Month: May 2014

Space & Time Posted on

NASA’s New Coronal Mass Ejection Close-Up Will Melt Your Brain

Image: Sunspot/NASA If one were to land on the Sun in some mythical spacecraft resistant to two million or so degrees Fahrenheit, they might be surprised at the temperatures encountered. Passing through the upper layers of said star, our solar passenger would find temperatures plummeting as they came closer and closer to the boiling plasma surface, from many millions of degrees in the Sun’s upper atmosphere to a mere 10,000 or so degrees Fahrenheit as they entered the Sun’s “interior.” As solar material is ejected from that interior, it gains energy and heats up as it moves outward into space. The atmospheric zones where this heating occurs are the chromosphere and the transition region. Together they form a volatile and rather mysterious zone of […] Read More

Physics Posted on

Throwback Thursday: The 95th Anniversary of Relativity’s Confirmation (Synopsis)

“Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate. One thing at least is certain, light has weight. One thing is certain and the rest debate. Light rays, when near the Sun, do not go straight.” –Arthur Eddington It might seem like General Relativity has been around forever, but it’s been less than a century since it was released and confirmed. In fact, today marks the 95th anniversary of the solar eclipse that changed our view of the Universe! The reaction of the world was priceless, particularly of the New York Times when all was said and done. Whether you’ve heard this story a thousand times or never once before, go read and enjoy this walk down memory lane, and find out about the day that […] Read More

Science Posted on

The Plan to Turn Elephants Into Woolly Mammoths Is Already Underway

Image: Flickr/V.H. Hammer A man charged with thinking outside the box to solve huge societal problems with game-changing ideas at one of the world’s most innovative companies stood on stage at a future tech conference in Washington DC last weekend and told a genetic scientist that he “would love to be alive to see a woolly mammoth.” The genetic scientist looked back at him and laughed. “What, are you sick?” he asked. The implication of the exchange, between Google X’s Richard DeVaul and Stewart Brand, a de-extinction expert, was clear: There’s a mission to bring back one of history’s most famous animals, it’s already underway, and it’s closer to becoming a reality than even some of the most forward-looking minds think it is. For all the […] Read More

Consensus Reality Posted on

The 432Hz ‘God’ Note: Why Fringe Audiophiles Want to Topple Standard Tuning

Image: Shutterstock The first time Ivan Yanakiev heard an instrument tuned to 432 Hertz, he says, it was like he’d heard God speak. In the men’s dressing room at the Musical Drama Theatre Konstantin Kisimov in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria, Yanakiev, a young, National Academy-schooled conductor, had his friend, Velimir, tune his cello down eight Hz from the standard A=440Hz. They were arranging an experiment. Velimir, “a skilled cellist,” Yanakiev told me, started in on the prelude to Bach’s “Cello Suite No. 1 in G major.” “So, la, si, so, si so, si, so/ So, la, si, so, si, so, si, so,” Yanakiev sings to illustrate. It’s one of the most often performed and well known pieces by Bach, but in that backroom rendition, transposed not even […] Read More

Consensus Reality Posted on

You Can Transform Your Own Consciousness, It’s Your Choice

The weather seems like a poignant reminder of how if we change ourselves, then we change the world. A lot of conversation I’ve been privy to recently has revolved around how bad or terrible this hot weather is. There seems to be an air of irritation and non-acceptance of it; wishing it to be different. But do we have any control over the weather? Do we even have any control over how the body reacts to this temperature? The ‘hotness’ and ‘uncomfortableness’ of the body occurs all by itself. We don’t control a single thing. All we can ever do is change how we relate to ‘what is’. The weather is hot, the body gets warm – it’s actually a really interesting sensation to […] Read More