Meteorite Almost Hits Norwegian Skydiver

When a meteoroid enters the Earth’s atmosphere, it slows down and ionizes molecules around it; it is this blazing track across the sky that is called a meteor. When the light disappears, the meteorite enters the stage called "dark flight"; it then no longer travels at an angle, but falls straight down.

“It has never happened before that a meteorite has been filmed during dark flight; this is the first time in world history,” said Amundsen. That fact means that the meteorite, which Amundsen says would normally be worth a few hundred thousand kroner, is actually far more valuable than its weight would suggest.

Gravity Represented through Artwork

Shizouka-based designer Kouichi Okamoto of Kyouei Design became inspired by gravity and created the Magnetic Field Record, a mobile artwork that offers a new look at gravity.

The overturned bottle on one side of the contraption is filled with sumi ink, balanced by a large magnet on the other end. Ink slowly drips out, initially slowly and then more closely together, as the mobile contraption rotates. The shift in weight causes the bottle to raise up, shrinking the diameter of the circle.

Curiosity's First Year in Two Minutes

The past year, the Mars rover Curiosity has been driving around the surface of Mars, drilling and collecting samples (and every once in awhile drawing inappropriate body parts for fun).

JPL just published a video shortening the past year in Curiosity's journey down to 548 images, taken with the fish-eye lens mounted on the rover's back. It's a great first-person look at Curiosity as it collects its first samples and explores the surface of Mars.

Zero Gravity Water Wringing

The Canadian Space Agency published a video this week of Astronaut Chris Hadfield performing a simple science experiment aboard the ISS. Last year, the Canadian Space Agency challenged young Canadians to design an experiment which could be performed by an astronaut using only materials he had at hand. This winning experiment was designed by grade 10 students from Fall River, Nova Scotia. Watch the video to see their experiment on surface tension in space using a wet washcloth. You can read more about the experiment here.

Science Education Kickstarter

Wonderfest, the nonprofit San Francisco Bay Area Beacon of Science, has just begun a Kickstarter campaign to support a new, online, video series called "Radical Physics." Alex Filippenko, one of the world's most highly cited astronomers and a professor at UC Berkeley, will be part of the series.

You can take part by contributing as little as $1. And if you want a tangible reward, you can pledge $10 or more. All contributions (including big ones!) will be very welcome, and are tax deductible.

To appreciate this campaign -- and the educational need for Radical Physics -- please see the following web page. If you wish, watch the short-and-fun video and check out the various rewards of the Energy Radical Physics Video Series.

Exploring with Curiosity

Late last night, the NASA "Mars Science Laboratory (MSL)" mission gently landed its fully robotic "Curiosity" rover in a crater on Mars. It was launched on November 26, 2011. The rover is aptly named.
 
The mission's primary purpose is to determine whether Mars could ever have supported life, but this does not yet extend to detecting current life itself. 

This is by far the largest rover to date: 10 feet long (not including the arm), 9 feet wide, and 7 feet tall, weighing 2000 pounds. If you’re having a tough time visualizing that, it's about the size of a typical car.
 
The mere landing of a vehicle this size, not to mention the execution of its experiments, will be a veritable marvel of modern mathematics, science, technology and engineering. The landing sequence had multiple steps addressing various challenges (some introduced by prior steps), designed to slow the vehicle from 13,000 mph upon hitting the thin atmosphere to a soft landing in 7 minutes, each of which had to work flawlessly or the whole enterprise would fail! Furthermore, because it takes 14 minutes for electromagnetic signals to travel one way between Earth and Mars, the entire landing had to have been accomplished via autonomous robotics, without any direct human intervention. By the time mission control received indications of entry into the thin Martian atmosphere, the Curiosity rover had already been sitting on the surface of Mars for at least 7 minutes. Yikes!
 
If interested, take a look at the following two videos about the astounding landing sequence:
 
"Video: Curiosity's Landing" a simple, excellent, non-narrated video -- just gets your heart racing!
 
"Video: Curiosity's Seven Minutes ofTerror" which is narrated by JPL scientists; includes fascinating context about the design decisions that had to be made.

Another good site is"Fast Facts" which includes basic info, simply presented, with links for digging deeper.
 
 

Higgs Boson Explained

Following in the wake of CERN's July 4th announcement, this video comes from the channel of MinutePhysics explaining the Higgs Boson.

