Cosmic Bits

crookedindifference:

Foucault pendulum

Named after the French physicist Léon Foucault, it is a simple device conceived as an experiment to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth.

The experimental apparatus consists of a tall pendulum free to swing in any vertical plane. The actual plane of swing appears to rotate relative to the Earth; in fact the plane is fixed in space while the Earth rotates under the pendulum once a sidereal day. The first public exhibition of a Foucault pendulum took place in February 1851 in the Meridian of the Paris Observatory.

Bottom: Animation of a Foucault pendulum at the Pantheon in Paris (48°52’ North), with the Earth’s rotation rate greatly exaggerated. The green trace shows the path of the pendulum bob over the ground (a rotating reference frame), while the blue trace shows the path in a frame of reference rotating with the plane of the pendulum.

(via proofmathisbeautiful)

jtotheizzoe:

alleluiaaa:

These are the patterns of planets orbiting around each other. It’s as though they’re eternally dancing around each other. Each step, pattern, movement makes a beautiful shape unique to their relationship. It’s so… glorious.

It also hurts my eyes if I stare at it for too long.

All based on this:

“Take the orbits of any two planets and draw a line between the two planet positions every few days.  Because the inner planet orbits faster than the outer planet, interesting patterns evolve.”

Lovely!

(Source: quitecamille, via turkiym)

Fragments of the Self

Among gods, all are shaken by the jeers of Momus.

Among heroes, Hercules gives chase to all the monsters.

Among demons, Pluto, the King of Hell, oppresses all shades.

While Heraclitus weeps at everything,

Pyrrho knows naught of anything,

And Aristotle glories in knowing all.

Diogenes spurns the things of this world,

And I, Agrippa, am foreign to none of this.

I disdain, I know, I do not know, I pursue, I laugh, I tyrannize, I protest.

I am philosopher, god, hero, demon, and the whole universe.

        -  Agrippa of Nettesheim (ca 1531)

                               * * *

I am angry, fearful, compassionate, joyous, sad, greedy, generous, enraged, meek, and all the good and bad emotions that can be found in all men together or separately. I have tried out all the vices and all the virtues, and in a single day I felt inclined to weep and laugh, give and keep, repose and suffer, and I am always unaware of the cause and the momentum of these contrarieties. I have heard this alternative of contrary impulses called madness; if it be so, we are all mad to a greater or lesser degree.

       - Torres Villarroel (ca 1743)

                              * * *

An infinite time has run its course before my birth: what was I throughout all that time? Metaphysically, the answer might be: I was always I; that is, all who during that time said I, were in fact I.

      - Arthur Schopenhauer (ca 1836)

We’re all made of star dust.

scipsy:

Neil DeGrasse Tyson: The Most Astounding Fact about the Universe. (via BadAstronomy)

(Source: youtube.com)

jtotheizzoe:

Björk’s Journey Within: Video For Biophilia’s ’Hollow’

The Biophilia project has been a true gift. From the iOS app it spawned to videos such as this, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more engaging multimedia exploration of where science meets art in today’s pop culture.

This video for the song “Hollow” is a collaboration with digital bio-artist Drew Berry, who is a bad-ass. Here’s my annotated story summary, but feel free to explore your own interpretations:

As we journey through the cytoplasm, past mitochondria, and into the twitching nuclear pore, we run into a lonely DNA-binding protein as it travels along the spiral path of the major groove in search of, well, something. As it passes wagging histone tails and dynamic nucleosomes, our green friend comes head-to-head with a mighty replication fork, thrown aside as leading and lagging strands are drawn through its replication machinery. A ghostly face, perhaps Björk’s ghost in her cellular machine, watches over as the protein is forced to wander on, alone, but not, to do whatever it is that little green proteins do.

Love this, more than you know. I’ll leave you with this line from the song:

The trunk of DNA
Now come forth
All species
Hollow

(via All Songs Considered)

geneticist: Household dust magnified 22 million times contains animal fur, insect scale, insect parts, fibers, and hair (via)

geneticist:

Household dust magnified 22 million times contains animal fur, insect scale, insect parts, fibers, and hair (via)