Last fall, the Canadian Space Agency asked students to design a simple science experiment that could be performed in space, using items already available aboard the International Space Station. Today,
Commander Chris Hadfield conducted the winner for its designers: two tenth grade students, Kendra Lemke and Meredith Faulkner, in a live feed to their school in Fall River, Nova Scotia. And now, we finally have an answer to the age-old question,
What Happens When You Wring Out A Washcloth In Space? [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Apr 18, 2013 -
63 comments
... and there is no dark matter/energy! Dr. Philip
Mannheim has succeeded in developing a cosmological and quantum field theoretic consistent PT symmetric theory that contains no kind of dark matter and dark energy.
Space is flat in the absence of matter, and even the largest galactic rotation curves are predicted. Perhaps most interestingly, it also handles the cosmological constant and zero-point energy 'problems' simultaneously! (This is the final paper in a
long list of publications, but it makes the case such that it's importance is immediately recognized. I leave it to the experts to recognize it's true beauty.) All hail the internets!
posted by quanta and qualia
on Apr 21, 2011 -
210 comments
Weightless Cats and other fun experiments. An excerpt from from coverage of
research at the Aerospace Medical Division Hq 657Oth Aerospace Medical Research Laboratories including scenes of F-104 seat ejection; drop tests from C-130 and ejection from F-106; effects of weightlessness on cats and pigeons in a C-131; test subjects in water tank, on centrifuge, in heat chamber and on complex coordinator. Also, scenes of vertical deceleration tower, incline impact test facility, vertical accelerator, equilibrium chair and vibration platform. More videos can be found at
Airboyd.tv:
Accident Animations,
Aviation Films,
Military Flight Training Films, and
Space Shuttle Vidoes.
posted by Fizz
on Jan 15, 2011 -
32 comments
Remember
Worms? Well,
Funky Pear (the guys who made playing golf in space fun) has another version of that, but the worms are replaced with guys in space suits, and the landscape is now a small planetary system. Use gravity to sling your rockets around planets, and build up the damage multiplier.
Play Gravitee Wars. Warning: addictive.
[more inside]
posted by Old'n'Busted
on Nov 12, 2010 -
20 comments
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
Physicist Erik Verlinde proposed in a recent
paper that the force of gravity can be derived from the principles of thermodynamics.
NY Times explains.
[Physicist Lee] Smolin called it, “very interesting and also very incomplete.”
posted by jjray
on Jul 12, 2010 -
55 comments
Gravity from Quantum Information At the heart of their idea is the tricky question of what happens to information when it enters a black hole. Physicists have puzzled over this for decades with little consensus. But one thing they agree on is Landauer's principle: that erasing a bit of quantum information always increases the entropy of the Universe by a certain small amount and requires a specific amount of energy. (via
mr)
posted by kliuless
on Apr 1, 2010 -
33 comments
Will a lava lamp work on Jupiter? Neil Fraser decided to test it.
"To find out how lava lamps behave in super-terrestrial gravity, I built a large centrifuge in my living room. ...it was a rich learning experience as I encountered one metal-shredding and wire-melting failure after another."
[more inside]
posted by odinsdream
on Mar 7, 2010 -
37 comments
Cogitate - Manipulate LEGO TECHNIC gears, beams, conveyor belts and motors to complete the ten pre-built puzzles or create your own levels.
[In my case - Then watch them crash in a heap when you test them.]
posted by tellurian
on Jun 4, 2009 -
15 comments
Friday
Flash JavaScript Fun!
Balldroppings (ha.) is a gravity-based game where balls drop at regular intervals from a particular point in the screen and you draw lines to make them bounce. The excellent part: every time the balls bounce off a line, they sing.
[more inside]
posted by LMGM
on Mar 20, 2009 -
19 comments
Friday Flash Fun: Green Moon Lab! Manipulate gravity and momentum to get to the exit in this sleek, simple,
Portal-esque physics puzzler. Contains twenty levels plus an unlockable challenge mode. A little weak in the writing department, but the drunken swooping gameplay more than makes up for it. (
via)
posted by Rhaomi
on Mar 13, 2009 -
16 comments
Monday Evening Flash Fun:
Fold. Run. Jump. Bend gravity at your will. Looks easier than it really is.
posted by schyler523
on Nov 17, 2008 -
16 comments
At the Beijing Olympics this summer there is a camera that follows divers through the air until they hit the water's surface in glorious high-definition. The DiveCam was originally invented by Garrett Brown, the inventor of the Steadicam, and was first used in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. What new technology made this innovation possible?
