as we walk, we ask questions

Liquid Rainbow Machine by Edwin Deen If your walls are white,...

foreverinwonderland — Tue, 14 May 2013 18:15:31 -0700

Liquid Rainbow Machine by Edwin Deen

If your walls are white, and you want to add more color to your life – take a look at this rainbow sprinkler by Edwin Deen. Netherlands-based artist transformed an ordinary garden sprinkler into an amazing rainbow machine!

The Magical World of Living Light This is the mysterious...

foreverinwonderland — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:30:31 -0700

The Magical World of Living Light

This is the mysterious spectacle of bioluminescence. Its hard not to revel in the beauty of this remarkable natural phenomenon. These glowing creatures are primarily a product of the ocean. They are the primary source of light in the largest and darkest area of habitable land on Earth, the deep sea. On land, they are most commonly seen as glowing fungus on wood (foxfire) or in the few families of luminous insects (fireflies).

Galaxy Collisions: Simulation vs Observations The folks over at...

foreverinwonderland — Tue, 14 May 2013 10:45:19 -0700

Galaxy Collisions: Simulation vs Observations

The folks over at NASA apod just put up an awesome galaxy collisions, simulations and observations video for the public. I made a little gif set to go along with the video which can be found here.

What happens when two galaxies collide? Although it may take over a billion years, such titanic clashes are quite common.

Images Credit: NASA, ESA; Visualization: Frank Summers (STScI);

Simulation: Chris Mihos (CWRU) & Lars Hernquist (Harvard).

Since galaxies are mostly empty space, no internal stars are likely to themselves collide. Rather the gravitation of each galaxy will distort or destroy the other galaxy, and the galaxies may eventually merge to form a single larger galaxy.

Expansive das and dust clouds collide and trigger waves of star formation that complete even during the interaction process. Pictured above is a computer simulation of two large spiral galaxies colliding, interspersed with real still images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Our own Milky Way Galaxy has absorbed several smaller galaxies during its existence and is even projected to merge with the larger neighboring Andromeda galaxy in a few billion years.

The Dead and the Dying

foreverinwonderland — Mon, 13 May 2013 22:16:06 -0700

The Dead and the Dying

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foreverinwonderland — Fri, 10 May 2013 14:30:48 -0700

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foreverinwonderland — Fri, 10 May 2013 10:45:18 -0700

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foreverinwonderland — Thu, 09 May 2013 18:15:41 -0700

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foreverinwonderland — Thu, 09 May 2013 14:30:25 -0700

Remote camera view of Vega VV02 liftoff by europeanspaceagency...

foreverinwonderland — Thu, 09 May 2013 10:45:36 -0700

Remote camera view of Vega VV02 liftoff by europeanspaceagency on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
The second flight of ESA’s newest launch vehicle has been completed from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Two Earth observation satellites, ESA’s Proba-V and Vietnam’s VNREDSat‑1A, were released into different orbits, demonstrating the rocket’s versatility. Estonia’s first satellite, the ESTCube‑1 technology demonstrator, was also released into orbit.

Vega lifted off at 02:06 GMT on 7 May 2013 (23:06 local time 6 May; 04:06 CEST 7 May) on a complex mission requiring five upper-stage boosts.

Credits: ESA–S. Corvaja, 2013

astronomy-to-zoology: Happy Birthday to David Attenborough!! 87...

foreverinwonderland — Thu, 09 May 2013 06:11:26 -0700

astronomy-to-zoology:

Happy Birthday to David Attenborough!!

87 years and still going strong!

mad-as-a-marine-biologist: thatscienceguy: A reason to Fear...

foreverinwonderland — Tue, 07 May 2013 10:45:21 -0700

mad-as-a-marine-biologist:

thatscienceguy:

A reason to Fear the Ocean, or Love it?

