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| (Credit: NASA; ESA; G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch, University of California, Santa Cruz; R. Bouwens, Leiden University; and the HUDF09 Team) |
Friday, 12 July 2013
10 years to take a picture of the universe
This is a compiled image of 10 years worth of NASA Hubble Space Telescope photographs. NASA call this the eXtreme Deep Field (XDF) which is a section of sky at the center of the original Hubble Ultra Deep Field (previous holder of the title 'deepest image of the universe') and contains 5,500 galaxies even within its smaller field of view. The faintest galaxies you can see on the picture are one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see. You can go into more detail and watch a video on the NASA website.
Monday, 1 July 2013
Lava over ice. Completely mesmerising.
You wouldn't think this video was 8 minutes long after sitting through it with your jaw slightly ajar and your eyes fixed at your screen in wonder. I love lava. It is an incredible thing that rocks can even get so hot that they can be poured but I had never considered how interesting and entertaining it would be to watch when in contact with something at the other end of the kelvin scale.
Watch in awe as the bubbles grow into glass domes and burst before settling into black rivers and boulders of semi-molten rock.
Watch in awe as the bubbles grow into glass domes and burst before settling into black rivers and boulders of semi-molten rock.
Friday, 31 May 2013
Life-size chocolate skulls
Whilst browsing on Firebox I noticed these chocolate Skulls and they reminded me of my previous post on Chocolate skulls with walnut brains. I thought that these too were small treats but what is in fact on offer is 2.5kg of life-size chocolate cranium molded on an actual human skull offering exceptional likeness to life. The team say "Each skull is cast by hand in intricate detail, displaying the ravages of age as well as various timeworn scars and bumps". One of these will set you back a hefty £350 but the look on people's faces as you nibble away at it would be priceless.
Monday, 18 March 2013
Nike's x-ray tights
Nike released these pretty cool x-ray leggings at the end of last year and I keep meaning to post about them. So here they are - Nike thinking outside the box.
The say in some admittedly effusive 'brand' speak:
"The new Nike Women’s Exclusive Print tight is a performance based pant for the athlete unafraid to make a statement. On the outside, she might be the girl next door, but on the inside, her body has survived grueling workouts, often pushing through pain, broken bones, pulled muscles and harsh tears."
Still, despite over-egging the campaign behind the tights, they look pretty awesome.
The say in some admittedly effusive 'brand' speak:
"The new Nike Women’s Exclusive Print tight is a performance based pant for the athlete unafraid to make a statement. On the outside, she might be the girl next door, but on the inside, her body has survived grueling workouts, often pushing through pain, broken bones, pulled muscles and harsh tears."
Still, despite over-egging the campaign behind the tights, they look pretty awesome.
Friday, 15 March 2013
The most beautiful sight in space is urine
From down here on our humble planet, the best sight for me is the Milky Way on a clear night in a remote location. Or a meteor shower. Or a Solar Eclipse. Or Uranus, Venus and Mars all visible with the naked eye on the same night. But for Russel Schweickart of Appolo 9...
Um. Awkard. So, could you explain yourself please Russel?
Russel wasn't available for comment but I can regurgitate what others have said for you. Space shuttles don't have much space on board for the little extras, like bodily waste, so they regularly have to release them to lighten their load. When urine is released from the exit nozzle it freezes immediately and 'instantly flashes into 10 million little ice crystals which go out almost in a hemisphere…a spray of sparklers, almost' (say Scientific American anyway). And it gets better, once those little droplets are crystals, the sun then hits them and transforms them into water vapour to create a kind of mesmerizing cloud of human bodily fluids.
The urine dump that Russel was talking about was a particularly big one (about 68 kilos of urine and water) because the shuttle couldn't unload during it's 10-day stay at the international Space Station. Nice.
*Source: Time
"The most beautiful sight in orbit…is a urine dump at sunset"*
Um. Awkard. So, could you explain yourself please Russel?
