Curiositytherover - I Like Space.

A lot of people live in fear because they haven’t figured out how you’re going to react when faced with a certain set of circumstances. I’ve come to terms with this by looking deeply into whatever makes me fearful - what are the key elements that get the hairs up on the back of my neck - and then figuring out what I can do about it.

Chris Hadfield (via fyp-science)

Perseids over Moosehorn Lake, Utah 

Credit: Eric Benedetti

Total Recall Sounds Great, But Some Things Should Be Forgotten

Imagine never again forgetting where you parked your car, or that last item you had on your grocery list, or why you walked into this room anyway. If you trust media stories about research currently under way at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to build an implantable device to restore memory, you might not have to worry about these memory lapses in the future.

Futuristic Weapons: How We Will Fight in the Future

For higher resolution: http://futurism.com/images/futuristic-weapons-how-we-will-fight-in-the-future/

For more cool infographics: http://futurism.com/images/

(via Biological & Popular Culture // Dino Pet)

Bio-luminescent dinoflagellates…

NASA is about to light the biggest human-made space fire ever

If a fire breaks out inside the cabin of a small spacecraft, there’s nowhere to run. But in order to figure out how large fires really behave in space, NASA is planning to light one on purpose. How they’re planning to conduct the test.

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We’ve hit peak drone everyone. 

Introducing: The delivery drone for humans.

Behold the most massive young galaxy cluster found in the early universe. How do these megastructures form? This newly discovered cluster, located 10 billion light years from Earth, gives us clues. Details here.

Credit: NASA’s Facebook Account

Why wildfires are necessary

Did you know that several forest species need fire to survive?

In the conifer-rich forests of western North America, lodgepole pines constantly seek the sun. Their seeds prefer to grow on open, sunny ground, which pits saplings against each other as each tries to get more light by growing straighter and faster than its neighbors. Over time, generations of slender, lofty lodgepoles form an umbrella-like canopy that shades the forest floor below. But as the trees’ pine cones mature to release their twirling seeds, this signals a problem for the lodgepole’s future: very few of these seeds will germinate in the cool, sunless shade created by their towering parents.

These trees have adapted to this problem by growing two types of cones. There are the regular annual cones that release seeds spontaneously:

And another type called serotinous cones, which need an environmental trigger to free their seeds:

Serotinous cones are produced in thousands and are like waterproof time capsules sealed with resinous pitch. Many are able to stay undamaged on the tree for decades. Cones that fall to the ground can be viable for several years as well. But when temperatures get high enough, the cones pop open.

Once it’s gotten started, a coniferous forest fire typically spreads something like this: flames ravage the thick understory provided by species like Douglas Fir, a shade-tolerant tree that’s able to thrive under the canopy of lodgepole pines. The fire uses these smaller trees as a stepladder to reach the higher canopy of old lodgepole pines. That ignites a tremendous crown fire, reaching temperatures of up to 2400 degrees Fahrenheit. At those temperatures, the serotinous cones burst open, releasing millions of seeds which are carried by the hot air to form new forests. After the fire, carbon rich soils and an open, sunlit landscape help lodgepole seeds germinate quickly and sprout in abundance. From the death of the old forest comes the birth of the new.

So however counterintuitive it may seem, wildfires are important for the wider ecosystem as a whole. Without wildfires to rejuvenate trees, key forest species would disappear—and so would the many creatures that depend on them. And if a fire-dependent forest goes too long without burning, that raises the risk of a catastrophic blaze which could destroy a forest completely, not to mention people’s homes and lives. That’s why forest rangers sometimes intentionally start controlled burns—to reduce fuels in order to keep the more dangerous wildfires at bay.  

From the TED-Ed Lesson Why wildfires are necessary - Jim Schulz

Animation by @provinciastudio

We pulled together the week’s top tech stories, just for you:

1. Living in the ‘90s? So are Underwater Wireless Networks Pro tip for anybody experiencing the frustration of heavy lag when you’re trying to watch a streaming video: You might be underwater. Try unplugging your router and plugging it back in again, once you’ve made it to dry land. via: Cellular News

2. Man survives 48 straight hours in VR with no reported nausea This is great news for pretty much everybody involved. Of course, if you believe in the many-worlds theory, there’s some alternate timeline where two whole days of this guy’s life were a real bummer. via: @arstechnica

3. When Virtual Reality Meets Education A bold step forward in the radical plan to unseat “time for recess!” as the most exciting thing students hear at school. via: @techcrunch

4. In a Huge Breakthrough, Google’s AI Beats a Top Player at the Game of Go One 2,500-year-old game. One 19-by-19 grid. Two players. One human brain. One state-of-the-art neural network. 170 GPU cards. 1,200 standard processors. 250 possible moves for any given turn. (Go figures). via: @wired