Science Corps International tees from ThinkGeek
Go and vote for the next member of the team to reveal their power! Who will it be: Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Rosalind Franklin or Carl Sagan?
(via greatmindsofscience)
Amazing Tilt-Shift Van Gogh Paintings
Serena Malyon, an illustrator in her third year at the Alberta College of Art & Design, has taken the classics works of Vincent Van Gogh and added a contemporary twist. Using Photoshop, Serena has added the ’tilt-shift’ effect to Van Gogh’s paintings, providing a fresh perspective on these masterpieces.
(via sagansense)
A Visual Timeline of the Future Based on Famous Fiction
We may not have hoverboards and self-lacing Nikes by 2015, but what else has sci-fi and other fiction predicted will come to pass in the coming years? The good news is that according to H.G. Wells, the Earth is good for another 800,000 years.
Prepare to spend the next hour having a geek freakout with this awesome timeline of the future as predicted by famous fiction. You’ll want to check out the hi-res version here.
And if you’re in the mood for something more realistic, check out an actual timeline of the far future as predicted by scientists.
(via Brain Pickings)
A Slower Speed of Light is a free little game from the MIT Game Lab. It visually demonstrates the effects of relativity. You move around in the first person picking up orbs which slow down the speed of light—the effect being that your normal walking speed inches ever closer to light speed. When you move faster—or light moves slower—colors begin to morph as the invisible shifts into the visible spectrum, until finally time and space themselves start bending. Very trippy, but based on real physics.
(via sagansense)
The Neurochemistry of Empathy, Storytelling, and the Dramatic Arc, Animated
Why do some stories connect to our emotions better than others?
Paul Zak, a neuroscientist and behavioral researcher, uses a touching story of a happy young boy and his sad father to explain how storytelling intersects with the brain chemistry behind empathy and distress. The classical story arc, one of the cornerstones of how we weave our tales, actually stimulates specific and predictable regions of the brain and involves some of the neural chemicals we’ve grown to love (cortisol and oxytocin).
This is fascinating. Literature has taught us which story structures work best, and neuroscience illuminates just how our brains latch on to those. Why we connect one to the other so closely remains an open question for now …
(via Brain Pickings)
10 Awe-Inspiring Photos of Lightning
What better way is there to show both the beauty and power of nature than with these incredibly electrifying images of lightning? While sometimes it just takes being at the right place at the right time, like for amateur photographer Bertrand Kulik and his photo of a brightly illuminated Eiffel Tower, for others, like Dan Ransom, it requires carefully assembling a composite image or “stacking” multiple photos together to showcase a wild electrical storm (like the one Ransom stunningly captured at the Grand Canyon). Whether these magnificent shots were the result of luck, hard work or patience, they all give us a deeper appreciation for a part of nature we rarely get to see.
Click through for image sources.
(via sagansense)
Russian artists Leonid Tishkov and Boris Bendikov created a fantastic world illuminated with the moonlight where they tried to convey relations between the man and the Moon. This is a romantic story about a man who met the Moon and decided to stay with it forever. They named the installation ‘Private Moon’.
(via sagansense)
Music to Your Brain by Dwayne Godwin and Jorge Cham
The Vancouver Science World museum wins at advertising
Click through to see the whole gallery of awesome ads.
Stars in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra (left), and Draco (middle-right)a appear above the city lights of Innsbruck, embraced by the Alps.
The clean air and good sky transparency above this capital of Alps still allow to see starry sky from the mountains at the edge of the city while light pollution has vanished away the sky of the most major cities around the world. The city light has strongly illuminated the inversion layer.