Russel wasn't available for comment but I can regurgitate what others have said for you. Space shuttles don't have much space on board for the little extras, like bodily waste, so they regularly have to release them to lighten their load. When urine is released from the exit nozzle it freezes immediately and 'instantly flashes into 10 million little ice crystals which go out almost in a hemisphere…a spray of sparklers, almost' (say Scientific American anyway). And it gets better, once those little droplets are crystals, the sun then hits them and transforms them into water vapour to create a kind of mesmerizing cloud of human bodily fluids.
The urine dump that Russel was talking about was a particularly big one (about 68 kilos of urine and water) because the shuttle couldn't unload during it's 10-day stay at the international Space Station. Nice.
*Source: Time
Thursday, 14 March 2013
Magic Zig-zagging water
A colleague sent me this link to an experiment on Alex Hardy's Blog where a 24Hz Sine Wave is put through a flow of running water adn it appears to run in a zig zig motion. I don't know if this beats non-newtonian fluid on a speaker* but it's pretty darn close.
The camera frame rate is adjusted to match the vibration of the wave (so, 24 FPS {frames per second})to get this effect. This is an optical illusion resulting from viewing the stream of water at the same FPS as the HZ of the sound. In person, it wouldn't look like this. It's a bit like the way the rims on a car appear to spin in reverse at certain speeds. At 23Hz the stream of water would look like it is moving backwards and 25Hz like it is moving forward in slow motion.
*I just searched back for a blog post to link to on non-newtonian fluid on speakers and was amazed to find that I haven't posted about it yet. Error. Post coming soon!
The camera frame rate is adjusted to match the vibration of the wave (so, 24 FPS {frames per second})to get this effect. This is an optical illusion resulting from viewing the stream of water at the same FPS as the HZ of the sound. In person, it wouldn't look like this. It's a bit like the way the rims on a car appear to spin in reverse at certain speeds. At 23Hz the stream of water would look like it is moving backwards and 25Hz like it is moving forward in slow motion.
*I just searched back for a blog post to link to on non-newtonian fluid on speakers and was amazed to find that I haven't posted about it yet. Error. Post coming soon!
Saturday, 17 November 2012
Tiny, tiny baby mouse. How cute.
When I say baby, what I really mean is embryo. This 18.5-day-old double transgenic mouse embryo (transgenic simply meaning that it contains genes from another species) was taken by Gloria Kwon and it won 1st place in the annual Nikon Small World photomicrography competition back in 2007.
The image was taken at 17x magnification. The green that you see is the in-tact yolk sac with green fluorescence The rest of the embryo, including the placenta, have red fluorescence.
The image was taken using widefield microscopy with various lighting conditions under brightfield as well as green and red fluorescent filters in darkfield which enable her to show up details of the embryo that would be difficult to see or document otherwise.
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| photo by Gloria Kwon, copyright of Nikon Small World |
The image was taken at 17x magnification. The green that you see is the in-tact yolk sac with green fluorescence The rest of the embryo, including the placenta, have red fluorescence.
The image was taken using widefield microscopy with various lighting conditions under brightfield as well as green and red fluorescent filters in darkfield which enable her to show up details of the embryo that would be difficult to see or document otherwise.
Monday, 12 November 2012
The original Spirograph
During a recent trip to the Science Museum I happily found myself distracted from the 8 foot by 8 foot calculator in the Mathematics exhibition, by this:
...and it reminded me of an early blog post of mine about the maths of the spirograph. I had assumed that the spirograph was designed for the sole purpose of entertaining under 5s on rainy days and testing children’s patience with numerous snapped pencil leads. But no, it seems there was a scientific use at the beginning of it’s ancestral line...
Introducing, the harmonograph (ps. before we go any further i am not saying that the Spirograph is defs a direct descendent of the harmonograph, this is purely ill-informed speculation).
The harmonograph was invented in the 1870s to analyse vibrations and was used in the study of sound. However, predictably, by the 1900s it was already regarded as a scientific toy for creating pretty patterns!
