What I post on this blog, mostly anything and everything. I am going to try and post more personal things as that is the purpose of a blog after all.
Photoset reblogged from The Science of Reality with 1,856 notes
This is my current little project I’ve got going on, I have a huge list of scientists of various disciplines I’m slowly getting through and putting up on my Redbubble store. When I’ve finished my list I’ll start making sets to sell, but for now they are just available individually on tshirts.
Source: mind-heart
Photo reblogged from Quantumaniac with 84 notes
Newly Discovered Mineral from Beginning of the Solar System
Hidden within a rock from space is a mineral previously unknown to science: panguite.
The new mineral was found embedded in the Allende meteorite, which fell to Earth in 1969. Since 2007, geologist Chi Ma of Caltech has been probing the meteorite with a scanning electron microscope, discovering nine new materials, including panguite.
Ma and his team have determined that panguite was one of the first solid materials to coalesce in our solar system, roughly 4.567 billion years ago. The mineral’s name is a reference to Pan Gu, a primitive, hairy giant from Chinese mythology who separated yin and yang with a swing of his enormous axe, thereby creating the Earth and sky.
Panguite’s primordial nature means that it was actually around before the Earth and other planets formed, meaning it can help scientists learn more about the conditions in the cloud of gas and dust that gave rise to our solar system.
Geology geeks can note that the mineral’s chemical name is (Ti4+,Sc,Al,Mg,Zr,Ca)1.8O3, meaning that it contains some familiar elements like oxygen, magnesium, and aluminum, but also some more exotic ones like zirconium and scandium. Zirconium in particular is a key element that can help scientists decipher the environment before and during the solar system’s formation.
The International Mineralogical Association’s Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature, and Classification has approved the new mineral and its name and a paper describing its properties was published online June 26 in American Mineralogist.
Photo reblogged from Quantumaniac with 488 notes
The Virus That Might Kill Your Computer on July 9th (And How to Stop It!)
It sounds like one of those annoying chain e-mails that show up from technically-challenged acquaintances: “The FBI Will Take Your Computer Offline July 9 If It Has A Virus! Visit This Site Immediately To Check!! Forward This To Everyone You Know!!!”
But the Federal Bureau of Investigation really has posted a warning on its site about the risk of “DNSChanger” malware, which really will result in your computer getting disconnected from the Web on July 9, if you don’t clean it up.
The story began last November when the Bureau announced it had busted a four-year-old Estonia-based conspiracy. The suspects had infected about 4 million computers — some 500,000 in the United States — with malware called DNSChanger (also referred to as Alureon) that diverted victims to scam sites.
This “rootkit” malware was usually delivered as a fake download for Windows or Mac OS X that then silently altered the Domain Name System (DNS) settings on computers and even some wireless routers. That’s about the most serious compromise an Internet-connected machine can suffer; when DNS stops correctly translating domain names like discovery.com to machine-readable Internet Protocol addresses like 63.240.215.85, you no longer know what sites you’re dealing with.
But once an infected machine had been cuffed to DNSChanger’s rogue servers, shutting it off would effectively unplug it from the Internet. To give unaware victims time to clean up their systems, the FBI secured a court order requiring the Internet Systems Consortium, a non-profit Net-architecture firm, to take over and sanitize those servers.
But all bad things must end; after one stay of execution, ISC is now set to turn off the DNSChanger servers on July 9. At that point, any infected machine will only be able to connect to numerical IP addresses, essentially, a rotary-dial version of the Internet.
Early advice on checking for a DNSChanger infection required a fair degree of technical skill, but now you just need to be able to read one line of text or know the difference between green and red. Visit www.dns-ok.us; if you see a green background to the image on that page and the words “DNS Resolution = GREEN,” you’re safe. (Your Internet provider may also offer a similar service; Comcast subscribers, for example, can check their computers at amibotted.comcast.net.)
If you see otherwise, you have a month and change to fix the problem. Since DNSChanger can disable security programs, you may not be able to do this the easy way, by clicking a “scan” button in your anti-virus app. You can try specialized DNSChanger-removal tools from such firms as SecureMac or run general-purpose anti-rootkit software like MalwareBytes’ Anti-Malware or Kaspersky Labs’ TDSSKiller.
