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Music of the Sphere
The irregular surface of the Moon is somewhat similar to the ridges on a vinyl record. If you squint. Therefore it stands to reason(?) that you could “play” it. There’s a new program called Moonbell which does just that. It lets you use topographical data to determine how musical pitch rises and falls, and can…
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From the Earth to the Moon
Drew Olbrich felt that most pictures of the Earth and Moon show them unrealistically close together, so he created a composite image of what the two would look like to an observer 350,000 miles away in space. It’s kinda trippy to stare at this image and then think about what the guys in the Apollo…
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Neat.
SomaFM’s MissionControl channel is playing live mission audio from Space Shuttle Discovery, backed by ambient music. (via @matthewbaldwin)
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Hell Yeah, Hubble
That’s the title of this post from Starts with a Bang, and I think it just about sums this up. It’s a 3-D flythough simulation of the Hubble’s Ultra Deep Field photos. And it is sort of amazing.
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NASA’s “40-Year Projects” May be Funded Again
NASA founded its Institute for Advanced Concepts in 1998 to fund outside research for concepts and products which had realization horizons of no fewer than 10 and no more than 40 years. It eventually lost funding, but the National Research Council has reviewed the NIAC program and concluded that a similar program could be re-launched.…
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Now I’m All Hungry
In a fit of whimsy, New Scientist has published an article comparing various cosmological models to similarly-shaped snack food. Expect the Intelligent Design guys to work a “god had the munchies” angle into their arguments. One possibility is that space is curved like a Pringle. At the centre of a Pringle, the surface curves up…
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Houston, Tranquility Base Here…
…The Eagle has landed. It’s been 40 years today. Where were you when you heard those words?
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Buzz Aldrin: Rapper
Legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin recently teamed up with Snoop Dogg and Talib Kweli to record “Rocket Experience.” The song is available for purchase on iTunes, and a portion of the proceeds will go to support the work of the National Space Society, the Planetary Society and the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. There’s also a “making of”…
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Pretty.
Photographer Thierry Legault took this image of the Atlantis shuttle in front of the sun. There’s a larger version and several more photos at his site. The shuttle looks so teeny against that big ball of gas, and realizing that it’s millions of miles closer really overwhelms you with size. It’s a very poetic image,…
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It’s Not a Milky Way, it’s a Truffle
Researchers examining the giant dust cloud at the center of our galaxy have concluded that it tastes like raspberries and smells like rum. They were looking for life-building amino acids, but found a substance called ethyl formate. It’s the compound that gives raspberries their flavor, and also happens to smell like rum. “It does happen…