The harmonograph works by utilising the swinging motion of two pendulums - one mounted to a pen and one to a drawing table - which swing at right angles to each other with the pen tracing out the resulting combinations of movement onto paper.
Weights can be added or moved up and down the pendulums to vary the speed that they swing at, creating varied patterns.
The Science Museum has a number of curve-drawing machines on show, like Stanley’s and George Adam’s geometric pens which arguably were the first spirographs, but with fancier cogs.
There was also a surprisingly elaborate contraption on display masking as a tool for ornamental turning used on lathes - the geometric chuck.
This example, at the Science Museum, is the only known example of a 4-stage chuck for use on paper...and boy does it do good things to paper.
The chuck works by drawing the epicycloidal motion of each tier (determined by different sizes of cog) onto the paper at the top of the chuck. The motion of each tier can be superimposed upon another, or other tiers can be fixed so that the motion of only one tier is drawn.
So there we have it, an introductory tour of curve-drawing machines with very little science or maths and a lot of “it makes pretty things”. That’s what I like. But...if you do want some maths - the old Spirograph post has a bit to whet your appetite or you can go all-out with this article - which has some amazing examples and a bit of science behind their construction.
The Science Museum Mathematics exhibition is on the Second floor and is a permanent fixture (for now).
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| Harmonograph at the Science Museum, London |
...and it reminded me of an early blog post of mine about the maths of the spirograph. I had assumed that the spirograph was designed for the sole purpose of entertaining under 5s on rainy days and testing children’s patience with numerous snapped pencil leads. But no, it seems there was a scientific use at the beginning of it’s ancestral line...
Introducing, the harmonograph (ps. before we go any further i am not saying that the Spirograph is defs a direct descendent of the harmonograph, this is purely ill-informed speculation).
The harmonograph was invented in the 1870s to analyse vibrations and was used in the study of sound. However, predictably, by the 1900s it was already regarded as a scientific toy for creating pretty patterns!
 |
| copyright Conor Lawless |
The harmonograph works by utilising the swinging motion of two pendulums - one mounted to a pen and one to a drawing table - which swing at right angles to each other with the pen tracing out the resulting combinations of movement onto paper.
Weights can be added or moved up and down the pendulums to vary the speed that they swing at, creating varied patterns.
The Science Museum has a number of curve-drawing machines on show, like Stanley’s and George Adam’s geometric pens which arguably were the first spirographs, but with fancier cogs.
 |
| George Adams' Geometric pen at Science Museum, London |
 |
| Stanley's geometric pen at Science Museum, London |
There was also a surprisingly elaborate contraption on display masking as a tool for ornamental turning used on lathes - the geometric chuck.
 |
| Geometric chuck at Science Museum, London |
This example, at the Science Museum, is the only known example of a 4-stage chuck for use on paper...and boy does it do good things to paper.
The chuck works by drawing the epicycloidal motion of each tier (determined by different sizes of cog) onto the paper at the top of the chuck. The motion of each tier can be superimposed upon another, or other tiers can be fixed so that the motion of only one tier is drawn.
So there we have it, an introductory tour of curve-drawing machines with very little science or maths and a lot of “it makes pretty things”. That’s what I like. But...if you do want some maths - the old Spirograph post has a bit to whet your appetite or you can go all-out with this article - which has some amazing examples and a bit of science behind their construction.
The Science Museum Mathematics exhibition is on the Second floor and is a permanent fixture (for now).
Wednesday, 28 March 2012
Visualising earth's tides
NASA's Scientific VIsualisation Studio produced this video demonstrating how the earths tides ebb and flow around the world. It doesn't include narration or annotation because, they explain, 'The goal was to use ocean flow
data to create a simple, visceral experience'.
The visualisation shows ocean surface currents around the world during the period from June 2005 through Decmeber 2007 - these firgures are plotted into a computer that takes in shed loads of data and outputs pretty things like this - I love when computers do that. The computational model is called Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, Phase II (ECCO2 for short).
