Beautiful Wind Map

There's a beautiful moving map of the wind for the United States at http://hint.fm/wind/. This is the moving wind map during Hurricane Sandy on October 30, 2012.

"Solar Rain" video from NASA

Gliding Along the Alps for Eleven Hours

Did You Wonder How a Plane Stayed Up for 11 Hours With No Engine? an article by James Fallows about the flight in The Atlantic.

Morning Glory

Elegant Microfluidic Images

This article contains more nice photomicrographs of emulsions High-Order Multiple Emulsions Formed in Poly(dimethylsiloxane) Microfluidics.

Mantis Shrimps are Really, Really Cute

Photos of mantis shrimps found on the web, for the source and attribution, click on the photo.

Nice collection of Science Images

ScienceShots at Science Magazine.
Here are a couple of favorites:
Arp 147: Hubble
Hubble

Science as Art Competition

Image: Fanny Beron, École Polytechnique de Montréal, Montréal, Canada)
Science as Art competition held at the 2007 Materials Research Society (MRS) Fall Meeting

New Form of Vision Discovered

Mantis Shrimps can detect polarized light, an ability previously unknown: Science Magazine.

They are also really cute.

Crayon Physics

Cute video demonstration of the Crayon Physics program. You will smile.

The Ant Nebula

The gorgeous Ant Nebula image from the .Hubble Space Telescope

Saturn's Rings

Waves and Small Particles in Ring A

See the full explanation and an even larger version of this gorgeous image at JPL/NASA

Stephan’s Quintet

Stephan's Quintet as imaged by the Gemini Observatory using the Multi-Object Spectrograph on Gemini North. The interacting members of the cluster are almost 300 million light years away. The galaxy NGC 7320 (top–center) is thought by most astronomers to be in the foreground (about 8 times closer) and is distinguished in this image by multiple red blobs indicating hydrogen clouds where stars are forming. Orientation: North–bottom, East–right.
Galactic Contortionists Captured by Gemini

From the image gallery at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory.

Art of Science Competition at Princeton

Driven
Anton Darhuber, Benjamin Fischer and Sandra Troian
Microfluidic Research and Engineering Laboratory, Department of Chemical Engineering
SECOND PRIZE WINNER
This image illustrates evolving dynamical patterns formed during the spreading of a surface-active substance (surfactant) over a thin liquid film on a silicon wafer. After spin-coating of glycerol, small droplets of oleic acid were deposited. The usually slow spreading process was highly accelerated by the surface tension imbalance that triggered a cascade of hydrodynamic instabilities. Such surface-tension driven flow phenomena are believed to be important for the self-cleaning mechanism of the lung as well as pulmonary drug delivery.

gallery page at Princeton.

Asymptotic Freedom: From Paradox to Paradigm

by Frank Wilczek. Lecture on receipt of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Preprint at the physics archive.


QCD Lava Lamp (spontaneous quantum fluctuations in the gluon fields)

These pictures make it clear and tangible that the quantum vacuum is a dynamic medium, whose properties and responses largely determine the behavior of matter. ... The masses of hadrons, then, are uniquely associated to tones emitted by the dynamic medium of space when it disturbed in various ways ... We thereby discover, in the reality of masses, an algorithmic, precise Music of the Void. It is a modern embodiment of the ancients’ elusive, mystical “Music of the Spheres”.

Abstract

Asymptotic freedom was developed as a response to two paradoxes: the weirdness of quarks, and in particular their failure to radiate copiously when struck; and the coexistence of special relativity and quantum theory, despite the apparent singularity of quantum field theory. It resolved these paradoxes, and catalyzed the development of several modern paradigms: the hard reality of quarks and gluons, the origin of mass from energy, the simplicity of the early universe, and the power of symmetry as a guide to physical law.

A beautiful (and often very readable) account of one of the most recent (well, 1972) major advances in theoretical physics.

In theoretical physics, paradoxes are good. That’s paradoxical, since a paradox appears to be a contradiction, and contradictions imply serious error. But Nature cannot realize contradictions. When our physical theories lead to paradox we must find a way out. Paradoxes focus our attention, and we think harder.

"Paradox 1: Quarks are Born Free, but Everywhere They are in
Chains"

Powerful interactions ought to be associated with powerful radiation. When the most powerful interaction in nature, the strong interaction, did not obey this rule, it posed a sharp paradox.

