As A Former Nerdy Child (and Current Nerdy Uni Student) I Love How You Don't Grow Out Of It, I Love That

Romanticizing studying/education

While I am not currently enrolled in college, something I found incredibly helpful when it came to studying and taking notes was fully romanticizing it. And by that I mean going all the way in— I would put on a classical music playlist and set my LEDs to a warm orange tone and pretend I was a young scholar in ye olden days studying by candlelight, and a couple hours later I’d have half a notebook filled with color-coded notes. Another time I put on some film noir jazz and rain ambience and imagined I was a tired, grizzled detective working tirelessly on a cold case that just wasn’t making sense. And sure enough, I would have pages upon pages of notes and work completed by the end of the night. It sounds really silly but I shocked myself with how well it worked, and I wanted to share my experience with it in case it can help anyone else!

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

Notes for drawing (and writing) insects

I do something like this almost yearly and it feels like it gets a little longer every time!

Personally I draw either cartoony stuff or hybrid monsters where none of this is mandatory, but here are some of the things I sometimes see missing or inaccurate in insect artwork that was meant to be lifelike, and even if you only do alien, monster or cartoon arthropods, or you don’t make art at all, you might still like to know some of these things!

First off, an insect leg pretty much always has 9 segments. #1, the coxa, is what attaches it to the body and can be a short little “ball” or a whole long piece, but almost always bends DOWN. The last five segments are almost always very short, forming a super flexible “foot” or “tarsus” ending in a set of claws and sticky pads. All spiders have this “foot” as well!

The foot is even still present on the claws of a preying mantis - growing right out of the “sickle” like this, and still used as feet when the mantis walks around or climbs. Basically ONLY CRABS have limbs ending in simple points!

Insects don’t just have side-to-side mandibles at all, but an upper and lower set of “lips” like a duck bill! In some, however, these parts can be very small or even fused solid.

Insects also typically have four “palps” on their head, an upper and lower pair, which evolved from legs and are used to handle food!

Most *FLYING* insects have ocelli, single-lens eyes in addition to their multi-faceted compound eyes! Some flightless insects can also have them but it depends on the species.

All legs and wings are always attached to the thorax!

Caterpillars still have six legs! They’re very small and up near the head. All the other “legs” are actually just suckers on its underbelly.

You will be forgiven for never drawing this but this is how many parts a mosquito’s mouth actually has. Every piece you can find in another insect’s mouth - the “upper lip,” the mandibles, the palps, etc. - are all present as different needles and blades!

The word “bug” originally referred only to one group of insects, the hemiptera, including stink bugs, assassin bugs, aphids, cicadas, bed bugs and water striders to name a few. One distinguishing feature of this group is that it did away with all those separate mouth parts - all “bugs” have just a single, hollow “beak” or “proboscis” to feed through!

The vast majority of insect groups have wings or at least members with wings, and all insects with wings have  FOUR of them…..except that in beetles, the front wings evolved into solid, protective shields for the hind wings, and in true flies (which includes mosquitoes!) the hind wings evolved into tiny little knobs with weights on the end, called halteres, which the fly’s fast-paced brain uses to feel its orientation, altitude, speed, surrounding air pressure and other fine data making them quite possibly the most advanced aerial navigators on the planet. OTHER NOTES THAT DON’T NEED ILLUSTRATION:

Insects and other arthropods HAVE TRUE BRAINS in their heads, made of brain cells like ours. They can learn, memorize, and make decisions.

Insects do have males and females and obviously only females lay eggs. Fiction is always getting this wrong, but I guess it also does so with birds so whatever.

Of insects, only termites, ants, some bees and some wasps have fully evolved a eusocial colony structure with “queens” as we think of them. Of these, the termites are actually highly specialized cockroaches, and the rest (bees, ants, wasps) are the same exact group.

The scrabbling, clicking noise associated with insects is usually added artificially in nature footage for dramatic effect. While their movements likely emit some sort of sound, it’s probably no “louder” proportionately than, say, the sound of a cat’s fur as it walks. In other words it should not be noticeable; what kind of animal survives as a species if it clatters with every step??

Compound eyes do not see a bunch of identical little images. There is no advantage to any organism seeing that way. An insect sees one big picture just like you do.

Only some insect groups have “larvae.” Others have “nymphs” which resemble fully grown but wingless insects.

The only insects with a venomous bite are some true bugs and some flies. There are no beetles or roaches or wasps or anything else that inject offensive toxins through their mouth parts, as far as I know!

The only insects that lay eggs inside other insects parasitically are certain wasps and flies. There are also NO arachnids that do this.

