"A mission scientist with NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, Natalie Batalha hunts for exoplanets — Earth-sized planets beyond our solar system that might harbor life. She speaks about unexpected connections between things like love and dark energy, science and gratitude, and how "exploring the heavens" brings the beauty of the cosmos and the
exuberance of scientific discovery closer to us all".
(Audio link of interview at top left corner of page, other relevant links at bottom of page)
posted by Brandon Blatcher
on Feb 17, 2013 -
10 comments
We last discussed music discovery site
TheSixtyOne back in 2009, but it's changed pretty radically since then. Out with
pages of spare, Facebook-like charts, in with gorgeous full-screen imagery peppered with photos and information about each track and the artists behind them. Anybody can submit music to the site, where community listens and ratings elevate the best to the top, and users can directly tip their favorite musicians with purchasable credits. Explore
by mood, by
Creative Commons tracks, indulge in some gamification with
quests (in the top bar), or follow development on the official blog
areasixtyone. Returning soon: user-created listening rooms for dedicated playlists or topics. And if you own an iPad, don't miss the free companion app
Aweditorium, which sprawls the site's entire collection into
an endless grid of playable audiovisual fun.
posted by Rhaomi
on Oct 28, 2012 -
15 comments
In 2005, the Discovery Channel aired
Alien Worlds, a fictional documentary based on Wayne Douglas Barlowe's graphic novel,
Expedition: Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV." Depicting mankind's first robotic mission to an extrasolar planet that could support life, the show drew from NASA's
Origins Program, the NASA/JPL
PlanetQuest Mission, and ESA's
Darwin Project. It was primarily presented through CGI, but included interviews from a variety of NASA scientists and other experts, including Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, John Craig Venter and Jack Horner. Oh, and George Lucas, too.
Official site.
Previously on MeFi. [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Sep 21, 2012 -
12 comments
A new monkey species, known to locals as the 'lesula' (Cercopithecus lomamiensis), has been
discovered in a largely unexploited rainforest within the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
posted by Wordshore
on Sep 12, 2012 -
44 comments
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is well-known for having been a child prodigy. A previously unknown composition of his, dated c. 1767, when he would have been 11 years old,
(PDF of score) had it's
premiere earlier this week.
[more inside]
posted by bardophile
on Mar 25, 2012 -
32 comments
The Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail is America’s first water-based national historic trail. It consists of the combined routes of Smith’s historic voyages on the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries in 1607-1609. Designated by Congress in December 2006, the trail stretches approximately 3,000 miles up and down the Bay and along tributaries in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Apr 16, 2011 -
5 comments
After completing it's
final mission in March, Space Shuttle Discovery has been returned to the Kennedy Space Center's Orbiter Processing Facility, where it is being dissembled for cleaning and decommissioning. Spaceflight Now has
pictures of the process.
posted by helloknitty
on Apr 11, 2011 -
49 comments
Where's Tyche, the 10th 9th planet? Getting the full story. John Matese and Daniel Whitmire of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette recently made the news when they announced the possible discovery of a gas giant planet they named
Tyche in the Oort Cloud, at the extreme edge of the Solar System (
previously). Now ars electronica breaks down the evidence behind the announcement, what can be done to confirm or disprove its existence & how long it could take.
posted by scalefree
on Mar 3, 2011 -
17 comments
Gocta Falls, Peru In 2005 Stefan Ziemendorff came across a waterfall in Northern Peru that didn't appear on any map, despite a village of 200 people being at its base. He returned the following year to measure its height. At 2,350 feet tall, Gocta Falls are now known to be the 3rd highest in the world.
[more inside]
posted by jontyjago
on Feb 16, 2011 -
17 comments
Curt Teich (1877-1974) was a printer who immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1896. Curt Teich & Company, opened in 1898 in Chicago, was the world's largest printer of view and advertising postcards. Teich is best known for its "Greetings From" postcards with their big letters, vivid colors, and bold style. Flickr user amhpics has archived nearly 2000 Teich linen postcards in his set
Vintage Curt Teich linen postcards 1930s-1950s.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Nov 28, 2010 -
5 comments
Web of stories - "There are few things more interesting or more pleasurable than to watch someone tell a good story. And one story always leads to another."
posted by unliteral
on Aug 24, 2010 -
5 comments
A letter by Rene Descartes, stolen in 1840s, recovered in 2010 by online detective work. The letter was stolen by Guglielmo Libri, inspector general of the libraries of France, who stole thousands of valuable documents and fled to England in 1848. Since 1902 it's been in the collection of Haverford College, its contents unknown to scholars, and nobody there realized that it was an unknown letter. But because they had catalogued it and recently put their catalogue on line, Dutch philosopher Erik-Jan Bos found it "
during a late-night session browsing the Internet". (A Haverford undergraduate thirty years ago had translated it and written a paper on it, in which he recognized that the letter was unknown -- but nobody followed up and the letter had sat in the library since then until it was listed online.) The letter includes some last-minute edits to the Meditations, and some thoughts on God as causa sui.
Haverford, whose president was a philosophy major, is returning the letter to the Institut de France.
posted by LobsterMitten
on Feb 26, 2010 -
21 comments
Hadji Muhiddin Piri Ibn Hadji Mehmed, ( 1465–1554/5) was an Ottoman-Turkish Admiral, Privateer, Geographer and Cartographer more commonly known as Piri Reis. In 1521 he finished his
Kitab-I Bahriye or Book of Navigation
This is an exquisite C17th - C18th revised and expanded version.
(
scroll down and click the icons which can then be magnified. )
Marvel at the gold leaf and coloring of the map of the
Bay of Salonica
or the wonderful
map of Rhodes.
(
click addittional information button below map to get further information.)
However Piri Reis
is more famously known for this map dated 1513 which is one of the oldest surviving maps to show the Americas. In the
marginalia are the accounts of the pioneer seamen who have taken part in the discovery of the places shown on the map.
Piri Reis at The
Map Room
and
wiki
and
related.
posted by adamvasco
on Nov 27, 2009 -
6 comments
A companion to one of Europe's most eminent prehistoric monuments has been discovered just a mile away.
Bluehenge has the same rough configuration as its sister site, Stonehenge, but with 27 stones instead of 56. It is speculated that the stones of Bluehenge may have been moved to aid in
the making of Stonehenge.
[more inside]
posted by Hardcore Poser
on Oct 3, 2009 -
43 comments
Decades after it was written on the eve of World War II, a lost Poirot story by Agatha Christie has been found. Today it is published in the Daily Mail for the first time:
The Capture Of Cerberus (scroll half way down the page).
[more inside]
posted by lioness
on Aug 21, 2009 -
19 comments
NYC Grid is a photo blog dedicated to exploring and discovering The City of New York block by block and corner by corner. Updated every weekday, each post covers a new block with a focus on the mundane and ephemeral. An optimistic snapshot of New York as it is now.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Aug 1, 2009 -
8 comments
![[Image 1]](http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/giant-squid-filmed.jpg?w=940){kind=link}
![[Image 2]](http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/japan_giant_squid.jpg?w=940&h=529){kind=link}
