Crazy living rock is one of the weirdest creatures we’ve ever seen
“The fact that this sea creature looks exactly like a rock with guts is not even the weirdest thing about it. It’s also completely immobile like a rock — it eats by sucking in water and filtering out microorganisms — and its clear blood mysteriously secretes a rare mineral called vanadium.“
(via kidsbop)
From red to blue to violet, all the colors of the rainbow appear regularly in urine tests conducted at hospital labs.
The prismatic pee collection seen in this stunning photo took only a week to assemble for medical laboratory scientists at Tacoma General Hospital in Tacoma, Wash. Heather West, the laboratory scientist who snapped the picture at the hospital, said she and her colleagues collected the urine colors to highlight their fascinating behind-the-scenes work.
“My picture was intended to illustrate both the incredible and unexpected things the human body is capable of, the curiosity in science, and also the beauty that can be found in unexpected places,” West said. “A mix between art and science.”
(via the-noravirus)
….what
Hot ice, everyone. Or supersaturation. I’ve done this in a lab and it is fun as hell. I’m going to explain the process of what the thing I did was, and assume it applies to what is going on in this gif. If I am wrong someone let me know.
I’m going to guess this is sodium acetate, as that’s what I worked with. You can make it with baking soda and vinegar. You very slowly add bits of baking soda to the vinegar and stir between additions - slow enough that you don’t get the volcano effect that kids love to make. Once the baking soda has been added, you boil it to further concentrate it, and stop boiling once a film has started to form over the surface. Covering the liquid to prevent evaporation and cooling it results in a supercooled liquid - a liquid that is actually at a temperature below its melting point. Something as simple as touching it - either with a fingertip or with another crystal, which could be what the ‘ice cube’ in the gif is - should activate the exothermic reaction that results in instant crystallization. And the crystals will be warm to the touch. Hence the name ‘hot ice’.
(via blessphemy)
On its own, it is a wonder, but viewed in isolation its complexity and very existence is inexplicable. Darwin’s genius was to see that the existence of something as magnificent as a blade of grass can be understood, but only in the context of its interaction with other living things and, crucially, its evolutionary history. A physicist might say it is a four-dimensional structure, with both spatial and temporal extent, and it is simply impossible to comprehend the existence of such a structure in a universe governed by the simple laws of physics if its history is ignored.
And whilst you are contemplating the humble majesty of a blade of grass, with a spatial extent of a few centimeters but stretching back in the temporal direction for almost a third of the age of the Universe, pause for a moment to consider the viewer, because what is true of the blade of grass is also true fro you. You share the same basic biochemistry, all the way down to the detail of proton waterfalls, and ATP, and much of the same genetic history, carefully documented in your DNA. This is because you share the same common ancestor. You are all related. You were once the same.
—Brian Cox channels Richard Feynman in this reminder that viewing science through any single lens is an incomplete view of its magnificence. In other words, physics is beautiful, but it’s a periscope view of life’s majesty.
From his new book to accompany the BBC series, Wonders of Life.
via Brain Pickings
(via jtotheizzoe)
(via itsokaytobesmart)
Top left: Hippocampus sp. internal structure
Top right: Short-snouted seahorse - Hippocampus hippocampus
Center: 1. Syngnathus hippocampus [now Hippocampus hippocampus]
2. Pegasus draconis [now Eurypegasus draconis] - the Little Dragonfish (*unrelated to Syngnathidae family*)
3. Syngnathus pelagicus - the Sargassum pipefish
Bottom: Phyllopteryx taeniolatus -the Weedy Sea DragonDespite their remarkable appearance, seahorses are true ray-finned bony fishes (class Actinopterygii, infraclass Teleostei), along with bass, mullets, eels, salmon, and lanternfish.
Many people know of the male seahorse incubating the eggs and giving “birth” to 100-1000 offspring after they hatch, but reproduction is similar throughout the order Syngnathidae (including the seahorses, leafy and weedy sea dragons, and pipefish). There’s a persistent myth that seahorses are monogamous, but that’s not strictly true. The majority of species are serially monogamous, and remain together throughout the mating season (until the male births the babies).
Another remarkable thing about seahorses (Hippocampus spp.) is that they’re the only fish with prehensile tails - even their close relatives, the sea dragons and pipefish, don’t have this adaptation. However, since the seahorses are the only ones that swim upright, and they have the poorest locomotive skills, they need to be able to anchor themselves to the sea flora in order to not be swept away. The Guinness Book of World Records has named Hippocampus zosterae, the dwarf seahorse, the slowest fish in the world, moving less than 5 ft [150 cm] an hour.
Aside from the seahorses, the razorfish (Aeoliscus strigatus) is the only other fish to swim “upright”.
Images:
Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol 1. 1881.
Arcana; or, The Museum of Natural History. George Perry, 1811.
