September 21, 2012: It’s Just Another Day In L.A. As The Space Shuttle Endeavour Passes Overhead On

a post-doc was doing a guest seminar at my institute and at the beginning of his presentation he was explaining why he chose birds for his evolutionary analysis - so he said "well first of all, because birds are the best and most interesting animals and it's fun to study them" and a few professors in the room gave him a very serious nod

This is a fascinating cosmic scene captured by Hubble: jets firing out from the rotational poles of a newly-ignited star illuminate gas and dust inside the Orion B cloud, 1,350 light-years away, forming what's called a Herbig-Haro object. 

Credit: Jason Major

This Zenith Movie was taken on Sol 4001 (2023-11-07) at approximately 8:04 LTST and a solar longitude of 145.03°. (What is this?)

As a former nerdy child (and current nerdy uni student) I love how you don't grow out of it, I love that ✨real scientists✨ remain genuine nerds: there's a sheet of paper stuck to the wall above the coffee machine in my internship mentor's office that shows an increasing linear function where x = amount of consumed coffee and f(x) = number of published papers. The researchers here regularly joke about electrons and syntheses and whatnot. Internship mentor told us all today about a science meme he'd seen the other day. It's amazing :')

NATIVE CARBON DIOXIDE FOUND ON JUPITER’S MOON EUROPA

The autoclave is designed to kill schmucks I think

nanotechnologyworld

Hydrogen becomes a superfluid at nanoscale, confirming 50-year-old prediction

Hydrogen nano-clusters at low temperatures display ‘superfluidity’—a quantum state of frictionless flow only previously observed in helium.

This discovery deepens our understanding of quantum fluids and could inspire more efficient hydrogen storage and transport for clean energy.

If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

The Conversation

Explainer: what is citizen science?

Public participation in science is increasing, and citizen science has a central part in this. It is a contribution by the public to researc

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

do you ever think about Humans, even humans who don’t like glitter, like glitter. We are drawn to shiny things in the same wild way our ancestors were overcome by a compulsion to forage for honey. A theory that has found favor among research psychologists (supported, in part, by a study that monitored babies’ enthusiasm for licking plates with glossy finishes) is that our attraction to sparkle is derived from an innate need to seek out fresh water. I'm at the beach and it is 27 degrees celsius and the water is glittering glittering glittering