Joss Fong from Vox Video Lab explores the far more complex truth behind the Western cultural stereotype of Asian people interchanging the ‘L’ and ‘R’ sound. To wit:
Japanese, Korean, and Chinese are completely different languages that each handle L-sound and R-sounds differently.
A ten minute time-lapse of the entire 13.8 billion year history of the Universe, visualised by remixer John ‘Melodysheep’ Boswell.
Narration by Brian Cox, Carl Sagan, and David Attenborough.Each second is 22 million years. We all appear right at the end.
Want to see what happens next? Check his time-lapse of the future, right up to the heat death of the Universe, many trillions of years from now.
German educational design studio Kurzgesagt ponders the following extremely important scientific problems:
What happens if we make a huge pile from all 15,000 nuclear bombs and pull the trigger? And what happens if we make an even bigger pile?
Previously: Self Aware?
Behold: IC 405, aka the Flaming Star Nebula – an apparently fiery region surrounding star AE Aurigae. But what looks like fire is not fire. To wit:
Fire, typically defined as the rapid molecular acquisition of oxygen, happens only when sufficient oxygen is present and is not important in such high-energy, low-oxygen environments such as stars. The material that appears assmoke is mostly interstellar hydrogen, but does contain smoke-like dark filaments of carbon-rich dust grains. The bright star AE Aurigae, visible just to the lower right of the image center, is so hot it glows blue, emitting light so energetic it knocks electrons away from surrounding gas. When a proton recaptures an electron, light is emitted, as seen in the surrounding emission nebula. Featured here, the Flaming Star nebula lies about 1,500 light yearsdistant, spans about 5 light years, and is visible with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga).
(Image: Amir Abolfath (TWAN))
Behold: NGC 1333 (in blue) – a reflection nebula at the edge of a large, star-forming molecular cloud in the constellation Perseus, 1000 light years from Earth. To wit:
This striking close-up spans about two full moons on the sky or just over 15 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 1333. It shows details of the dusty region along with telltale hints of contrasty red emission from Herbig-Haro objects, jets and shocked glowing gas emanating from recently formed stars. In fact, NGC 1333 contains hundreds of stars less than a million years old, most stillhidden from optical telescopes by the pervasive stardust. The chaotic environment may be similar to one in which our own Sun formed over 4.5 billion years ago.
(Image Credit & Copyright: Steve Milne, Barry Wilson – Processing: Steve Milne)
Behold: UGC 6945, aka Arp194 – a trio of merging galaxies 570 million light years from Earth. To wit:
Usually when galaxies crash, star formation is confined to galaxy disks or tidal tails. In Arp 194, though, there are bright knots of young stars right in a connecting bridge. Analyses of images and data including the featured image of Arp 194 from Hubble, as well as computer simulations of the interaction, indicate that the bottom galaxy passed right through the top galaxy within the past 100 million years. The result has left a stream of gas that is now falling toward the bottom galaxy. Astronomers hypothesize that stars form in this bridge because of the recent fading of turbulence after the rapid collision. In about a billion years, the galaxies — including a smaller galaxy superposed on the upper galaxy will all merge into one larger galaxy.
(Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing & License: Judy Schmidt)
In the first of a three-part series, German educational design studio Kurzgesagt (and here’s why you should trust what they say) explores the origins of consciousness and takes a closer look at how unaware things became aware.
Previously: Lonely?
Behold: spiral galaxy Messier 106 – a swirling disk of stars and gas dominated by blue spiral arms and red dust lanes near the nucleus. To wit:
The core of M106 glows brightly in radio waves and X-rays where twin jets have been found running the length of the galaxy. An unusual central glow makes M106 one of the closest examples of the Seyfert class of galaxies, where vast amounts of glowing gas are thought to be falling into a central massive black hole. M106, also designated NGC 4258, is a relatively close 23.5 million light years away, spans 60 thousand light years across, and can be seen with a small telescope towards the constellation of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici).
(Image Credit: NASA, ESO , NAOJ, Giovanni Paglioli; Assembling and Processing: R. Colombari and R. Gendler)
A 2018 audio-visual work by Belgian artist Joanie Lemercier that explores the vastness of the Cosmos using 3D orbs and morphing geometries projected onto water particles over a rippling water surface with an accompanying soundscape provided by Paul Jebanasam.
Currently on a tour of the Universe, starting on Earth.
A 360 degree panorama of Perseverance Valley on Mars taken last year by the Opportunity Rover. To wit:
The scene is composed of 354 individual images recorded through 3 different colour filters by the rover’s panoramic camera from May 13 through June 10, 2018. A few frames remain in black and white at the lower left though. Those were obtained through only one filter just before a dust storm engulfed Mars in June 2018, ultimately ending the solar-powered rover’s trailblazing 15 year mission. Just right of center, the annotation identifies Opportunity’s entry point to Perseverance Valley along the Endeavor crater’s western rim. The rover’s tracks begin there, extending from over the horizon toward the far right and its final resting spot on the Red Planet.
Explore the full sized image here.
