TRAPPIST-1 is a planetary system, located 12 parsecs away from the Solar system (39 light years), near the ecliptic, within the constellation of Aquarius. Around a star which is 12 times less massive than the Sun and only slightly larger than Jupiter, there are at least seven planets in orbit.
This is a wild dusky dolphin off the coast of New Zealand with a new non-invasive underwater camera attached.
Credit: The University of Sydney
Check out the video about the project...
The Oceania Project, established in 1988, is a Not-for-profit, Research and Information organisation dedicated to Raising Awareness about Cetacea (Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises) and the Ocean Environment...
This short video outlines the Hubble Deep Image Survey, and puts the scale of that first image into perspective. The point of space that the scientists observed is about the size of the end of a ballpoint pen, or about one 24-millionth of the whole sky. In that tiny speck is a huge number of galaxies and stars, proving that the universe is an incredibly crowded place...
From February to April 2017, NOAA and partners will conduct two telepresence-enabled ocean exploration cruises on NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer to collect critical baseline information of unknown and poorly known deepwater areas in American Samoa and Samoa, with an emphasis on Rose Atoll Marine National Monument, National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa, and National Park of American Samoa. Check out info on the expedition and view videos of the ocean floor...
This amazing animation of Jupiter is made from more than 1,000 images taken by 91 amateurs from around the world between the 19th of December 2014 and the 31st of March 2015...
Also check out the Juno Mission Website for exciting images and interactive learning activities about Jupiter and the missions to photograph and study it.
Also of related interest is thePlanetary Virtual Observatory and Laboratory website which is a searchable database of ground-based observations of solar system planets. The images are made available by amateur astronomers and are used for research purposes by several professional and amateur teams and for astronomy popularization.
NASA distributes a free simulator of the Solar System, named "Eyes on the Solar System" with their mission data in it. The the Solar System can be seen in real time or at any time between 1 January 1950 and 31 December 2049. It can be used in a "simple" - or "advanced" mode depending on your experience. An object, like a planet, moon, comet, asteroid or NASA satellite, can be visited by just clicking on it. You can even re-experience the landing of Curiosity on Mars or "jump" on the back of Cassini, while orbiting Saturn, by taking a programmed tour. The 3D anaglyph mode can be experienced with red-cyan glasses.
The simulator has also 2 other modes. The first "Eyes on the Earth" shows the datasets of the Earth explorers, while the Earth can be rotated by mouse. The latest datasets, like CO, CO2, 03, water vapor, sea level, gravity field, global winds and many more, can be seen at every average computer on Earth.
The third mode "Eyes on the Exoplanets" takes you to a sphere of about 800 light years around the Sun and shows the neighbour stars, where exoplanets have been discovered. By clicking on a star, the planetary system with it's habitable zone can be seen. And when you want to take a vacation at a planet, the program comes with an estimate of the travel time.
And here is a helpful review from Anton Petrov on YouTube...
Nick Bostrom is a professor at Oxford University, where he directs the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) and also the Strategic Artificial Intelligence Research Center (SAIRC) and he has set up an excellent webpage marshalling much information about the Simulation Argument... Go to the Simulation Argument Webpage Included here is a link to the original paper he wrote on the subject... Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? Also available here is the link to an excellent video interview with Nick Bostrom...
And an imaginative setting of this interview to music by Nick Pasztor...
"This robot design will help us build safer and more efficient flying robots, and also give us more insight into the way bats fly," says Soon-Jo Chung, associate professor of aerospace and Bren Scholar in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory research scientist.
Always fun and intriguing to see math equations come to life in this manner! Wheels within wheels and makes me think of the complex systems of epicycles that Ptolemy had to use to make his Earth Centered model of the Solar System jibe with Astronomical observations...
Fourier Series heading towards the square wave
This animation is used to great effect in the Wikipedia article... Fourier Series
The original source seems to be an excellent piece of Java Script created by Pierre Guilleminot... Fourier Series Visualization
An interesting sidelight on Ptolemy and his complicated epicycles is that this approach was the first step in the development of Fourier Analysis or the process of decomposing a periodic function into the sum of simple oscillating functions. Today Fourier Analysis has a vast range of engineering and scientific applications...
Atomic School presents an excellent introductory video on the periodic table that explains how there are 92
naturally occurring elements, one for each kind of atom, and how they
are arranged into a table according to their relative weights:
And for more fun, join in to sing the Periodic Table Song!
In hopes of getting a rare glimpse of the newly discovered third species of seadragon, researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego and the Western Australian Museum led a scientific expedition off the coast of Western Australia to find Ruby Seadragons in the wild...
The interesting article on the Ruby Seadragon is also now available for free download... Ruby Seadragon Article And next you can watch weedy seadragons dance into the night...
