Friday Flash Fun:
Color Theory is a puzzle platformer about... um... color theory. And gravity switching. And aliens.
Via the eternal font of pleasant time-wasters, jayisgames.
posted by macmac
on Aug 6, 2010 -
19 comments
"Tubes of space borscht are on sale in the museum gift shop. “There are white and black tubes. On the white is written: ‘BLONDE.’ On black one: ‘BRUNETTE.’ "
Astronauts relate challenges of
life in space.
posted by ambient2
on Aug 2, 2010 -
17 comments
On July 17th, NASA's
Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite
completed its first survey of the entire sky viewable from Earth. After just seven months in orbit, WISE -- a precursor to the planned
James Webb Space Telescope -- has returned more than a million images that provide a close look at
celestial objects ranging from
distant galaxies to
asteroids. The first release of WISE data, covering about 80 percent of the sky,
will be delivered to the astronomical community in May of next year, but in the meantime we can see some of the images and animations that NASA has released to date: Galleries
(containing just a small selection of images):
1,
2,
3,
4. Videos and Animations:
1,
2 [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jul 24, 2010 -
11 comments
Space Project from photographer
Vincent Fournier.
"Playing on the stylised notion of a sci-fi utopia, Fournier’s otherworldly photographs of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah and the Atacama Desert Observatories in Chile – alongside a series of surprisingly stringy trainee astronauts - offer an alternative view of the world, unseen by many and known by few."
posted by puny human
on Jul 18, 2010 -
11 comments
Year On Earth breaks it down, explaining the complicated mechanics involved in trying to determine how long a year really is, why seasons and ice ages happen, and how not all years are created equal.
posted by loquacious
on Jul 5, 2010 -
22 comments
Last year, high school science teacher Ron Dantowitz of Brookline, Mass., played a clever trick on three of his best students. He asked them to plan a hypothetical mission to fly onboard a NASA DC-8 aircraft and observe a spacecraft disintegrate as it came screaming into Earth's atmosphere. For 6 months, they worked hard on their assignment, never suspecting the surprise Dantowitz had in store.
On March 12th, he stunned them with the news: "The mission is real, and you're going along for the ride."
posted by Burhanistan
on Jun 26, 2010 -
50 comments
The Carnegie Institution for Science reports "a much higher water content in the Moon’s interior than previous studies." For decades, the moon's water content was estimated at less than 1 part per billion; the new estimates range from 64 ppb to 5 parts per million. A scientist at Washington University said, "We can now finally begin to consider the implications—and the origin—of water in the interior of the Moon.”
There's more at
NASA and the
BBC, and the full paper is available at
PNAS (PDF).
posted by Stan Carey
on Jun 15, 2010 -
21 comments
Everybody's heard about the "secret" launch of the military's newest spacedrone the
X-37, and everybody's heard about the other "secret" launch on the same day. The military has launched another type of
spacedrone. This one looks a lot less like
this and more like
this. Unfortunately they've hit a
snag.
(previously)
It's all part of the the U.S. military's prompt
global strike doctrine. Some people think this may be a
bad idea.
[more inside]
posted by AElfwine Evenstar
on Jun 9, 2010 -
74 comments
As the shuttle program winds down, astrophotographers like Thierry Legault are taking advantage of these last opportunities to capture absolutely incredible shots like
this one, showing Atlantis' transit in front of the sun as it performs its inspection backflip before docking with the ISS. His other photography includes
this magnificent series of the launch of
STS-125.
[more inside]
posted by disillusioned
on May 19, 2010 -
16 comments
MOONWALK ONE - A surprisingly groovy look at the Apollo 11 mission to the moon in a full length documentary that contains a lot of rare and not often seen footage of the preparations and launch of the first manned mission to the moon. Warning: Also contains lots of theramins, trippy optical effects, faux bohemians and some really blowy narrative.
posted by loquacious
on Apr 23, 2010 -
22 comments
UK Space Agency launched with
a logo that "looks uncannily like the logo for the British Rocket Group, a scientific body from Doctor Who." It's mission is
to develop British space technology, "[b]ut this will have to be done through
unmanned space activities, because for the foreseeable future the UKSA will not have enough resources to reverse the decision,
taken by the Thatcher government in the 1980s, that Britain will not pay for manned space flights... planned expeditions to the International Space Station will be funded by the country's partners in the European Space Agency."
posted by kliuless
on Mar 24, 2010 -
35 comments
