The best thing I've seen on the Internet today.

I do love sea horses very much and New Scientist is the best magazine in the world!
http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/sea-portraits

Spotted seahorse

The common seahorse (Hippocampus kuda) is a strange hodgepodge of characters, from the top of its equine head to the tip of its prehensile tail. But its unusual appearance is as nothing compared with its unique approach to breeding: famously, in seahorses, pipefishes and sea dragons it is the male of the species that carries the pregnancy.

The female uses her ovipositor to inject eggs into a pouch on the male's belly, where they are fertilised and grow into tiny replicas of adults over the course of three to four weeks. (Source: New Scientist)

weightless cats

Human spaceflight rests on the shoulders of kitties. Before shooting humans into space, NASA and the U.S. Air Force tested the low-gravity waters with smaller mammals, birds and insects. The propaganda videos of the time claimed the animal astronauts were ushering in "a new era -- not a Buck Rogers era in a science fiction world, but an age having its foundations in research." That may be true. But the resulting videos of these hapless creatures, which range from hilarious to disturbing, seem to best answer the question, "How does a creature that doesn't understand gravity respond to its absence?"

Cat Can Has Gravity?
Cats only land on their feet when they know which way is down. Researchers at the Air Force Aerospace Medical Research Laboratories in Dayton, Ohio sent cats flying in a C-131 jet on a trajectory that gave them 15 seconds of weightlessness. This footage is from an Air Force film called Bioastronautics Research.

(via Wired)

Into the heart of Hurricane Katrina

ever wondered what it would look like to follow a monster hurricane as it develops? watch this amazing visualisation?

Hawaiian volcano sweps and spatters!

Mount Kilauea in Hawaii has been living up to its fiery reputation this year. Its name means "spewing" or "spreading" in the Hawaiian language and it's one of the most active volcanoes in the world.

Throughout January and February, it's been grumbling loudly and crater walls have been collapsing. Cascading lava was captured on February 17 at the Puu Oo crater and on 3 March, a dramatic collapse at Halema'uma'u shows part of the vent wall falling into the lava lake. Erupting fissures were filmed in early March, sending lava up to 10 metres into the air.

According to US Geological Survey (USGS), a lake of lava about 200 metres deep has formed inside one of the craters, while seismic activity in the area remains high. New reports estimate that 150 detectable earthquakes have been caused by the eruption, although so far it poses no threat to locals.

The time-lapse is a compilation of videos shot by the (USGS) from a variety of cameras between 15 February and 6 March 2011.

(source: New Scientist)

Solar Flare Eruption Recorded By NASA

A large and stunning solar flare was captured on camera by NASA this past week. According to the BBC, the eruption lasted about 90 minutes, and was the latest in a series of sunstorms.

NASA caught the flare in extreme ultraviolet light, using high definition and a cadence of a frame taken every 24 seconds, making the sense of motion appear seamless. The eruptions created a "tendril of plasma" (a solar prominence), which can be seen in the video.

Earlier this month, massive solar flares threatened to disrupt power grids and communication systems on Earth. But this most recent flare was not aimed at earth, and thus was not considered a threat to satellites or other systems. Fortunately for Earthlings, this week the solar flare just made for an awesome video. (via HuffingtonPost)

Whole sun imagined for the first time

The sun is one of the objects most familiar to humanity, but until yesterday, we'd never seen all of it at once.

On February 6, NASA's twin STEREO probes moved into position on polar opposite sides of the sun and started beaming back the first images to capture the star's entire surface (see video above).

"For the first time ever, we can watch solar activity in its full 3-dimensional glory," says Angelos Vourlidas, a member of the STEREO science team at the Naval Research Lab in Washington, DC.


(Image: NASA)

This new ability should improve forecasts of solar eruptions. These violent magnetic events can wreak havoc with satellites and even power lines and railway signals on Earth. But without a view of the sun's entire surface, charged solar emissions can end up hurtling through space, even towards Earth, without warning.

The twin probes left Earth in 2006, heading for the positions they have now reached. They are expected to beam back images of the entire sun for the next 8 years.

(Source: New Scientist)

This is for Science Nerds

The Toughest Life Forms on Earth (click the link to view the article)

The evolution of life, on a wall

Michael Marshall, environment reporter (Source: New Scientist)

The rather excellent video below is a wall-painted animation: essentially a stop-motion animation created by painting a sequence of still images on a wall and photographing them, then running the photos together into a film.

It was created by the street artist Blu, who describes it as the result of "months of work and hundreds [of] buckets of paint". That's hardly surprising, given that it tries to illustrate the history of the universe since the big bang, with a particular focus on the evolution of life on Earth.

BIG BANG BIG BOOM - the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

this is for bird lovers!

Birds as you've never seen them before

Top Shots from the Bird Catwalk (photo gallery)

Source: News Scientist

A bright flash of light on Jupiter observed on June 3rd

Amateur astronomers Anthony Wesley of Australia and Christopher Go of the Philippines have independently observed an impact event on Jupiter.


"I still can't believe that I caught a live impact on Jupiter," says Go, who has made a must-see video of the event.

"There were no visible remains at the impact point for the next half hour or so, until sunrise put an end to the imaging," says Wesley.

The nature of the impactor is presently unknown. It might have been an asteroid or a comet. In either case, a dark and cindery debris field is expected to develop around the impact point; that's what has happened in the aftermath of previous Jupiter impacts.

click here to see the video (source: spaceweather.com)

great idea: the DBA pen made from potato-based plastic.

DBA 98 Biodegradable Pen from DBA on Vimeo.

here's a mind-blowing video of the sun!

Source: Wired

The best of New Scientist's video coverage.

Awesome collection of brain visualizations over the last 100 years

Click here: Time Travel Through the Brain

this is the most interesting thing i've heard in a while..