"Paradox 2: Special Relativity and Quantum Mechanics Both Work"

The second paradox is more conceptual. Quantum mechanics and special relativity are two great theories of twentieth-century physics. Both are very successful. But these two theories are based on entirely different ideas, which are not easy to reconcile. In particular, special relativity puts space and time on the same footing, but quantum mechanics treats them very differently. This leads to a creative tension, whose resolution has led to three previous Nobel Prizes (and ours is another).

So we had the paradox, that combining quantum mechanics and special relativity seemed to lead inevitably to quantum field theory; but quantum field theory, despite sub-stantial pragmatic success, self-destructed logically due to catastrophic screening.

A picture of particle tracks emerging from the collision of two gold ions at high energy. The resulting fireball and its subsequent expansion recreate, on a small scale and briefly, physical conditions that last occurred during the Big Bang

Video, etc of the Nobel Lecture.


See also An Emptier Emptiness a previous post about another Wilczek article.

Beautiful Graphics from this week's Nature

The density distribution of matter in a slice of the computational volume of the Millennium Run model, showing large clusters with densities 1,000 times the mean density of the Universe (yellow); a 'cosmic web' of filamentary structures 10 to 100 times denser than the mean (purple); and the mostly empty regions (black), often called voids, which contain less than 10% of the mean density of the Universe. The white square shows the size of the computational volume for a full hydrodynamic simulation that would use up the same computational resources as the Millennium Run. (Figure courtesy of Volker Springel.)

Cosmology: Digitizing the Universe by Nickolay Y. Gnedin in Nature 435, 572-573 (2 June 2005).

For years, cosmologists have been racing each other to develop ever more sophisticated and realistic models of the evolution of the Universe. The competition has just become considerably stiffer.

Volcano of Colima Erupts in Mexico

Smoke and ash from the Colima volcano, on May 25 2005, 430 miles northwest of Mexico City, in what was the largest eruption in 14 years. (Photo: AP)



October 2004 from Volcano of Colima Mexico, photos


Photograph courtesy of Abel Cortes, Colima Volcano Observatory,
University of Colima, November 22, 1998.
Aerial view of Colima Volcano moments after a lava flow on the upper flank of the volcano collapsed; the photograph is tilted slightly (horizon is in upper right). The white plume is rising directly from the summit of the volcano. The tan-colored ash cloud on the volcano's flank (left side in this view) is rising from a pyroclastic flow. The fast-moving pyroclastic flow was caused by the collapse of a thick lava flow that was extruding from the summit area and oozing down the volcano's steep upper cone. When the lava flow collapsed, the hot lava broke apart into fragments ranging in size from boulders to tiny ash particles and swept down the volcano under the influence of gravity to form the pyroclastic flow; the flow reached a maximum distance of 4.5 km from the summit.


More images and information on Colima at Volcano World (Colima)

SI / USGS Weekly Volcanic Activity Report

Microsocopic Images

at The Micropolitan Museum of microscopic art forms.


The fragile wing of a mosquito. If you smash a mosquito very carefully you can enjoy the beauty of its wings!


Bell animalcules are common in fresh water but can also be found in the sea. These colonial Ciliates live attached to a stalk. Find out more about their fresh water relatives on the smallest page on the web

Max Ernst: a Retrospective

exhibit at the Metropolitan in New York - April 7, 2005–July 10, 2005. See the review by John Updike in the New York Review of Books



"The Robing of the Bride", 1939 130 x 96 cm., Venice


Europe after the Rain II. Oil on canvas. 54 x 146 cm. 1940-42. Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, USA

Europe after the Rain, we are told, was begun by Ernst in a European prison camp and finished in the United States—a precarious transit, in that dire time, for a crusty canvas two feet by five." says Updike in his review.



Adolf Hitler and Josef Goebbels view the exhibition of "degenerate art", Munich 1937

Hitler was definitely not a fan, Ernst happened to be Jewish:



Max Ernst (French, born Germany, 1891–1976)
The Blessed Virgin Chastises the Infant Jesus Before Three Witnesses: A.B., P.E. and the Artist, 1926
Oil on canvas; 77 1/4 x 51 1/4 in. (196 x 130 cm)
Museum Ludwig, Köln
© 2004 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

According to Updike's review, "The original exhibition including Ernst's assaultive painting The Blessed Virgin Chastises the Infant Jesus before Three Witnesses: A.B., P.E., and the Artist (1926) was closed by church pressure because of it; at the Met, alone on a large wall and protected by glass against possible Christian vandals, it exerts a sensuous spell."

Klein's quartic curve

This is called Klein's quartic curve. It can be turned inside out and it gets reflected in the process.




See John Baez's page for more information.