The DNS Changer Working Group, created by Internet-security experts to help clean up the problem, has also set up a page with links to manual malware-cleanup instructions from Microsoft and others. In a worst-case scenario, you may need to reinstall your computer’s operating system and software from scratch, using either the discs that came with the computer or the recovery partition on its hard drive.
But that still beats having a computer that can only navigate the Internet by numbers. So if you have friends or family members online who might not know to check for this problem, please forward this post to them. But hold the exclamation points.
Photoset reblogged from Quantumaniac with 717 notes
The “Impossible Buildings”
Barcelona-based artist and photographer Victor Enrich created these intriguing works of art through a combination of photography and 3D digital rendering. With over a decade of professional experience in the 3D architectural visualization field, Victor is able to bring a true sense of photorealism to his ‘impossible’ (rather highly improbable) buildings.
Victor has an extensive 37-image gallery on his website that’s worth checking out if the series below interests you. Enjoy!
Photo reblogged from Scinerds with 777 notes
The Candle Problem
Given a book of matches, a box of thumbtacks, and a candle, how can you fix the candle to the wall so that its wax won’t drip onto the table below?
See Answer Below
Pin the box to the wall, put the candle in the box, and light it.
In experiments, Gestalt psychologist Karl Duncker found that most subjects instead tried to pin the candle directly to the wall or to use melted wax to affix it there (neither worked). Duncker called this “functional fixedness” — a “mental block against using an object in a new way that is required to solve a problem.” In this case, subjects had “fixated” on the box’s function as a container, which prevented them from considering it as a platform. If the box was empty at the start of the experiment, they were more likely to find the correct solution.
In a 2000 study, psychologists Tim German and Margaret Defeyter found the 6- and 7-year-olds show signs of functional fixedness, but 5-year-olds appear immune to it: “Rather than taking into account only the properfunction of an object, they adopt and agents-goals view of function in which any intentional use of an object can be its function.”
Source: quantumaniac
Photoset reblogged from Quantumaniac with 105 notes
Awesome Inflatable Water Park
This awesome inflatable water park is made by a company called Wibit. The park and parts are fully modular, allowing you to customize your park with an assortment of inflatable combinations.
Photoset reblogged from Quantumaniac with 368 notes
Incredible High-Speed Photographs of Paint
German artist Markus Reugels specializes in high-speed and macro photography, and has taken these beautiful photographs of paint at high speeds. By utilizing the bass-lines from techno tracks, Reugels has been able to create these images.
Photoset reblogged from Quantumaniac with 301 notes
The Funnel Wall - Plays Music When It Rains
Known as the Funnel Wall, this is a Rube-Goldberg inspired wall machine at the Kunsthof-Passage in Neustadt, Germany. Due to the ‘Mouse Trap’ like system devised on the front of the building, the wall itself creates music when it rains.
Photo reblogged from Quantumaniac with 130 notes
Tachyons
A purely speculative particle, which is presumed to travel faster than light. According to Einstein’s equations of special relativity, a particle with an imaginary rest mass and a velocity greater than c would have a real momentum and energy. Ironically, the greater the kinetic energy of a tachyon, the slower it travels, approaching c asymptotically (from above) as its energy approaches infinity. Alternatively, a tachyon losing kinetic energy travels faster and faster, until as the kinetic energy approaches zero, the speed of the tachyon approaches infinity; such a tachyon with zero energy and infinite speed is called transcendent.
Special relativity does not seem to specifically exclude tachyons, so long as they do not cross the lightspeed barrier and do not interact with other particles to cause causality violations. Quantum mechanical analyses of tachyons indicate that even though they travel faster than light they would not be able to carry information faster than light, thus failing to violate causality. But in this case, if tachyons are by their very nature indetectable, it brings into question how real they might be.
Photoset reblogged from Quantumaniac with 69 notes
Digits - Stay Warm, Stay Connected
“Don’t let the cold keep you from your connections. Digits are mini conductive pins that attach to the gloves you already have so you can use electronic touch screen devices — like smartphones and MP3 players — even when it’s below zero. Digits are made of conductive silicone with a metal pin on the back for attaching to your glove.
Photoset reblogged from Shychemist with 225 notes
Ohh Sheldon ♥ Exactly this..
Sometimes I feel like this.
Source: felicity-avenal
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