It can calculate ocean flow at all depths but this particular video shows only surface flows. NASA describe it as a 'high resolution model of the global ocean and sea-ice. ECCO2 attempts to model the oceans and sea ice to increasingly accurate resolutions that begin to resolve ocean eddies and other narrow-current systems which transport heat and carbon in the oceans'.
The dark areas under the ocean rshow the the undersea bathymetry (basically the opposite of topography). The bathymetry and land topography are exaggerated to enhance the contrast - bathymetry by 20 times and topography by 40 times.
Details of the video:
The visualisation shows ocean surface currents around the world during the period from June 2005 through Decmeber 2007 - these firgures are plotted into a computer that takes in shed loads of data and outputs pretty things like this - I love when computers do that. The computational model is called Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, Phase II (ECCO2 for short).
It can calculate ocean flow at all depths but this particular video shows only surface flows. NASA describe it as a 'high resolution model of the global ocean and sea-ice. ECCO2 attempts to model the oceans and sea ice to increasingly accurate resolutions that begin to resolve ocean eddies and other narrow-current systems which transport heat and carbon in the oceans'.
The dark areas under the ocean rshow the the undersea bathymetry (basically the opposite of topography). The bathymetry and land topography are exaggerated to enhance the contrast - bathymetry by 20 times and topography by 40 times.
Details of the video:
| Completed: | 2011-04-08 |
| Animators: | Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC) (Lead) |
| Horace Mitchell (NASA/GSFC) | |
| Video Editor: | Victoria Weeks (HTSI) |
| Scientists: | Hong Zhang (UCLA) |
| Dimitris Menemenlis (NASA/JPL CalTech) | |
| Platforms/Sensors/Data Sets: | GTOPO30 Topography and Bathymetry |
| Hipparcos/Tycho 2 Catalogue | |
| ECCO2 High Resolution Ocean and Sea Ice Model (06/2006 - 12/2007) | |
| Series: | Flows |
Chocolate skulls with walnut brains
Ruth and Sira GarcÃa Trigueros are twin sister illustrators and graphic designers from the north of Spain. They are currently selling these handmade chocolate skulls with walnut or candy brains on etsy and they look delicious!
Ruth and Sira say that they "love the smell of damp earth, the mountains, the woods, walking around barefoot and eating directly from the saucepan. We listen to black metal. We are quiet. We smile a lot, sometimes people freak out. We play drums and bass in a band that doesn't exist". They seem cool.
Wednesday, 22 February 2012
The Theory of Everything
A friend shared this video with me recently, introducing me to Minute Physics and the awesome videos they produce. This one is an introduction to the hypothetical Theory of Everything - a theory I wrestled with in a quantum physics module last year - that links together all physical 'things' and predicts the outcome of any experiment that could be carried out, ever...in theory. Yeah, it's tough to summarise, that's where Minute Physics come in:
Tuesday, 21 February 2012
Mouse intestines on twitter
#Super resolution image of mouse intestine from @API_DeltaVision stained with #Phalloidin & #DAPI #microscopy #biology twitter.com/GECellBiology/…
— GE Cell Biology (@GECellBiology) February 20, 2012
Monday, 20 February 2012
Sciartist spotlight: Stephen Gaeta
I came across a series of creative prints over at the Street Anatomy store the other week and keep meaning to write about the artist, Stephen Gaeta.
Stephen is a physician-scientist currently completing his internal medicine residency. After completing his phd dissertation on cardiac arrhythmia he said he wanted to "display his accomplishment without hanging a certificate on the wall". He therefore used the words of his dissertation in a print of a heart (similar to the print below) to display his achievement.
From this, he continues to create typographical imagery from classic scientific masterpieces.
Click each image for a close-up.
Click each image for a close-up.
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Beat poetry
Text from the seminal 1809 work of cardiology Cases of the Organic Disease of the Heart, with Dissections and Some Remarks Intended to Point Out the Distinctive Symptoms of These Diseases, by John Collins Warren. In this work, Warren describes the symptoms of 11 of his patients with heart disease as they presented in his office and, later, on his dissecting table.
