Author Archives: Chompsky

‘L’eau De Loire’ – a recently completed mural by Spanish artist Taquen on a 35 metre water tower at Gien in north central France featuring ospreys, herons and terns in flight. Of this paean to feathered visitors to the nearby Loire river he sez:

For me, movement is a basic form of knowledge, to get to know myself and my environment and learn to respect it. Birds are great symbols of freedom, animals that migrate thousands of kilometres each year with no one who can stop them.

colossal

Ewoks out of shot.

Behold: a memorable shot taken by photographer Will Godward who knew that celestial objects directly overhead are seen more clearly because their light is scattered least by atmospheric air. And so, around midnight in Southern Australia….

Chasing his mental picture, he ventured deep inside the Kuipto Forest where tall radiata pines blocked out much of the sky — but not in this clearing. There, through a window framed by trees, he captured his envisioned combination of local and distant nature. Sixteen exposures of both trees and the Milky Way Galaxy were recorded. Antares is the bright orange star to left of our Galaxy’s central plane, while Alpha Centauri is the bright star just to the right of the image center. The direction toward our Galaxy’s center is below Antares. Although in a few hours the Earth’s rotation moved the Galactic plane up and to the left — soon invisible behind the timber, his mental image was secured forever — and is featured here.

(Image: Will Godward)

apod

Behold: a truly bizarre recent discovery by a team of scientists in Bulgaria, Poland, the UK and China.

It seems – when ordinary oil droplets floating in soapy water are cooled to around 2-8°C – they change shape, grow tentacles and propel themselves around like sentient marine life. To wit:

Some of the particles’ facets grow while other shrink, producing a variety of geometrical forms such as kites, isosceles triangles and spiked tetrahedra. Then, from some of the sharp corners emerge tentacle-like strands, as if being extruded from a nozzle. As they grow, the strands bend into undulating shapes — and the droplets start to swim, propelled through the fluid by the tentacles’ extension.

kottke