When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it is tied to everything else in the universe.
John Muir (via we-are-star-stuff)
(Source: subatomiconsciousness, via infinity-imagined)
If you ever want to be reminded of the unbelievably vast distances between our solar system and others, consider this; the closest star to our sun, Proxima Centauri, is 25 trillion miles away. That equates to 104.5 million trips to the moon. And I particularly like this one;
The Voyager 1 spacecraft is 18.5 billion miles away from Earth and has been flying at ~38,000 mph for the last 36 years. At that pace, and if Voyager 1 were to be aimed at Proxima Centauri, it would take something like 48,500 years to get there at that speed.
That’s some crazy shit. That is the distance to the nearest star. Just one star out of about 400 billion others of course.
And this is all just in our own galaxy; one of about 170 billion others, many having trillions and trillions of stars, not just billions.
This realization for me is utterly baffling. It’s like…nothing else even matters.
2.5 million gallons of toxic oil waste spilled in Alberta
Globe and Mail claims it’s the largest spill in North America. It’s also the third major leak in Alberta, including one burst pipeline that spilled nearly one million gallons of oil in May 2012.
Also of interest, the company didn’t report the spill until a citizen reported it to a local TV station.
(via inspirement)
Global Warming effects on the Arctic Ocean
The surface waters of a major portion of the Arctic Ocean are becoming saturated with carbon dioxide sooner than many scientists expected, all but halting the watery region’s ability to sop up more of the greenhouse gas from Earth’s atmosphere, new research finds.
To read the full article, please visit:
http://blogs.agu.org/geospace/2013/05/13/agu-video-prospects-dim-for-ice-free-arctic-ocean-helping-slow-global-warming/via AGU videos and skeptv.
A Review of the Universe
(Source: infinity-imagined, via infinity-imagined)
Did you know, you can quit your job, you can leave university? You aren’t legally required to have a degree, it’s a social pressure and expectation, not the law, and no one is holding a gun to your head. You can sell your house, you can give up your apartment, you can even sell your vehicle, and your things that are mostly unnecessary. You can see the world on a minimum wage salary, despite the persisting myth, you do not need a high paying job. You can leave your friends (if they’re true friends they’ll forgive you, and you’ll still be friends) and make new ones on the road. You can leave your family. You can depart from your hometown, your country, your culture, and everything you know. You can sacrifice. You can give up your $5.00 a cup morning coffee, you can give up air conditioning, frequent consumption of new products. You can give up eating out at restaurants and prepare affordable meals at home, and eat the leftovers too, instead of throwing them away. You can give up cable TV, Internet even. This list is endless. You can sacrifice climbing up in the hierarchy of careers. You can buck tradition and others’ expectations of you. You can triumph over your fears, by conquering your mind. You can take risks. And most of all, you can travel. You just don’t want it enough. You want a degree or a well-paying job or to stay in your comfort zone more. This is fine, if it’s what your heart desires most, but please don’t envy me and tell me you can’t travel. You’re not in a famine, in a desert, in a third world country, with five malnourished children to feed. You probably live in a first world country. You have a roof over your head, and food on your plate. You probably own luxuries like a cellphone and a computer. You can afford the $3.00 a night guest houses of India, the $0.10 fresh baked breakfasts of Morocco, because if you can afford to live in a first world country, you can certainly afford to travel in third world countries, you can probably even afford to travel in a first world country. So please say to me, “I want to travel, but other things are more important to me and I’m putting them first”, not, “I’m dying to travel, but I can’t”, because I have yet to have someone say they can’t, who truly can’t. You can, however, only live once, and for me, the enrichment of the soul that comes from seeing the world is worth more than a degree that could bring me in a bigger paycheck, or material wealth, or pleasing society. Of course, you must choose for yourself, follow your heart’s truest desires, but know that you can travel, you’re only making excuses for why you can’t. And if it makes any difference, I have never met anyone who has quit their job, left school, given up their life at home, to see the world, and regretted it. None. Only people who have grown old and regretted never traveling, who have regretted focusing too much on money and superficial success, who have realized too late that there is so much more to living than this.
Wunderkammer: Did You Know (via hollowwishes)
I need to be reminded of this daily.
(via hell0kayla)
(Source: susannacole, via inspirement)
This is an example of supercooling – the process by which a very pure liquid is chilled to a temperature just below its usual freezing point without actually making the jump to its solid state. Bottled water is perfect for this, especially the kind that’s been purified via reverse osmosis, a process that strips water of all its particulates. This particulates can act as “seed crystals,” or “nuclei,” to which a liquid phase on the cusp of becoming solid can attach, and crystalize around. In this video, a seed crystal is introduced in the form of a cube of already-frozen water. As soon as it’s introduced, the liquid phase rapidly crystallizes and attaches to the solid one, kicking off a chain reaction of ice-formation.Water that freezes as it’s being poured out of the bottle also solidifies upon exposure to a seed crystal, which, in this case, is an already-frozen surface. This is similar to the effect observed when freezing rain, supercooled by its flightpath through sub-freezing layers of atmosphere, comes into contact with an object cooled to a temperature below freezing. The result is a phenomenon known as glaze-ice, which – if you live somewhere cold – you may have seen before, coating the spindly extremities of tree branches.
See here for more on supercooling and glassy water.
via, courtesy of we-are-star-stuff
(via sagansense)
when it was my year 12 graduation ceremony each girl has to stand up next to the principal and she chats about us and we all need to tell her our ‘motto for life’ and I remember this one girls quote was ‘science flies you to the moon while religion flies you into buildings’ and there was just a massive gasp while she was just cackling on stage and tbh i think that was the most intense moment of my entire school life
(via astrodidact)