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| Transgenic Text from Chromosome 1 of the human genome. |
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Extraocular
Text from Zoonomia, the 1794 masterpiece of Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles), in which he attempted to catalog and explain human anatomy, pathology, and physiology, including the visual system.
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| Reactant Text from the The Sceptical Chymist by Robert Boyle (1661), in which he provided the foundations of modern chemistry by proving that matter is comprised of individual atoms. |
Sunday, 19 February 2012
Can you tell what it is yet?
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| Image: Babak Anasori/Michael Naguib/Yury Gogotsi/Michel W. Barsoum/Drexel University [high-resolution] |
Why it's nano-material titanium cliffs of course.
Alright, so perhaps you didn't get that straight off - it's pretty awesome though, huh? This microscopic cliff-like overhang is an electron micrograph of super-thin layers of a titanium compound. When dunked in hydrofluoric acid, a compound known as Ti3AlC2* loses its aluminum to form layers of Ti3C2 that are just five atoms thick. The result is a nearly two-dimensional compound called “MXene”.
*you can probably just skim right over that jumble of letters and numbers - like the first time you read 'Hermione' in Harry Potter.
Saturday, 18 February 2012
Saturday, 11 February 2012
The Sky at Night on BBC
I have just finished watching the Sky at Night on BBC, admiring all the stunning cosmic photographs on display, so decided to check out their Flickr page. It's a good collection of amateur and professional photography, with a particularly large selection of picture of the moon with good views of the lunar mare. Check out The Sky at Night Flickr group.
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
The Art in Science favourite sciart hangouts
My 10 fave sciart hangouts (in no particular order). This list is by no means exhaustive - feel free to share your faves in the comments.
Street Anatomy
One of my favourite blogs for study-procrastination. It features prints, sculptures, street art, sketches and just about every other art form, all inspired by the field of anatomy. Full of awesome images.
BioEmphemera
'Robot Art, Algorithmic and Procedural Art, Computational Aesthetics, Glitch Aesthetics, Vj’ing, Video Art, Computational Archaeology and similar subjects'...go check it out for yourself!
Is this bioart?
A blog that asks the question 'Is this bioart?' through biology-inspired works of art. A good read despite coming away still not really knowing what is bioart... but that's part of the charm.
Symbiartic
A blog by Glendon Mellow, fine artist and illustrator, and Kalliopi Monoyios, scientific illustrator - two successful sciartists in their field who, I would go so far as to say, are a real authority on science-art.
Astro Wheels on Twitter
Astro_Wheels is the twitter feed of NASA astronaut Douglas H. Wheelcock who tweets pictures from a laboratory in space that is orbiting the earth. Rare and mesmerizing views.
Nikon Small World
A Treasure trove of photomicrography and electron photography - thousands of amazing images from previous photomicrography competions providing views of world that we rarely get to see.
Microbial Art
An intriguing collection of unique artworks created using living bacteria, fungi, and protists using a wide variety of taxa and techniques.
Artologica on Etsy
Art by Michelle Banks on Etsy - she mostly uses watercolour to create impressions of veins, cells, neurons, petric dishes and the like.
Melanie K
Sciart works that inspire blogger and MA Art and Science student, Melanie K. (I was very excited to hear that this masters is available! - she is studying at at Central St Martins in the UK)
Information is Beautiful
A popular website full of pretty, design-y visualisations of vast amounts of data - presenting the headache of statistics in easy-to-chew chunks.
Street Anatomy
One of my favourite blogs for study-procrastination. It features prints, sculptures, street art, sketches and just about every other art form, all inspired by the field of anatomy. Full of awesome images.
BioEmphemera
'Robot Art, Algorithmic and Procedural Art, Computational Aesthetics, Glitch Aesthetics, Vj’ing, Video Art, Computational Archaeology and similar subjects'...go check it out for yourself!