Love.

neuromorphogenesis: Here’s the Real Reason Why Virtual Reality...

foreverinwonderland — Mon, 06 May 2013 18:16:33 -0700

neuromorphogenesis:

Here’s the Real Reason Why Virtual Reality Doesn’t Work Yet

It’s another blow for immersive virtual reality. University of California researchers have shown that even people with perfect eyesight navigate the world by relying on a lot more than what they see. Here’s why VR won’t really work until we go beyond visual cues and fancy treadmills.

Inside our brain’s hippocampus we have what are called place cells. These specialized cells help us build a “cognitive map” of our surroundings — mental representations which allow us to orientate ourselves in our spatial environment.

These neurons have been observed to fire like crazy whenever a rat has to go about the task of figuring out where it is in the world. And if the rat in an entirely new location altogether, it has to create a new cognitive map from scratch.

But once this map has been created, rats can quickly figure out where they are should they return to that location.

Scientists have theorized that rats don’t require much sensory information to build these maps, figuring that distant visual images, the ability to move themselves around, and maybe some proprioceptive orientation is all that’s required to do the trick. But as the new study by Pascal Ravassard and colleagues has shown, that’s not enough — and not enough by a mile.

To reach this conclusion, Pascal Ravassard and colleagues experimented with rats placed in a virtual reality environment. Indeed, VR is becoming a popular tool amongst some scientists. For example, researchers have interacted with rats by becoming virtual rats themselves, and they’ve gotten monkeys to feel virtual objects by using a brain implant.

But as this experiment showed, getting a rat’s brain to respond to a VR environment in the same way it responds to the real world is not so easy.

For the study, the researchers tried to create two apparently identical worlds, one real (RW) and one virtual (VR). Each environment consisted of a linear track in the center of a square room with distinct visual cues on each of the four walls. These cues were nearly identical in both environments, but the rats’ bodies were fixed in VR — thus minimizing (or even eliminating) other important spatial cues, like balance. So, the only incoming environmental data during VR exposure were the visual cues and self-motion.

After attaching tetrodes to measure the neural activity of six rats, the researchers had them run the track in both the RW and VR environments. When looking at the results, it was clear that the VR environment was not exciting the place cells as per usual. In VR, place cells showed 20% activity as compared to 45% in RW — more than twice as much.

So, vision and self-motion will spark a little bit of place cell activity, but balance and other sensory cues are what’s fully required to properly encode a rat’s — and likely a human’s — position. Moreover, the researchers speculate that other cues — like smell, sound, and textures — are what’s needed to help the rats properly self-locate themselves. But looking at the scans, the researchers realized that the only spatial encoding that was being done in VR was distance.

It’s clear from the study, therefore, that a variety of sensory clues must interact and compete in the brain for us to construct a robust cognitive map.

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foreverinwonderland — Mon, 06 May 2013 14:30:53 -0700

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foreverinwonderland — Mon, 06 May 2013 10:45:33 -0700

cephalopodsgonewild: Octopus. by ~Nafertini

foreverinwonderland — Sun, 05 May 2013 18:15:30 -0700

cephalopodsgonewild:

Octopus. by ~Nafertini

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foreverinwonderland — Sun, 05 May 2013 14:30:38 -0700

h4ilsham: NGC 224 / Great Nebula in Andromeda / M 31 (by LJ...

foreverinwonderland — Sun, 05 May 2013 10:45:32 -0700

h4ilsham:

NGC 224 / Great Nebula in Andromeda / M 31 (by LJ Sears-Thomas)

mothernaturenetwork: Earth’s carbon dioxide levels to hit 400...

foreverinwonderland — Sun, 05 May 2013 01:22:18 -0700

mothernaturenetwork:

Earth’s carbon dioxide levels to hit 400 ppm

This much carbon dioxide hasn’t filled the planet’s atmosphere since the Pliocene Epoch 3 million years ago — long before the rise of modern humans.

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foreverinwonderland — Sun, 05 May 2013 01:15:51 -0700

did-you-kno: Source

foreverinwonderland — Sun, 05 May 2013 01:15:21 -0700

did-you-kno:

Source