponge, or a pile of rubble. |
And those craters… they just look funny. They have sharp rims, shallow slopes, and flat bottoms, and it’s thought that this is because of how crunchy Hyperion is Read more at blogs.discovermagazine.com |
Gordon's Makes Us Drunk 1972
duration: 12 min. |
The Guardian's art critic Adrian Searle compares the design and execution of four Raphael tapestries made for the Sistine Chapel almost 500 years ago, at London's Victoria & Albert Museum The Guardian's art critic Adrian Searle compares the design and execution of four Raphael tapestries made for the Sistine Chapel almost 500 years ago, at London's Victoria & Albert Museum |
Regarded as one of the finest of all illuminated manuscripts in existence, the Ottheinrich Bible was thought to have been commissioned in about 1425 by the Royal Court of Bavaria. The unusually large manuscript was not completed until the following century when the German painter and engraver, Mathis Gerung, was offered 60 Rhenish guilders and winter clothes to decorate the text (the employment contract survives to this day). Ottheinrich Bible
(15th-16th century : Bavaria)
 |
| You will be doing yourself a favour if you click through to the enlarged versions. |
The Bible carries the name of the benefactor who supported its completion. Ottheinrich (1502-1559) was the Prince of Neuburg, Elector Palatine, soldier, pilgrim, reformer, art patron (and adopted patron of BibliOdyssey), and the first unambiguously documented owner of the Bible. |
| The enormous book in the German vernacular language (and that only covers the New Testament) was eventually divided in the 19th century and bound into eight manuscripts which had a partially separated journey over the next century and a half. It was only about two years ago that all volumes were reunited when the privately owned sections were purchased by the Bavarian State Library in Munich (noted).Read more at bibliodyssey.blogspot.com |
Senegal's capital city is better known for its music and its tropical beauty, but now a thriving contemporary art scene is attracting enthusiasts from the west
Soon we could all be changing channels with our minds. Researchers in Europe and Japan are developing thought-controlled consumer electronics that will allow us to play games, push buttons and send text messages just by thinking about it. |
And yesterday, the Nikkei daily announced a collaboration between Japanese corporations and universities including Toyota, Honda, Hitachi, the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Osaka University and the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International to develop similar technology that in addition to thought-controlled games and phones, would develop car navigation systems
that search for restaurants when the driver thinks of eating
and central air units that cool down or heat up when the person thinks they feel to warm or cold. Read more at news.discovery.com |
Tom Lowe has done it again: another jaw-dropping astronomy timelapse. Wow, that’s simply stunning. The music is beautiful and driving, too; it’s from "The Fountain", a movie I quite enjoyed. |
The people's summit to tackle climate change is a radical, transformative response to the failure of the Copenhagen club Bolivia's climate summit has had moments of joy, levity and absurdity. Yet underneath it all you can feel the emotion that provoked this gathering: rage against helplessness. It's little wonder. Bolivia is in the midst of a dramatic political transformation, one that has nationalised key industries and elevated the voices of indigenous peoples as never before. But when it comes to Bolivia's most pressing, existential crisis – the fact that its glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, threatening the water supply in two major cities – Bolivians are powerless to do anything to change their fate on their own. |
| because the actions causing the melting are taking place not in Bolivia but on the highways and in the industrial zones of heavily industrialised countries |
| argued passionately for the kind of deep emissions cuts that could avert catastrophe. They were politely told that the political will in the north just wasn't thereRead more at www.guardian.co.uk |
'Toxic stew' of chemicals causing male fish to carry eggs in testes.
Intersex fish, found across the US, result from a mix of drugs that mimic natural hormones, say scientists
More than 80% of the male bass fish in Washington's major river are now exhibiting female traits such as egg production because of a "toxic stew" of pollutants, scientists and campaigners reported yesterday. |
Intersex fish probably result from drugs, such as the contraceptive pill, and other chemicals being flushed into the water and have been found right across the US. |
The Potomac Conservancy, which focuses on Washington DC's river, called for new research to determine what was causing male smallmouth bass to carry immature eggs in their testes. "We have not been able to identify one particular chemical or one particular source," said Vicki Blazer, a fish biologist with the US geological survey. "We are still trying to get a handle on what chemicals are important." |
| But she said early evidence pointed to a mix of chemicals – commonly used at home as well as those used in large-scale farming operations – causing the deformities |
4,000-year-old lentils ready to be planted in Kütahya
Plants grown from lentils discovered during a dig in Kütahya and believed to be thousands of years old will soon be planted, scientists have announced. | Speaking to the press, Dr. Nüket Bingöl of the biology department at Dumlupınar University said the lentils, which were found in the Seyitömer district during a dig by the university’s archaeology department, were germinated four months ago using a tissue culture method. “We have in hand 17 [plants grown from the] 4,000-year-old lentils,” he said. “Now we’re going to plant our sprouts in the field and try to get seeds from them. … Our plants are living in a sterile environment, but we don’t know what will happen when they’re planted in the field.” |
| scientists say the seeds display morphological differences from the lentil plants of today. An archaeological team from Dumlupınar University had found a container holding seeds during an excavation in Seyitömer. While many were burned and useless, three of them were not and formed the basis for the current projectRead more at www.todayszaman.com |
|
