climateadaptation:

Burning for two weeks, American oil company Chevron denies that this oil rig explosion is causing environmental damage in the Niger Delta, Nigeria.

The company says that the leaked and burning oil poses no risk to human health or the environment. There seems to be no concrete plans to stop the fire, which has been burning since about January 23rd. 

Chevron is paying off a nearby village with food, and activists are being stonewalled by the company. 

Why are oil companies not forced to have emergency systems in place? 

Al Jazeera has video, here.

scipsy: Bizarre snow and ice formations called “penitentes” produced by the competition between sublimation and melting of the snow (via ESO)

scipsy:

Bizarre snow and ice formations called “penitentes” produced by the competition between sublimation and melting of the snow (via ESO)

sharpestrose: producermatthew: Cupertino high school student Angela Zhang may know the cure for cancer: As a freshman, she started reading doctoral-level papers on biological engineering. By her sophomore year in high school, she managed to convince Stanford University to let her use their laboratories, and by junior year, she began doing her own research that led her to develop a recipe that boggles even her chemistry teacher. Zhang’s recipe won her a $100,000 award at a national science competition sponsored by Siemens. Her method of curing cancer by aiming an infrared light at mutated cells killed cancer in mice; it will be a few more years before it can be determined if the method works in humans. Nevertheless, Zhang’s three years of research is considered a breakthrough. [CBS News] A name to know and quote the next time you head some fuckdouche start slagging off teenage girls. 

sharpestrose:

producermatthew:

Cupertino high school student Angela Zhang may know the cure for cancer: As a freshman, she started reading doctoral-level papers on biological engineering. By her sophomore year in high school, she managed to convince Stanford University to let her use their laboratories, and by junior year, she began doing her own research that led her to develop a recipe that boggles even her chemistry teacher.

Zhang’s recipe won her a $100,000 award at a national science competition sponsored by Siemens.

Her method of curing cancer by aiming an infrared light at mutated cells killed cancer in mice; it will be a few more years before it can be determined if the method works in humans. Nevertheless, Zhang’s three years of research is considered a breakthrough. [CBS News]

A name to know and quote the next time you head some fuckdouche start slagging off teenage girls. 

roachpatrol:

jtotheizzoe:

alleluiaaa:

These are the patterns of planets orbiting around each other. It’s as though they’re eternally dancing around each other. Each step, pattern, movement makes a beautiful shape unique to their relationship. It’s so… glorious.

It also hurts my eyes if I stare at it for too long.

All based on this:

“Take the orbits of any two planets and draw a line between the two planet positions every few days.  Because the inner planet orbits faster than the outer planet, interesting patterns evolve.”

Lovely!

Oh whoops I will just be having an eyegasm thank you and goodnight. 

(Source: quitecamille)

geologise:

Cave Of The Crystals | Naica, Chihuahua, Mexico

I remember when this was first discovered, and how blown away I was when photos were released of this magnificent wonder. There’s a documentary out there called, “Naica: Beyond The Crystal Cave” and another that hits on other sister caves as well, “Into The Lost Crystal Caves”. Definitely interesting if you want to watch them go through the cave to get samples and explore. A dangerous but extremely satisfying task! Here’s a bit of information on the Crystal Caves in Naica, Mexico.

  • It contains some of the largest (in size, mass, length, etc) natural crystals ever found on Earth. A Gypsum beam was found to be 11 metres (36 feet) in length, 4 metres (13 feet) in width, and weigh around 55 tons.
  • It is found in a horseshoe-shaped cavity of limestone rock, which used to be full of mineral-rich hot water, but has since been kept drained.
  • The cave is extremely hot with air temperatures reaching up to 58 °C (136 °F) with 90 to 99 percent humidity.
  • The cave was filled with mineral-rich hot water (a constant 50 °C+) for around 500,000 years, which let these crystals form under the right conditions.

I’ve added a few links that take you to more photos and articles as well (along with its sister caves).

[Flash 10 is required to watch video]

ishmaeldreaming:

cacellcee:

tumbleweedalong:

klaineexists:

imaweaponofmassiveconsumption:

darktwiistedfantasy:

WITCHCRAFT 

can i has

COOL

We are living in the future!

(Source: bignickels)

thirddeadlysin:

Quantum locking, aka quantum LEVITATION, aka by about halfway through I realized I’d been sitting with my mouth wide open for a full minute

Uggghhh, I love following you on Tumblr because HOLY SHIT LOOK AT THIS AMAZING THING.

Played 110 times [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

publicradiointernational:

How do you make science fascinatingly hilarious? Add one part John Hodgman and one part Neil deGrasse Tyson … and that’s what The Sound of Young America did in this interview.

