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Posts tagged science
Four nights a year, the streets of Manhattan’s grid become the site for a spectacular sunset phenomenon known as “Manhattanhenge.” As Director of the Hayden Planetarium Neil deGrasse Tyson, who discovered the phenomenon and coined the term “Manhattanhenge,” explains in his Hayden Planetarium blog, Manhattanhenge takes place “when the setting Sun aligns precisely with the Manhattan street grid, creating a radiant glow of light across Manhattan’s brick and steel canyons, simultaneously illuminating both the north and south sides of every cross street of the borough’s grid. A rare and beautiful sight.”
View Manhattanhenge tonight at 8:17 pm and tomorrow at 8:16 pm. Tweet your photos of the phenomenon @AMNH with the hashtag #Manhattanhenge or email them to comments@amnh.org for a chance to win two tickets to our Manhattanhenge program on July 11.
Photo courtesy of Katie Killary
Floaters are deposits of various size, shape, consistency, refractive index, and motility within the eye’s vitreous humour, which is normally transparent. At a young age the vitreous is perfectly transparent but, during life, imperfections gradually develop. The common type of floater, which is present in most people’s eyes, is due to degenerative changes of the vitreous humour. The perception of floaters is known as myodesopsia. Floaters are visible because of the shadows they cast on the retina or their refraction of the light that passes through them, and can appear alone or together with several others in one’s field of vision. They may appear as spots, threads, or fragments of cobwebs, which float slowly before the observer’s eyes. Since these objects exist within the eye itself, they are not optical illusions but are entoptic phenomena.
(Source: longcatislooooong)
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The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists warned on Monday.
Scientific estimates differ but the world’s temperature looks set to rise by six degrees Celsius by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are allowed to rise uncontrollably. As emissions grow, scientists say the world is close to reaching thresholds beyond which the effects on the global climate will be irreversible, such as the melting of polar ice sheets and loss of rainforests.
”This is the critical decade. If we don’t get the curves turned around this decade we will cross those lines,” said Will Steffen, executive director of the Australian National University’s climate change institute, speaking at a conference in London. Despite this sense of urgency, a new global climate treaty forcing the world’s biggest polluters, such as the United States and China, to curb emissions will only be agreed on by 2015 - to enter into force in 2020.
”We are on the cusp of some big changes,” said Steffen. “We can … cap temperature rise at two degrees, or cross the threshold beyond which the system shifts to a much hotter state.”
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In this NOVA video short, learn how to extract your own DNA using just a few common household items.
Studies in Ancient DNA going on now.
After you watch this video, will you be digging out your microscope to study your DNA? What do you see?
(Source: youtube.com)
ELECTRIC BLUE This new “Blue Marble” image of Earth was produced by the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s most recently launched Earth-observing satellite, Suomi NPP. The composite image was assembled from image data captured from a number of swaths of Earth’s surface on Jan. 4 and is the best-known high-resolution images of our planet. (Photo: NASA / NOAA / Suomi VPP / VIRS / Norman Kuring via MSNBC.com)
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(Source: inothernews)
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Aperture is offering a job…you should turn it down, be smart.
Turn down an Aperture job? For shame! Everyone should take it! FOR SCIENCE!
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The race to discover gravity waves may be getting closer to the finish line with scientists successfully squeezing light using quantum mechanics.
It will allow us to test theories such as time standing still on the surface of black holes and space getting warped to the most extreme degree possible.
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(via bringtheruckuss)