From the video:

"The fact that the Higgs Boson is so independent from the rest of the Standard Model is why it's the last piece of the puzzle to be discovered - and if it turns out to be exactly what was predicted, the Standard model will be complete."

Closure of 70 of California's State Parks

The First 70 Trailer from Heath Hen Films on Vimeo.

On July 1st, up to 70 of California’s 279 state parks may be closed due to budget cuts enacted by the Governor and Legislature. This closure will affect 25% of California's beautiful parks will erode the state’s commitment and legacy to irreplaceable natural, cultural, and historic resources. Additionally, closing state parks will impact California’s travel and tourism industry and reduce much-needed revenues for local businesses. As the parks are shut down they will no longer be considered in the state's eyes as an asset, which will allow for lobbyists to push to have state protection of the parks removed. This will allow for timber, mining, and real estate interests to purchase bits of the parks. Although this will profit them immensely, it will devastate the national landmarks and leave the land ravaged.

Do You Feel the Attraction?

Why are people so drawn to magnets? (Bad pun, I know.) Magnets truly are fascinating, and a mini-movie was filmed at the NASA Space Sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley, in 2007 showing just the amazing research that goes on regarding magnetic forces. Everything shown in the movie takes place around those laboratories as the scientists describe their research and discoveries. These scientists develop and conduct experiments and instruments to study the magnetic fields above the sun and to create theoretical models.

The site describes the movie saying, "Magnetic Movie is the aquavit, something not precisely scientific but grants us an uncanny experience of geophysical and cosmological forces." Take a gander at the short movie, it's beautifully artistic and cleverly done.

The Most Astounding Fact, Part Two

On March 5 I posted a link to a video featuring Neil DeGrasse Tyson, titled The Most Astounding Fact. In the past month or so, this video has appeared repeatedly on Facebook as a beautiful and inspirational speech regarding the universe.  Well, now the artist behind Zenpencils has taken that video and cartoonized it, and I think it's worth a look. Take a look here.

From the Zenpencils website: "I kept putting off trying to adapt this quote because it was too intimidating. I knew that it would require me to draw stars and planets which I’m not very comfortable with, but I loved the quote so much that I just had to try it. I spent a lot longer than usual working on the cosmic scenes and I’m pretty happy with how they turned out. I guess I was also inspired by the film The Tree of Life which connects the story of a family with the history of the Universe."

Planet Earth

In anticipation of Planet Earth's return to BBC America, this video was released featuring young fans reading scripts and voicing over action on the screen. These are supposed to be narrator auditions for the Planet Earth series, and some of their youngest fans decide to try their hand at relaying wilderness scenes. However, Sir David Attenborough - the regular narrator - is a tough act to follow, even for kids. The results are hysterical.

28th National Space Symposium

Last week was the 28th National Space Symposium attended by over 3,000 space professionals. The keynote speech was given by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium and the host of COSMOS. It is an inspiring forty minutes of speech by Dr. Tyson, followed by twenty minutes of Q&A. It is definitely worth listening to, especially in a time when NASA is quickly losing all of its funding. Enjoy!

Introducing TED-Ed:

TED Talks is rolling out their new program: TED-Ed. This is set to be a series of TED Talks, under ten minutes in length, whose intention is to potentially rival Khan Academy.

I think the idea is fabulous, and the more well funded, educational services out there and accessible by students, the better. From the video description: TED-Ed's mission is to capture and amplify the voices of great educators around the world. We do this by pairing extraordinary educators with talented animators to produce a new library of curiosity-igniting videos.

In fact, they make it simple for you to nominate a teacher or animator. This can be done here.

The Most Astounding Fact

Neil DeGrasse Tyson was asked by a reader of TIME magazine, "What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?" This is his video response, an incredible and humbling take on the universe:

Under the Microscope

 

The human body is an amazing instrument with the ability to heal itself from a variety of different maladies. A T cell (depicted in the video above) is one of the immune system's responses to external threats. These cells identify and attack diseased cells in order to eradicate them from the host's body. A cytotoxic T cell, which is what the above cell is classified as, exists with the single purpose of going around looking for cancerous cells, whereupon is eradicates them without causing any damage to the healthy cells in the area.

10 Misconceptions Debunked