Participants rated their sexual orientation on a 10-point scale, ranging from gay to straight. Then they took a computer-administered test designed to measure their implicit sexual orientation. In the test, the participants were shown images and words indicative of hetero- and homosexuality (pictures of same-sex and straight couples, words like “homosexual” and “gay”) and were asked to sort them into the appropriate category, gay or straight, as quickly as possible. The computer measured their reaction times.
The twist was that before each word and image appeared, the word “me” or “other” was flashed on the screen for 35 milliseconds — long enough for participants to subliminally process the word but short enough that they could not consciously see it. The theory here, known as semantic association, is that when “me” precedes words or images that reflect your sexual orientation (for example, heterosexual images for a straight person), you will sort these images into the correct category faster than when “me” precedes words or images that are incongruent with your sexual orientation (for example, homosexual images for a straight person). This technique, adapted from similar tests used to assess attitudes like subconscious racial bias, reliably distinguishes between self-identified straight individuals and those who self-identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual.
Using this methodology we identified a subgroup of participants who, despite self-identifying as highly straight, indicated some level of same-sex attraction (that is, they associated “me” with gay-related words and pictures faster than they associated “me” with straight-related words and pictures). Over 20 percent of self-described highly straight individuals showed this discrepancy.
Notably, these “discrepant” individuals were also significantly more likely than other participants to favor anti-gay policies; to be willing to assign significantly harsher punishments to perpetrators of petty crimes if they were presumed to be homosexual; and to express greater implicit hostility toward gay subjects (also measured with the help of subliminal priming). Thus our research suggests that some who oppose homosexuality do tacitly harbor same-sex attraction.
—New study indicates homophobia is often a result of repressed homosexual feelings, validating what Freud posited in his concept of “reaction formation,” in which we lash out against others’ expressions of what we loathe in ourselves.
The above is via explore-blog, and it’s a long and fancy way of saying that (at least according to this study) homophobia is often associated with repressed homosexual feelings. This work will be appearing in the next issue of Journal of Stuff Everyone Knows But Couldn’t Quite Prove Until Now.
(via jtotheizzoe)
(via itsokaytobesmart)
one time this girl in my art class was telling the table that her eyes change color depending on her mood and i told her that that is scientifically impossible and explained to her the facts on how it is impossible and she started crying
Eye colour can change though. Mine go from being Forrest green to dark brown randomly.
Actually, because your irises expand and contract in accordance with the amount of light entering your pupils, it’s possible for eyes (especially hazel eyes, which include a mix of colors, one of which tends prevalent near the edge of the pupil) to appear to change color depending on the the light.
However, light is not the only stimulus for changes in pupil size. You probably know that taking certain drugs causes your pupils to dilate (meaning your iris is contracted), but research shows that your mood can also affect the size of your pupils. So it’s not unreasonable believe that your eye color changes depending on your mood, though may not be as noticeable as you might think it is.
In other words, don’t be a jerk because you think you know science.
Sources:http://www.allaboutvision.com/conditions/eye-color.htm
http://www.bodylanguageexpert.co.uk/what-do-dilated-pupils-mean.html
That’s actually a theory incorporated into M-theory (string theory)
Sorry, I just used the word theory three times.
Basically, there is a possibility, if string theory is correct and atoms are actually made up of tiny strings vibrating in 10 dimensions, we could have infinite parallel universes inside each and every quark contained in our body. We’re huge to them, and tiny to the universe WE are contained in.
How bout that? There could be billions upon trillions of creatures, things, worlds, inside each atom inside us. Infinite universes in one quark.
Mia your geek is showing.This is why I study physics.
…whoah. brb, contemplating this forever.
So does that mean that when we die all those billions of universes and creatures die within us?
oh hello there existential crisis. i missed you. :|
MAYBE THAT’S WHAT THE APOCALYPSE IS. IT’S THE PERSON THAT OUR UNIVERSE IS A BRAIN CELL OF, DYING.
Whenever we have a headache, there’s an earthquake. O_O
MY HEAD HURTS AND I WANT TO GO HOME
Give your bodies to Atom, my friends. Release yourself to his power, feel his Glow and be Divided! Each of us shall give birth to a billion stars formed from the mass of our wretched and filthy bodies.
I’m gonna say………. PROBABLY FUCKING NOT. I wish I could find an appropriate link but rn im just too 4 am to esplain science
Science!
what the fuck is this science bullshit
Fuckin’, chemistry, and physics, and all that good shit.
(via satorikomeiji-archivelol)
This miniature ecosystem has been thriving in an almost completely isolated state for more than forty years. It has been watered just once in that time.
The original single spiderwort plant has grown and multiplied, putting out seedlings. As it has access to light, it continues to photosynthesize. The water builds up on the inside of the bottle and then rains back down on the plants in a miniature version of the water cycle.As leaves die, they fall off and rot at the bottom producing the carbon dioxide and nutrients required for more plants to grow.
that old man loves his self-sustaining bottle plant
could you imagine one of those just sitting in an apocalyptic wasteland
(via blessphemy)