Only certain bees, wasps and ants have stingers on their abdomens. These are modified from egg laying appendages, so it’s also only ever the females.

The only other kind of “sting” in any insect is a venomous hair or spine, mostly seen in caterpillars.

Long Tail of Comet Pons-Brooks ©

It's very endearing to me how many people are willing to keep an eye on a video feed so they can push a button and let a fish in the Netherlands get to the other side of a dam.

What We Learned from Flying a Helicopter on Mars

The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter made history – not only as the first aircraft to perform powered, controlled flight on another world – but also for exceeding expectations, pushing the limits, and setting the stage for future NASA aerial exploration of other worlds.

Built as a technology demonstration designed to perform up to five experimental test flights over 30 days, Ingenuity performed flight operations from the Martian surface for almost three years. The helicopter ended its mission on Jan. 25, 2024, after sustaining damage to its rotor blades during its 72nd flight.

So, what did we learn from this small but mighty helicopter?

We can fly rotorcraft in the thin atmosphere of other planets.

Ingenuity proved that powered, controlled flight is possible on other worlds when it took to the Martian skies for the first time on April 19, 2021.

Flying on planets like Mars is no easy feat: The Red Planet has a significantly lower gravity – one-third that of Earth’s – and an extremely thin atmosphere, with only 1% the pressure at the surface compared to our planet. This means there are relatively few air molecules with which Ingenuity’s two 4-foot-wide (1.2-meter-wide) rotor blades can interact to achieve flight.

Ingenuity performed several flights dedicated to understanding key aerodynamic effects and how they interact with the structure and control system of the helicopter, providing us with a treasure-trove of data on how aircraft fly in the Martian atmosphere.

Now, we can use this knowledge to directly improve performance and reduce risk on future planetary aerial vehicles.

Creative solutions and “ingenuity” kept the helicopter flying longer than expected.

Over an extended mission that lasted for almost 1,000 Martian days (more than 33 times longer than originally planned), Ingenuity was upgraded with the ability to autonomously choose landing sites in treacherous terrain, dealt with a dead sensor, dusted itself off after dust storms, operated from 48 different airfields, performed three emergency landings, and survived a frigid Martian winter.

Fun fact: To keep costs low, the helicopter contained many off-the-shelf-commercial parts from the smartphone industry - parts that had never been tested in deep space. Those parts also surpassed expectations, proving durable throughout Ingenuity’s extended mission, and can inform future budget-conscious hardware solutions.

There is value in adding an aerial dimension to interplanetary surface missions.

Ingenuity traveled to Mars on the belly of the Perseverance rover, which served as the communications relay for Ingenuity and, therefore, was its constant companion. The helicopter also proved itself a helpful scout to the rover.

After its initial five flights in 2021, Ingenuity transitioned to an “operations demonstration,” serving as Perseverance’s eyes in the sky as it scouted science targets, potential rover routes, and inaccessible features, while also capturing stereo images for digital elevation maps.

Airborne assets like Ingenuity unlock a new dimension of exploration on Mars that we did not yet have – providing more pixels per meter of resolution for imaging than an orbiter and exploring locations a rover cannot reach.

Tech demos can pay off big time.

Ingenuity was flown as a technology demonstration payload on the Mars 2020 mission, and was a high risk, high reward, low-cost endeavor that paid off big. The data collected by the helicopter will be analyzed for years to come and will benefit future Mars and other planetary missions.

Just as the Sojourner rover led to the MER-class (Spirit and Opportunity) rovers, and the MSL-class (Curiosity and Perseverance) rovers, the team believes Ingenuity’s success will lead to future fleets of aircraft at Mars.

In general, NASA’s Technology Demonstration Missions test and advance new technologies, and then transition those capabilities to NASA missions, industry, and other government agencies. Chosen technologies are thoroughly ground- and flight-tested in relevant operating environments — reducing risks to future flight missions, gaining operational heritage and continuing NASA’s long history as a technological leader.

You can fall in love with robots on another planet.

Following in the tracks of beloved Martian rovers, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter built up a worldwide fanbase. The Ingenuity team and public awaited every single flight with anticipation, awe, humor, and hope.

Check out #ThanksIngenuity on social media to see what’s been said about the helicopter’s accomplishments.

Learn more about Ingenuity’s accomplishments here. And make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

医生Lophēlē 🏥

Galaxies

Unimaginably huge collections of gas, dust, stars, and even planets, galaxies come in many shapes and sizes. Some are spirals, such as our own galaxy, others are like squashed balls, and some have no shape at all.

From the book Knowledge Encyclopedia Science! (DK)