The power of gravity and pulleys.
posted by HaloMan
on Aug 14, 2008 -
21 comments
A site for artist
Bas Jan Ader (
wikipedia) who was last seen in 1975 when he took off in what would have been the smallest sailboat ever to cross the Atlantic. Site includes his most famous piece,
I'm Too Sad to Tell You.
posted by dobbs
on Dec 23, 2007 -
15 comments
[Friday Flash Fun]
Gravity Pods, a physics-based shooter/puzzle where you use special gravity pods and repellers to alter the course of a projectile and avoid barriers to hit a target.
posted by aerotive
on Jul 27, 2007 -
25 comments
The Worlds of David Darling. British astronomer and science writer David Darling has written over 10,000 articles for three massive online efforts: the
Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Astronomy, and Spaceflight, the
Encyclopedia of Alternative Energy and Sustainable Living , and a related
encyclopedia of concept vehicles. Though the diversity of entries can be eccentric, and some are quite short, the science seems solid: learn about the
illicit corned beef sandwich of Gus Grissom, peruse a comprehensive set of
advanced space propulsion concepts, and see a terrific illustrated listing of
strange land and air vehicles (don't miss the
Peel P50 microcar and the
Volvo Gravity Car).
posted by blahblahblah
on Oct 16, 2006 -
2 comments
An experiment recently performed by the AET RaDAL group shows that the gravitomagnetic field produced by a rapidly-spinning superconductor can cause a 1.117 times increase over the Earth's gravity.
Gravitomagnetism, a phenomenon predicted by General Relativity, is a poorly understood but promising topic in modern physics. Speculation about harnessing the bizarre, space-warping and gravity-altering effects of gravitomagnetism has already begun.
Reactionless space propulsion [PDF] is the most apparent use (
previously discussed), with the potential applications far-reaching and nearly inconcievable.
The earlier experiment by the European Space Agency involving another rapidly-spinning superconductor earlier this year found a massive increase in strength over the predicted values, but still miniscule by our standards. Things could become very interesting if the results from this latest experiment pan out.
posted by nervestaple
on Aug 15, 2006 -
47 comments
Before the Big Bang -
way,
way out of my depth, but I thought this comment was intriguing: "The paper as published, along with a longer follow up paper, looks to my untrained eye a nearly complete quantum gravitation theory, which is an exciting prospect in itself. However, as with all physical theories, we will await for experimental support before popping the cork." Here's some more on
loop quantum gravity,
spin networks,
the big bang and
ekpyrosis.
posted by kliuless
on Apr 16, 2006 -
18 comments
Gravity Monuments were erected on several college campuses in the 1960's and 1970's by the
Gravity Research Foundation "to remind students of the blessings forthcoming when science determines what gravity is, how it works, and how it may be controlled." I regularly visited the one at Colby College, in Maine. Emory
had one, and apparently
SMU did as well. Anyone know of others?
posted by mmahaffie
on Sep 7, 2004 -
15 comments
DREAM WORLD
Given that green tea provides a more effective and environmentally-friendly method of preparing computer hard disks, pulsars are used to study gravitational waves with great precision, solar cells made from nanocrystals are found to be much more efficient, and scientists have discovered evidence for the earliest known wildfire in Earth's history, 443 to 417 million years ago, it would be hard to make the case that what we are living in is not, in fact, a Dreamworld.
posted by mcgraw
on Apr 27, 2004 -
29 comments
I drink my tea with chopsticks. At least, I would if I lived in outer space. Cool movie (achtung: Quicktime) from the international space station showing the effects of surface tension in the absence of gravity. I wonder if any of us will ever live long enough to experience this in person?
posted by jonson
on Apr 9, 2003 -
13 comments
Just Party like it's 2060 According to some researchers, this will be the year sir Issac Newton predicted the world will come to an end, based on his Biblical interpretations. Like we didn't have enough depressing news already.
posted by betobeto
on Feb 23, 2003 -
19 comments
