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
The Forces Of The Next 30 Years - SF author and
Mefi's Own Charles Stross talks to students at Olin College about sci-fi, fiction, speculation, the limits of computation, thermodynamics, Moore's Law, the history of travel, employment, automation, free trade, demographics, the developing world, privacy, and climate change in trying to answer the question
What Does The World Of 2043 Look Like? (Youtube 56:43)
posted by The Whelk
on Mar 27, 2013 -
18 comments
In the late 1970s the UK's Anglia Television ran a respected weekly documentary series:
Science Report. But when the show was cancelled in 1977, the producers decided to channel Orson Welles in their final episode. The result was
Alternative 3. Over the course of the hour, the audience would learn that a
Science Report investigation into the UK "brain drain" had uncovered shocking revelations: man-made pollution had resulted in catastrophic climate change, the Earth would soon be rendered uninhabitable, and a secret American / Soviet joint plan was in place to establish colonies on the Moon and Mars. The show ended with footage of a US/Soviet Mars landing from May 22, 1962. After Alternative 3 aired,
thousands of panicked viewers phoned the production company and demanded to know how long they had left to change planets. [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jun 20, 2012 -
22 comments
Five years ago this week, the BBC started broadcasting one of the most extraordinary documentaries ever to grace television:
Planet Earth. The culmination of
five years of field work, it employed
the most cutting-edge of techniques in order to capture life in all its forms, from
sweeping spaceborne vistas to shockingly intimate close-ups -- including
many sights rarely glimpsed by human eyes.
Visually spectacular, it showcased footage shot in
204 locations in 62 countries, thoroughly documenting every biome from the snowy peaks of the Himalayas to
the lifegiving waters of the Okavango Delta, a rich narrative tapestry backed by
a stirring orchestral score from the BBC Concert Orchestra. Unfortunately, the series underwent
some editorial changes for rebroadcast overseas. But now fans outside the UK can rejoice -- all eleven chapters of this epic story are available on YouTube in their original form: uncut, in glorious 1080p HD, and with the original narration by renowned naturalist
Sir David Attenborough. Click inside for the full listing (and kiss the rest of your week goodbye).
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Mar 7, 2011 -
69 comments
"Five orphans with a spacecraft battle a lipsticked maniac from the Crab Nebula and his unlikely big flying robots. No one gets hurt."
In 1972, the anime action-adventure show
Kagaku ninja tai Gatchaman (
Science Ninja Team Gatchaman,) premiered on Japanese television. Featuring graphic violence, extensive profanity and a transgendered
villain, it was one of the most popular animated series of its time. Envisioning similar success in the US,
Sandy Frank Entertainment acquired the series in 1978 but deemed it too graphic and shocking for domestic audiences. So they hired two Hanna-Barbera vets to "
re-version" totally
bowdlerize the episodes with new scripts, voiceovers music and effects, animation, etc., at a cost of $5 million and turn it into a brand new show:
Battle of the Planets. Here are the
original 1978 Battle of the Planets feature film (in 7 parts,) and the
first 19 episodes of the show, all available on Youtube.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jan 28, 2011 -
61 comments
The Electric Grandmother (
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4,
Part 5) was a made-for-TV movie from 1982, based on the short story
"I Sing the Body Electric!" by Ray Bradbury. It deals in mortality, grief, abandonment, artificial (emotional) intelligence, and other themes suitable for children.
[more inside]
posted by eric1halfb
on Oct 17, 2010 -
20 comments
Telephoneme: Even if your Alphabet Conspiracy succeeds and you destroy the books, machines have no minds of their own. They are easily confused by different voices and different accents. It is the brain of man that tells them what to do.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Aug 20, 2010 -
10 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
Double Full Full Full, annotated (NYT video, reg REq'd) U.S. Olympic Team aerial skier Ryan St. Onge and a science reporter describe via video the physics going on as he executes a triple backflip with four twists.
Also, the
snowboard halfpipe.
(Don't ask me why a triple backflip with four twists is called a "double full full full")
posted by planetkyoto
on Feb 3, 2010 -
16 comments
"Fun To Imagine" is a BBC series from 1983 featuring theoretical physicist Richard Feynman thinking aloud. What is fire? How do rubber bands work? Why do mirrors flip left-right but not up-down? All is explained in his lovely meanderingly lucid manner.
[more inside]
posted by mhjb
on Dec 15, 2009 -
26 comments
Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye, sing to us (auto-tuned in a way that I actually
don't hate), in
We Are All Connected*.
*Possibly NSFW owing to sidebar video links.
Something similar was mentioned here
previously.
posted by bwg
on Oct 28, 2009 -
38 comments
