Links
Lots and lots of links have been piling up, so here they are.First off, my friend Frank Taylor sent me a link to an absolutely amazing video that shows you flight patterns--of every flight in the U.S. on a single day. You see as many as 18,000 flights represented simultaneously, and you see the data presented in multiple views, many of which are strikingly beautiful. It's spectacular, and you can see it here.
Here's a panorama--of Mars. Just click on the "enlarge image" option in the right panel. It's spectacular, and you can see it here.
From Sirius, an article about NASA sending two spacecraft to make a 3D movie.
Of the sun.
It's fascinating, and you can read about it here.
From Frankling Brown of SportsDigs, a link to a video combining footage from the Super Friends cartoon with the audio track from Office Space. NSFW (at least the audio), but it's very clever and very funny and you can see it here.
From Geoff Engelstein, a link to a story about a prehistoric bear that was quite a badass. Here's an excerpt:
The bear that left a 3-foot-long claw mark in an Ice Age clay bank was the largest bear species ever to walk the earth, about 6 feet tall at the shoulder and capable of moving its 1,800 pounds up to 45 miles per hour in a snarling dash for prey.
The claw mark was found in a Missouri cave, and you can read about both the bear and the cave here.
Here's another link from Sirius, and it's a fascinating article about elephants and their self awareness. Here's an excerpt:
Elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror and use their reflections to explore hidden parts of themselves, a measure of subjective self-awareness that until now has been shown definitively only in humans and apes, researchers reported yesterday.
The findings confirm a long-standing suspicion among scientists that elephants, with their big brains, complex societies and reputation for helping ill herdmates, have a sufficiently developed sense of identity to pass the challenging "mirror self-recognition test."
The test, which in this case required construction of a huge, "elephant-proof" mirror at the Bronx Zoo, where the experiments were conducted, provides an index of an animal's ability to conceive of itself. It is a quality of self-consciousness that some scientists believe is a prerequisite for the emergence of empathy and altruism.
It's an amazing article, and you can read it here.
Jesse Leimkuehler sent in a link to some stunning images from the Hubble telescope (which you can also use as wallpaper). They're stunning, and you can see them here.
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