Archive for the 'Sciences' category

There are not only creepy aliens in space (where no one can hear you scream). There are also monster-shaped galaxies.

A Spectre in the Eastern Veil

Thanks to NASA.

Magnetic levitation is considered by some as the future of train technology. Several real trains have actually been created (the German industry has been a pioneer and is in a strong competition with Japan for the development of such MagLev trains or Magnetic Levitation trains). But did you really see how it works? It’s easy. Check this demonstration with maglev toy trains.

The tracks are made of traditional magnets and the train contain a big super-conducting magnet (cooled down by liquid nitrogen to maintain its super-conducting characteristics). Everything is relying heavily on magnetic fields. So, not surprisingly, these fields can be observed in the real train. The following video — shot on the Rokko Liner in Kobe, Japan — shows metal paper clips dancing on the stray magnetic fields of such a Maglev train, going through the floor of one of the passenger cars.

Don’t drop your credit card (or an age-old floppy disk) on the floor for fear of seeing it quickly erased.

20 foods you should not eat together

You can’t read Chinese? That’s a pity. You would learn from this official announcement that some foods should not be eaten together (it is not clear how the exact risk was identified, though).

According to Xinjiang, the list of terrible mixtures is:

1. Pork + water chestnuts = a stomach ache
2. Beef + chestnuts = vomiting
3. Lamb meat + watermelon = a decreased vigor for life
4. Dog meat + green beans = poisonous to the body
5. Rabbit meat + celery = loss of hair
6. Chicken + celery = a decreased vigor for life
7. Goose meat + chicken eggs = a decreased vigor for life
8. Turtle meat + amaranth (a nutritional herb) = poisonous to the body
9. Carp + liquorice (not the candy) = poisonous to the body
10. Crab + persimmon fruit = diarrhea
11. Chicken eggs + saccharin = poisonous to the body, potentially fatal
12. Brown sugar + preserved eggs = poisonous to the body
13. White wine (白酒) + persimmon = chest pains
14. Onions + honey = damaged vision
15. Radish + fungus = dermatitis (a skin disease)
16. Bean curd + honey = makes you deaf
17. Potatoes + bananas = (not translated)
18. Bananas + sweet potato = a bloated belly
19. Peanuts + cucumbers = harmful to the body
20. Sweet potatoes + persimmon = lithiasis (formation of stones, such as the kidney stone)

I knew that you wanted to know about it…

Plenty of people will try to teach you how to create a good business card. Catchy, well-designed, well-balanced and unforgettable.

Apart from the plain design (OK by that time), here the best possible business card. You will never forget about this guy.

The best business card, ever

Unfortunately, we will not know who W.W.Green is.

The exact text:

The Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin is a museum presenting a large mount of technology history. Quite naturally, they are biased toward presenting a lot of German achievements and this country is known for hosting some of the very best optical engineers and being rightfully proud of brands like Carl Zeiss, Leitz/Leica.

Charlie Sorrel wrote a piece of article for Wired.com, titled “Gallery of Sawn-In-Half Cameras” that I intensely recommend reading.

CollegeDegree.com lists 100 Extensive University Libraries from Around the World that Anyone Can Access.

Knowledge is always free.

The atom bomb is obviously usable (it has been used more than 60 years ago) for war. But some people had the weirdest idea: Using the bomb (Not a nuclear power plant, mind you! A real bomb) for civilian uses. Wired has an interesting list.

• Digging a hole, a big hole, a harbour
• Digging a new Panama canal
• Natural Gas Exploration
• Mining Oil Shale
• Disposing of Nuclear Waste (Would you believe it?)
• Propulsing humans into space
• Defending Earth From an Asteroid

None of these seem to be remotely applicable…

The International Space Station is the product of a complex assembly process out of elements brought upt here by rockets and the space shuttle. Here is a video animation from USA today showing the sequence of events in this build-up.

You can browse, but you can’t hide… from your browser.

Actually, your browser knows a lot about you. Some scientists believe that from your browsing habits they can recognize fairly precisely if you’re a man or a woman.

Using your browser URL history to estimate gender

Be patient, it may be long.

According to it, I am a man…

The Roomba autonomous and (nearly) intelligent vacuum cleaner runs around to clean the floor. Example of its convoluted path:

La danse du Roomba

Not bad for a vacuum cleaner which has a very limited and very artificial intelligence!

Visit the infinitely small as we zoom right into steel.

True Marbleâ„¢ is a true color, photo-realistic, high resolution, 3 terabyte image of the earth. All data is provided at a base 15 meter resolution. Even if this was not shot in a single time (sattelite imagery is a bit more complex than Gigapan panoramas), this is really stupendous. But even more, you can download your own reduced subset for free. Keep cool, this is a lot of downloads of big files (they are even available on BitTorrent – much more practical than FTP downloads, and faster too). But it’s definitely there.

True Marble - Earth at high resolution

True Marble GLCDâ„¢ by Unearthed Outdoors, LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Masque

An advanced civilisation if there was one, Aztecs lived in Central America from IXth Century to XVth Century (when their decline was essentially precipitated by their encounter with the Spanish conquistadores). Many facets of this civilisation stay unknown principally because they were wiped out wy the first European colonizers.

But one aspect stayed deep in the minds because it was an immediate shock to those who were meeting it for the first time: Aztecs practiced extensive human sacrifice when Cortés arrived in America. Rare are the Europeans who observed it first-hand, because it stopped quickly then, but many traces are left for the historian.

Generally, religious reasons (”gods are asking for peace brought to them through human bloodshed in their honor”) are shown as the main driving factor. I found a group of articles quite intersting because they discuss the vertus and weaknesses of another theory: That Aztecs needed to enrich their meals with meat that could only be obtained from cannibalism.

• The Enigma of Aztec Sacrifice, by Michael Harner (April 1977)
• Aztec Cannibalism: An Ecological Necessity? by Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano (May 1978)

I can’t guarantee the quality of the scientific arguments by myself, but -for the reader with a strong heart- the LatinAmericanStudies.org web site contains historical data about the Aztecs grouped in a quite enthralling scientific package.

Additional references:

1. Wikipedia article on the Aztecs.
2. Photos about the Jaguar and Ocelotl, the jaguar Aztec god.

After billions of years of simulated galactic video, here is the simulation of a balck hole while it swallows a full star. Huge jets, huge amounts of matter removed from sight.

We all love when things come free to us. Here I found a treasure trove of movies that are free to download. Legally.

Thanks to the Canadians of the National Film Board of Canada. They give us feature-length movies, documentaries, animated short movies. Everything, of the best quality, at the best price: Free.