Hodgman and Tyson talk about how money for space exploration stacks up to other spending, personal space travel dreams, how to explain dark matter to normal people, the Cosmos series reboot, and more.

Oh my gosh, this is the best use of my time I can find.

“Since her death in 1979, the woman who discovered what the universe is made of has not so much as received a memorial plaque. Her newspaper obituaries do not mention her greatest discovery. […] Every high school student knows that Isaac Newton discovered gravity, that Charles Darwin discovered evolution, and that Albert Einstein discovered the relativity of time. But when it comes to the composition of our universe, the textbooks simply say that the most abundant atom in the universe is hydrogen. And no one ever wonders how we know.”

Jeremy Knowles, discussing the complete lack of recognition Cecilia Payne gets, even today, for her revolutionary discovery. (via alliterate)

Here, let me give you an example of her BAMFness, courtesy of Wikipedia: “Elected member of Royal Astronomical Society while still a student at Cambridge 1923.” Now, get informed-ish, for a start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilia_Payne-Gaposchkin (via angwe)

But isn’t it also sad that Mr. Knowles continues the tradition and does not mention her name.

narwhalian: taintedsaints: vaguelyhazee:   Largest water reservoir discovered in black hole. “The reservoir holds as much as 140 trillion oceans, or more than 4,000 times more than exists in the entire Milky Way. It exists as vapour spread across hundreds of light years. While water has been found across much of the universe previously, this is interesting because of the fact this reservoir is 12 billion light years away, meaning that this water existed when the universe was only 1.6 billion years old.” Sooo, can we relocate to a black hole then? Life would be SO much more interesting :D Come purchase a lovely starter home in Black Hole Acres.  Where if you don’t care for your neighbors, hopefully they’ll be sucked down into oblivion! Okay, that part about it holding the equivalent of 140 TRILLION OCEANS just blew my mind. 140 TRILLION OCEANS

narwhalian:

taintedsaints:

vaguelyhazee:

 

Largest water reservoir discovered in black hole.

“The reservoir holds as much as 140 trillion oceans, or more than 4,000 times more than exists in the entire Milky Way. It exists as vapour spread across hundreds of light years.

While water has been found across much of the universe previously, this is interesting because of the fact this reservoir is 12 billion light years away, meaning that this water existed when the universe was only 1.6 billion years old.”

Sooo, can we relocate to a black hole then? Life would be SO much more interesting :D

Come purchase a lovely starter home in Black Hole Acres.  Where if you don’t care for your neighbors, hopefully they’ll be sucked down into oblivion!

Okay, that part about it holding the equivalent of 140 TRILLION OCEANS just blew my mind.

140 TRILLION OCEANS

(Source: popsci.com)

“We need to get girls interested in computing by first grade. By fifth grade, it’s game over. Computing has an image crisis. A boy geek subculture has grown up around gaming that involves violence. It’s not something little girls aspire to. It’s not about lack of educational opportunities for women. Smart girls graduate from high school with straight A’s, go to college, and find themselves surrounded by guys who’ve been hacking for 10 years. So they’re way behind. They get discouraged, and go into law or medicine.”

Audrey MacLean on Women’s Advantage in Technology - NYTimes.com (via infoneer-pulse)

Women basically founded the entire field of computer science.  The computers we have today would not exist without the work of Grace Murray Hopper, the ENIAC programmers, and so many other fabulous women.  The extent to which we’ve since been excluded from CS and the way these women’s achievements have been erased/applied to men is just really freaking gross.

(via delennofmir)

theanimalblog: Pacific Parrotlet (by jim lehmann) Also see: Parrot Parents Name Their Babies

theanimalblog:

Pacific Parrotlet (by jim lehmann)

Also see: Parrot Parents Name Their Babies

bg5000: Grains of sand magnified to 250 times real size I can’t believe this is real.

bg5000:

Grains of sand magnified to 250 times real size

I can’t believe this is real.

“This is usually the point where some bleating moron emails me to say ‘science doesn’t know everything’. You’re right. It doesn’t. I mean, what is science anyway? Only a rigorously tested, peer-reviewed, continually evolving system of knowledge about the way our world works, built up over centuries - that’s all. It’s not a patch on mindless superstition, which has been around far longer, and is responsible for bringing us such exciting gems as ghosts, demons, witch trials, the tooth fairy and the Psychic pissing Detective.”

Charlie Brooker on The Psychic Detective (via jaffajam)

or as Dara O’Briain says: of course science doesn’t know everything. if it did, it’d STOP.

(via neonloneliness)(via bitterbuffalo)