MetaFilter posts tagged with Ice

Expeditions to the Polar Regions

netbros — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:01:49 -0800

The Polar Discovery team has documented science in action from pole to pole during the historic 2007-2009 International Polar Year, and covered five scientific expeditions. The science projects explored a range of topics from climate change and glaciers, to Earth’s geology, biology, ocean chemistry, circulation, and technology at the icy ends of the earth. Through photo essays and other multimedia, they explain how scientists collected data and what they discovered about the rapidly changing polar regions. From the awesome folks at WHOI.

Where am I now? Travelin' 1.18km/s(2646mph). 70,289km from the Moon. 19 hrs! RU Excited? I am! #lcross

filthy light thief — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:55:27 -0800

On October 9th, NASA spacecraft will run into the moon, and on purpose. The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) and its rocket's Centaur upper stage will impact the moon, with the goal of sending some of the (possibly present) ice above the lunar surface. Once out of the eternal shade of the moon's south pole, sunlight will break the ice up into H+ and OH- molecules, which can be detected by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The initial impact site was the crater Cabeus A, but the target was later changed to Cabeus (proper), selected for highest hydrogen concentrations with the greatest level of certainty, and for the high-contrast back drop to detect ejecta and vapor measurements. NASA has provided guides for amateur observations of the impact, a facebook group, and a Twitter feed so you don't miss the moment.

1000 Melting Men in Berlin.

cristinacristinacristina — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:36:33 -0800

1000 Melting Men in Berlin. (1 2 3 4) from design boom: "earlier this week, brazilian artist nele azevedo, carved 1,000 figures out of ice and placed them on the steps of the concert hall in berlin's gendarmenmarkt square. with temperatures of 73 degrees fahreneheit, (23 degress celsius), the ice figures began melting within half an hour. the project entitled 'melting men' was meant to bring awareness to the world wildlife fund's warning, that melting ice could cause sea-levels to rise more than 3.3 ft by 2100." greenmuze interview last year with Nele Azevedo: "Melting Men is a series of art installations from the Minimum Monument project created by Brazilian artist Nele Azevedo. Since 2005, Azevedo has been setting up her Melting Men in various countries around the world. Although originally intended as a critic of the role of monuments in cities, environmentalists around the world are adopting her work as climate change art." more images on Nele Azevedo's fotopage.

Saturn Equinox

netbros — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:17:16 -0800

Cassini Reveals New Ring Quirks, Shadows During Saturn Equinox. "It's like putting on 3-D glasses and seeing the third dimension for the first time," said Bob Pappalardo, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "This is among the most important events Cassini has shown us." Latest press images.

Cartoon Crud On Ice

GavinR — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 22:01:51 -0800

Hanna Barbera's All-Star Comedy Ice Revue: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 [via WFMU] Oh, the 70's...man how I miss you.

Surface Tension

netbros — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 16:31:56 -0800

Ice — Nick Cobbing features stunning photographs of the Greenland Ice Melt and a stormy voyage to Greenland on an old sailing ship. Cobbing also features stories in photographs from Tibet, Kenya and elsewhere.

Thin ICE

Pope Guilty — Thu, 21 May 2009 13:37:19 -0800

"ICE does not keep records on cases in which detainees claim to be US citizens. If larger trends are consistent with the pattern in Hartzler's caseload, since 2004 ICE has held between 3,500 and 10,000 US citizens in detention facilities and deported about half. US citizens are a small percentage of ICE detentions for this period, which totaled around 1 million, but in absolute terms the figure is staggering. "

Blood Tide

Artw — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 09:15:27 -0800

Blood Falls - The iron rich red liquid gushing from a buried Antarctica lake shows how life may have existed on a snowball Earth, or on Europa.

Antarctic Fox

mathowie — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:47:41 -0800

Antarctica travel blog, done Big Picture style. Kevin Fox, formerly a designer at Yahoo and Google (who wrote a great response to Doug Bowman's design-by-metrics post) took a trip to Antarctica a couple months back and has been slowly updating a mini-site, exhaustively describing and showing photos from each part of each day he was down there. There are icebergs. There are penguins. There is swimming. There is drinking. It's all done in a wonderful large image Big Picture style that makes me drop everything whenever the feed updates. Start at the top and read the whole way through.

Photographs of polar explorations 1845-1960

Lanark — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 05:52:04 -0800

Freeze Frame a new collection of over 20,000 photographs of British and international polar explorations from 1845-1960, from the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge. A few favourites: Bear cub, Penguins, Mooring on the ice, Glaciers, Icebergs, Caves, Ice Floe, Ranulph Fiennes, Sled dogs, BiPlane - related book, more: coloured icebergs, PictureAustralia.org [Previously]

Fridtjof Nansen

homunculus — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:30:24 -0800

Fridtjof Nansen's Polar Saga. Part One: 1,000 Days in the Ice "It was an outlandish idea: freeze a ship in the Arctic Ocean and ride the drifting ice across the North Pole." Part Two: Chasing Nansen's Ghost. "Two adventurers set out across the Arctic in the footsteps of Norway's pioneering polar explorer."

There he was with his immigration face giving me a paper chase

Smedleyman — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:25:38 -0800

Remember Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement Julie Myers , the immigration chief who had some controversy during her tenure and introduced “operation scheduled departure” where illegal immigrants would turn themselves in and who’s organization was refered to (in so many words) as the gestapo by (Dem) Illinois Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez? Yeah, she resigned. Speculation abounds as to why. Statement by Chertoff

Oddstrument

Upton O'Good — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:36:56 -0800

Oddstrument is a blog about unusual musical instruments and other interesting acoustic technologies.