Is this bioart?
A blog that asks the question 'Is this bioart?' through biology-inspired works of art. A good read despite coming away still not really knowing what is bioart... but that's part of the charm.
Symbiartic
A blog by Glendon Mellow, fine artist and illustrator, and Kalliopi Monoyios, scientific illustrator - two successful sciartists in their field who, I would go so far as to say, are a real authority on science-art.
Astro Wheels on Twitter
Astro_Wheels is the twitter feed of NASA astronaut Douglas H. Wheelcock who tweets pictures from a laboratory in space that is orbiting the earth. Rare and mesmerizing views.
Nikon Small World
A Treasure trove of photomicrography and electron photography - thousands of amazing images from previous photomicrography competions providing views of world that we rarely get to see.
Microbial Art
An intriguing collection of unique artworks created using living bacteria, fungi, and protists using a wide variety of taxa and techniques.
Artologica on Etsy
Art by Michelle Banks on Etsy - she mostly uses watercolour to create impressions of veins, cells, neurons, petric dishes and the like.
Melanie K
Sciart works that inspire blogger and MA Art and Science student, Melanie K. (I was very excited to hear that this masters is available! - she is studying at at Central St Martins in the UK)
Information is Beautiful
A popular website full of pretty, design-y visualisations of vast amounts of data - presenting the headache of statistics in easy-to-chew chunks.
The Art in Science has a new look
Hi there readers,
Whilst I don't often address you directly, for I rarely find the occasion, today is different. If you haven't noticed already, The Art in Science has had a makeover and I am pleased to share it with you. I felt it was time, like a snake shedding it's skin to allow for growth (and to remove old parasites but that part of the analogy doesn't apply), to give the blog a new lease of life. I wanted to move to a simpler, cleaner, yet brighter look and feel for the blog and so have spent the last few days working on a new logo and palette.
I would welcome your feedback - this is a work in progress and there are many tweaks yet to be made. Howeveer, I would be grateful to hear all kinds of criticism you got for me - be it constructive of otherwise (sometimes it's good to just let it all out) - and of course any squeals of joy at how excited the new-look blog has gotten you.
Cheers m'dears,
Kim
Whilst I don't often address you directly, for I rarely find the occasion, today is different. If you haven't noticed already, The Art in Science has had a makeover and I am pleased to share it with you. I felt it was time, like a snake shedding it's skin to allow for growth (and to remove old parasites but that part of the analogy doesn't apply), to give the blog a new lease of life. I wanted to move to a simpler, cleaner, yet brighter look and feel for the blog and so have spent the last few days working on a new logo and palette.
I would welcome your feedback - this is a work in progress and there are many tweaks yet to be made. Howeveer, I would be grateful to hear all kinds of criticism you got for me - be it constructive of otherwise (sometimes it's good to just let it all out) - and of course any squeals of joy at how excited the new-look blog has gotten you.
Cheers m'dears,
Kim
Monday, 16 January 2012
The intricacies of life: animating the cell
Drew Berry, a biomedical animator, is helping researchers and laymen alike to see the unseeable. We have no ways to directly observe molecules and what they do but at TEDxSydney Berry shows his scientifically accurate and aesthitcally rich animations that are helping researchers to visualise and further understand the unseeable processes within our own cells.
ps. If you are not familiar with TED.com it is time you were. Their tag line is "Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world" and that is exactly what they are. Focusing on science, technology, arts and business. Go explore >>
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
Sick: Candice Coust's knitted anatomy
Candace Coust is a Calgary-based mixed-media artist whose recent work has involved knitting anatomical works including full bodies, pulled apart at the threads and this stop-motion video of a faciful voyage through our mysterious innards.
Candice describes Sick as 'a fanciful, endoscopic journey through the knitted body that is violently disrupted by the discovery of a malignant malady'.
Candice describes Sick as 'a fanciful, endoscopic journey through the knitted body that is violently disrupted by the discovery of a malignant malady'.
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