La Vitrina Cloud Collection - Leandro Erlich (2011)

The full rotation of the Moon as seen by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

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Ferrofluid!

Swirling swarms of bacteria offer insights on turbulence

In the bacterial world, as in the larger one, beauty can be fleeting. When swimming together with just the right amount of vigor, masses of bacterial cells produce whirling, hypnotic patterns. Too much vigor, however, and they descend into chaotic turbulence.

A team of physicists led by Rockefeller University fellow Tyler Shendruk recently detected a telling mathematical signature inscribed in that disintegration from order to chaos. Their discovery, described May 16 in Nature Communications, provides the first concrete link between turbulence in a biological system and within the larger physical world, where it is best known for buffeting planes and boats.

Amin Doostmohammadi, Tyler N. Shendruk, Kristian Thijssen, Julia M. Yeomans. Onset of meso-scale turbulence in active nematics. Nature Communications, 2017; 8: 15326 DOI: 10.1038/NCOMMS15326

When swimming together, bacteria produce swirling patterns that can disintegrate into turbulence as they speed up. Credit: Kristian Thijssen

Picture of the longest Solar Eclipse we observed so far. It lasted up to six minutes and 39 seconds, a duration that will not be surpassed until 2132.

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Where Does The Mass Of A Proton Come From?

“It is very accurately known how large the average gluon density is inside a proton. What is not known is exactly where the gluons are located inside the proton. We model the gluons as located around the three valance quarks. Then we control the amount of fluctuations represented in the model by setting how large the gluon clouds are, and how far apart they are from each other.”

If you divide the matter we know into progressively smaller and smaller components, you’d find that atomic nuclei, made of protons and neutrons, compose the overwhelming majority of the mass we understand. But if you look inside each nucleon, you find that its constituents – quarks and gluons – account for less than 0.2% of their total mass. The remaining 99.8% must come from the unique binding energy due to the strong force. To understand how that mass comes about, we need to better understand not only the average distribution of sea quarks and gluons within the proton and heavy ions, but to reveal the fluctuations in the fields and particle locations within. The key to that is deep inelastic scattering, and we’re well on our way to uncovering the cosmic truths behind the origin of matter’s mass.

Adjustable Wood Lamp ‘Goldberg’

The adjustable 'Goldberg’ lamp by Atelier Akerboom is a handmade wooden lamp. By adjusting the 31 openings of the lamp you can control how much light it gives out in any direction. The lamp can be used as a hanging (pendant) lamp or as table or floor lamp. The lamp is available in different colors (see information sheet) and in two sizes (30cm or 50cm diameter).

This special design is named after Michael Goldberg (1902-1990) who described the Goldberg polyhedron – a convex polyhedron made from hexagons and pentagons – first in 1937.

https://www.etsy.com/de/listing/267492092/adjustable-lamp-goldberg?ref=shop_home_active_2

Glass art by Asaf Zakay.

9 years in the making, all our best geometry in one place. ❤, NakGeo

Images of Jupiter taken by JunoCam on NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

Mission Juno

Juno is a NASA spacecraft. It is exploring the planet Jupiter. Juno launched from Earth in 2011. It reached Jupiter in 2016. That was a five-year trip!

The name “Juno” comes from stories told by the Romans long ago. In the stories, Juno was the wife of Jupiter. Jupiter hid behind clouds so no one could see him causing trouble. But Juno could see through the clouds.

Juno has science tools to study Jupiter’s atmosphere. (The atmosphere is the layer of gases around a planet.) Juno will take the first pictures of Jupiter’s poles. The spacecraft will study the lights around Jupiter’s north and south poles, too.

Juno will help scientists understand how Jupiter was made. The spacecraft will help them learn how Jupiter has changed, too. The new discoveries can help us understand more about our solar system.

Sound of Jupiter’s Magnetosphere: Click here

Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Mission Juno / Jason Major / Luca Fornaciari /  Gerald Eichstädt