Trainrider

GuyZero — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 15:14:18 -0800

Trainrider : How to surf on a train - at 330 km/h.

Non-lethal injections

Kirth Gerson — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:11:47 -0800

The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country "The government's forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the "pre-flight cocktail," as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane."

'There is no such thing as polywater because if there were, there would also be an animal which didn't need to eat food. It would just drink water and excrete polywater' - Richard Feynman

Large Marge — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:34:51 -0800

If you were doing research in the 60s, You might've heard of Polywater, A form of water that exhibited wide variety of interesting characteristics and existed under identical conditions to that of normal water. Eventually debunked, none the less is a fascinating story. Naturally one draws parallels to Vonnegut's ice nine, but did you know there actually is an ice nine? In fact, there's twelve to sixteen types of ice, depending on your opinion. More recently, computer simulations have indicated water may structure itself into icosahedra, which, incredibly, is the platonic solid (described over 2000 years ago!) representing the element water! And if you don't know what an icosahedron is, I bet you've used one before. One of the most ubiquitous, and arguably most important, substances in our lives, our understanding of water is far from complete.

They'll eat lilies?

Smedleyman — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:30:42 -0800

Dogs , are they gettingenough doggie ice cream? Some brands and flavors are better reviewed than others, but it seems to work well as an aid to training and as a distraction for new puppies. Just lay off the real ice cream (and grapes, raisins, Easter lillies , cat poop, chocolate , etc.)

Fire and Ice underground

Kirth Gerson — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:47:20 -0800

Weird scenes inside the ~~gold~~ mica mines Russians photograph and play in an abandoned mine.

Ice Road Truckers of Canada

rongorongo — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 15:57:09 -0800

For about two months each year Nuna Logistics operates the Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road in Canada's Northern territories. The road is nearly 600km long and is predominantly constructed over frozen lakes. At this time of year the Ice Road Truckers take on the cold and the risks inherent with carrying loads of up to 40 tons over it (home page for a History Channel series about the drivers with some interesting video). The road one of several worldwide - it has some travel news. Also previously.

Water, water, anywhere?

Guy_Inamonkeysuit — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 06:25:58 -0800

We're making another effort to find water on the moon. Beginning in 1964 with the Ranger spacecraft, we've been lobbing things at poor old Luna. Lately we've been trying to find water there so that future explorers don't have to haul the stuff up the gravity well from Earth. Water just is not compressible, you see, and we haven’t figured out how to dehydrate it, so we have to bring it with us where we go, reclycling endlessly, or rely on local supplies. The Clementine mission in 1996 gave us reason to think that substantial amounts of H2O exists locked up in ice at the bottom of craters at the lunar South Pole, where the sun doesn't reach. We tried to find it with the 1998 Lunar Prospector, with inconclusive results. We're gonna do our best to find out this summer with another lunar smackdown. If water-ice is there a new era of lunar exploration will commence. Maybe then Google can find that damn monolith.

Frozen fire-gutted building

baphomet — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 09:48:50 -0800

It's never a happy occasion when a 130 year old brick building goes up in flames. But when the fire crews have to spray down the building (and the surrounding city block) in sub-zero temperatures, the end result looks stunning. From 10:30AM to around 1PM yesterday, firefighters in downtown Minneapolis worked to contain the blaze that consumed Maxwell's American Cafe, a popular local lunch spot, and the adjacent Scandia Furniture store. While these buildings were neither historic nor especially remarkable, their sudden drenching and subsequent rapid deep-freezing made for some very unique and striking photographs.

The hard shake, on the balls, and edible cocktails

madamjujujive — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 02:27:38 -0800

"In the U.S., they're mixing drinks with herbs and other weird ingredients, but in Ginza the best guys just polish their cocktails like jewels." And perhaps no Japanese mixology master has contributed more than Kauzo Ueda, who has perfected the art of the hard shake, a refinement over more traditional shake styles. He has a disciple in NYC's Eben Freeman, who now imparts the secrets of the hard shake via a video tutorial. * A review of the solid drinks pictured in the "weird ingredients" link. * The cocktails you eat * Cocktails enter the ice age * In Japan, giant ice balls are often hand carved (as in the videos in "polish" and "jewels") but if you don't want to carve your own, there is an easier way to make your own giant ice balls. * For some great cocktail recipes and a sidebar of kickass links to cocktail blogs and sites, you can't do better than Looka! The Gumbo Pages by Mefi's own, Chuq.

Cold, crunchy and oh so delicious!!

pearlybob — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 19:44:49 -0800

So, do you do it? Is your significant other "one of them"? Is it catching? Ice chewing is not just a annoying habit anymore. It is becoming a "cool" new trend and has quite a large following! Some think that the "perfect ice" is a marketable idea. Others think it might indicate a health probem. What do you think? Do you do it? Does it bother you? What would you do for that "perfect chew"?

Chinese ice sculpture festival

dhruva — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:16:49 -0800

Harbin Ice and Snow World 2007 "Welcome to... Beijing after an ice storm? No, this is “The Eighth Annual Harbin Ice and Snow World”, China’s premiere winter event." Previously on MeFi.

Kadath in the Cold Waste

Artw — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:13:02 -0800

Landsat Image Mosaic Of Antarctica UK and US researchers peice together the most detailed map of Antarctica yet, searching through years of data to find cloud free images.