May 15, 2013 | 40 notes

View From the Top of the Washington Monument

If you’re scared of heights this video isn’t for you. On May 13, workers wore helmet cams as they repaired the last of the scaffolding around the 555-foot-tall monument. The next step is to wrap fabric around the monument and attach lights. The damage caused by the August 2011 earthquake should be completed in 2014.

Ed note: How engineers investigated the Washington Monument from hundreds of feet above the ground.

h/t WAMU

May 14, 2013 | 4,670 notes

X-ray vision tracks lightning bursts

Blink and you’ve missed it. Researchers in the US have captured the world’s first X-ray images of lightning, by creating a special camera that can capture radiation at 10 million frames per second. They presented their new findings at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting in San Francisco and they say that this new view of lightning could help to solve some of the mysteries of this spectacular natural phenomenon.

The research was carried out at the International Center for Lightning Research and Testing, located in Florida. It is one of the few sites in world where lightning is initiated and studied under controlled conditions. By firing rockets with trailing wires into thunder clouds, scientists are able to generate electric fields that are large enough to trigger bolts of lightning, which then propagate back down towards the rocket launch tower.

Joseph Dwyer and colleagues at the Florida Institute of Technology became interested in the fact that lightning emits X-rays as it propagates through the air, a phenomenon that was only noted in the past decade. But given that X-ray sources in lightning travel through the Earth’s atmosphere at velocities approaching the speed of light, it is difficult to catch them on camera before they disappear. In addition, they cannot be imaged with standard mirrors and lenses because huge amounts of material are required to prevent X-rays and gamma rays from entering through the sides of a camera.

Dwyer’s team has created a customized camera that has 30 detectors made from a combination of sodium iodide and photomultiplier tubes, each measuring 3 × 3 inch. The device, which is approximately the size of a standard refrigerator, is also equipped with a 3 inch pinhole aperture, and can record X-rays at 10 million frames per second. “This is actually a very old technique for making images, like that seen in a camera obscura,” Dwyer says.

During July and August this year, Dwyer’s team studied four rocket-triggered lightning flashes at the Florida test site. Each flash lasted for approximately two seconds and the resulting sequences of images revealed that X-rays emerged primarily from the vicinity of the lightning tip as it propagated towards the Earth. As the lightning crashed into the control tower it also triggered large bursts of gamma radiation, which were also captured by the camera.

“For the first time we’re catching a glimpse of lightning in the X-ray emission,” says Dwyer. “We’re seeing lightning as Superman would see it with his X-ray vision”.

Credit: James Dacey/physicsworld.com

via: spaceplasma

(via n-a-s-a)

May 14, 2013 | 272 notes

Amazing Sea Butterflies Are the Ocean’s Canary in the Coal Mine Most climate change discussion focuses on the warmth of the air, but around one-quarter of the carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere dissolves into the ocean. Dissolved carbon dioxide makes seawater more acidic—a process called ocean acidification—and its effects have already been observed: the shells of sea butterflies, also known as pteropods, have begun dissolving in the Antarctic. But some pteropod species are proving to do just fine in more acidic water, while others have shells that dissolve quickly. So why do some species perish while others thrive? - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com. Photo: © Karen Osborn

Amazing Sea Butterflies Are the Ocean’s Canary in the Coal Mine

Most climate change discussion focuses on the warmth of the air, but around one-quarter of the carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere dissolves into the ocean. Dissolved carbon dioxide makes seawater more acidic—a process called ocean acidification—and its effects have already been observed: the shells of sea butterflies, also known as pteropods, have begun dissolving in the Antarctic.

But some pteropod species are proving to do just fine in more acidic water, while others have shells that dissolve quickly. So why do some species perish while others thrive? - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.

Photo: © Karen Osborn

May 14, 2013 | 228 notes

Get a Degree in Heavy Metal Music Performance Looking to get that all-important college degree but care more about double-kicks and shredding than valence electrons or iambic pentameter? According to the Telegraph, Nottingham Trent University in England may have just what you’re after: a degree in Heavy Metal Music Performance. The course will encourage students to explore how the actions of heavy metal figures have been censored throughout history, as well as to study how famous heavy metal bands came into being and the relationship of heavy metal to religion and philosophy. The degree is a two-year focus that you’ll need to round out with another year of studies. In the end, you’ll be sent home with a nice artium baccalaureus. In England, says the Telegraph, the school is facing flak for offering what many are criticizing as a useless degree, one that sets students back professionally (on top of taking their tuition money.) - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com. Ed note: If you were majoring in heavy metal, who would you want to be your teacher? Photo courtesy of Flickr user Focka

Get a Degree in Heavy Metal Music Performance

Looking to get that all-important college degree but care more about double-kicks and shredding than valence electrons or iambic pentameter? According to the Telegraph, Nottingham Trent University in England may have just what you’re after: a degree in Heavy Metal Music Performance.

The course will encourage students to explore how the actions of heavy metal figures have been censored throughout history, as well as to study how famous heavy metal bands came into being and the relationship of heavy metal to religion and philosophy.

The degree is a two-year focus that you’ll need to round out with another year of studies. In the end, you’ll be sent home with a nice artium baccalaureus. In England, says the Telegraph, the school is facing flak for offering what many are criticizing as a useless degree, one that sets students back professionally (on top of taking their tuition money.) - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.

Ed note: If you were majoring in heavy metal, who would you want to be your teacher?

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Focka