Author Archives: Chompsky

Behold: the 2004 Mercedes Benz Unimog U500 – one of the best and toughest trucks on the planet.

Built by Daimler-Benz (and subsequently Mercedes-Benz) since 1948, the Unimog has performed heavy duty work in various guises from military to farm service and this late model has been extensively modified.

To wit: a crew cab in place of the normal two seater cab, the 3-way tilting bed from a short wheelbase Unimog, a custom rollbar, LED lighting rig and a huge 6.4-litre diesel inline six with eight-speed manual transmission driving all four wheels via portal axles to maximize ground clearance.

In short, a landscape gardener’s Rolls Royce.

Sold for €181,000.

uncrate

An excerpt from the famous ‘Pale Blue Dot’ speech given by the late American cosmologist and astrophysicist Carl Sagan, animated as a tribute by Vishal Varghese. To wit:

Carl Sagan, the astronomer of the people strived to untangle the subtle complexities of modern physics and present them to the everyday audience. He believed that in a world where knowledge was available freely to every person seeking it.

curiousbrain

Behold: the Aston Martin Valhalla Coupe – a hypercar developed alongside the (similarly Norse god-themed) Valkyrie.

Powered by a F1-inspired hybrid twin-turbo V6 and designed to compete with Ferrari’s SF90 Stradale and McLaren’s next P1, 500 of these mid-engined track rockets will be produced (with a possible convertible option to follow).

uncrate

An image of the magnetic field at the centre of the Milky Way taken using a specialised HAWC+ camera by NASA’s 747 mounted observatory SOFIA. To wit:

HAWC+ maps magnetism by observing polarized infrared light emitted by elongated dust grains rotating in alignment with the local magnetic field.

Now at our Milky Way’s center is a supermassive black hole with a hobby of absorbing gas from stars it has recently destroyed. Our galaxy’s black hole, though, is relatively quiet compared to the absorption rate of the central black holes in active galaxies.

The featured image gives a clue as to why — a surrounding magnetic field may either channel gas into the black hole — which lights up its exterior, or forces gas into an accretion-disk holding pattern, causing it to be less active — at least temporarily.

Inspection of the featured image — appearing perhaps like a surreal mashup of impasto art and gravitational astrophysics — brings out this telling clue by detailing the magnetic field in and around a dusty ring surrounding Sagittarius A*, the black hole in our Milky Way’s center.

(Image: NASA, SOFIA, Hubble)

apod

Breathing, walking, being interested in things, experiencing fear: all unconscious and automatic things, and therefore – strictly speaking – not you, sez exurb1a. To wit:

Consciousness is a bit like poop. It’s a mysterious internal process, and if you talk about it at parties you’ll stop getting invited to parties.

Fair enough.

Previously: You Will Never Do Anything Remarkable (Probably)