Aesthetics

1 Apr

oklahoma

south dakota

oklahoma

idaho

awkwardsituationist:

mammatus clouds, named for their resemblance to the mammary gland, form when air laden with big water droplets is carried to the top of a thunderstorm cloud whose altitude is cold enough to freeze the water droplets. the resulting crystals sink back down towards earth, collecting at the base of the cloud before they have time to evaporate. mammatus clouds are usually only stable for a few minutes.

photos by zack schnepf and mike hollingshead in the american midwest (click pic for specific location).

1 Apr

jonkakes:

bigcoolscorner:
merauderdon:
givemeinternet:
As close as you will ever be to a nuclear explosion
THIS IS FUCKING TERRIFYING
No thank you.
The columns of smoke in the foreground are telephone poles boiling

(via five-to-one-baby)

1 Apr

medicalillustration:

unfinished coral | Vancouver Aquarium | early/mid-2013 sketch
Week 28: I’m flipping through my sketchbooks realizing that I need to draw more. I know that sounds silly - but I mean that I need to re-embrace drawing for myself. There’s a lot going on and deadlines at every turn, and the only way I’m going to be proud of what I create is if I do it for me. Yes, feedback and constructive criticism are essential for my growth as a scientist and artist… but at the end of the day, I can’t please everyone and I’m going to have to get used to that.

(via scientificillustration)

1 Apr

"

In that model, our three-dimensional (3D) Universe is a membrane, or brane, that floats through a ‘bulk universe’ that has four spatial dimensions.

Ashfordi’s team realized that if the bulk universe contained its own four-dimensional (4D) stars, some of them could collapse, forming 4D black holes in the same way that massive stars in our Universe do: they explode as supernovae, violently ejecting their outer layers, while their inner layers collapse into a black hole.

In our Universe, a black hole is bounded by a spherical surface called an event horizon. Whereas in ordinary three-dimensional space it takes a two-dimensional object (a surface) to create a boundary inside a black hole, in the bulk universe the event horizon of a 4D black hole would be a 3D object — a shape called a hypersphere. When Afshordi’s team modelled the death of a 4D star, they found that the ejected material would form a 3D brane surrounding that 3D event horizon, and slowly expand.

The authors postulate that the 3D Universe we live in might be just such a brane — and that we detect the brane’s growth as cosmic expansion.

"

— Did a hyper-black hole spawn the Universe? (via kenobi-wan-obi)

(Source: kn207, via scinerds)

1 Apr

likeafieldmouse:
Etienne-Louis Boullee - Cenotaph for Sir Isaac Newton (1784)
“Boullee promoted the idea of making architecture expressive of its purpose, a doctrine his detractors termed architecture parlante (‘talking architecture’), which was an essential element in Beaux-Arts architectural training in the later 19th century. His style was most notably exemplified in his proposal for a cenotaph for the English scientist Isaac Newton, which would have taken the form of a sphere 490 ft high embedded in a circular base topped with cypress trees.
Though the structure was never built, its design was engraved and circulated widely in professional circles.
Boullee’s Cenotaph for Sir Isaac Newton is a funerary monument celebrating a figure interred elsewhere. The small sarcophagus for Newton is placed at the lower pole of the sphere. The design of the memorial creates the effect of day and night. The night effect occurs when the sarcophagus is illuminated by the sunlight coming through the holes in the vaulting. This gives the illusion of stars in the night sky. The day effect is an armillary sphere hanging in the center that gives off a mysterious glow.”

(via mahdic)

1 Apr

"The most important tool of the theoretical physicist is his wastebasket."

— Albert Einstein, collected in Albert Einstein: A Guide for the Perplexed, 1979 (via mucholderthen)

(Source: en.wikiquote.org, via mucholderthen)

1 Apr

explore-blog:

Slow Life – a magnificent look at marine life under high magnification by photographer Daniel Stoupin, who writes:
Corals and sponges are very mobile creatures, but their motion is only detectable at different time scales compared to ours and requires time lapses to be seen. These animals build coral reefs and play crucial roles in the biosphere, yet we know almost nothing about their daily lives.
Pair with a very analog, very artistic counterpart in the gorgeous Waterlife.
(HT swissmiss)

(Source: explore-blog, via mucholderthen)