All Too Well Was Requested So I Decided To Try Something Different.

NDT just murdered B.o.B.

Imagine if Blank Space had been recorded back in the 40′s…what might that have sounded like? I put an amp filter on PMJ’s version of it, and I gotta say, the 40′s sounds good with some taylorswift :)

Why isn’t Pluto a planet?!?!?

Ahhhhh sweet cute innocent little Pluto, what did you do to deserve the demotion? How can we live in a world with only 8 planets? Were all those years of elementary school for nothing? Many people …

oldie but goodie

Geologist Andrés Ruzo first heard about the boiling river as child, but it was always thought of as mythical. It was considered “a place of spirits.” But when Ruzo’s aunt insisted a boiling river existed in Peru, he set out to find it. Now, Ruzo is the first scientist to be given the blessing of the local shaman to study the boiling river. Ruzo talks about the mysterious nature of the boiling river on the latest episode of the TED Radio Hour.

“look again at that dot. that’s here. that’s home. that’s us. on it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. 

“the earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.  

“our posturings, our imagined self importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. in our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. 

“the earth is the only world known so far to harbour life. there is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. visit, yes. settle, not yet. like it or not, for the moment the earth is where we make our stand. 

“there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. to me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” 

- carl sagan

photos taken from cassini in 2013 when 1.5 billion km from earth; voyageur 1 in 1990 when 6 billion km; mars rover curisoity in 2014 when 160 million km; and the lunar reconnaissance orbiter in 2014, when the moon was 403,473 km away from earth, or near apogee.

Watch: If you miss tonight’s supermoon lunar eclipse you won’t get another glimpse for a long time.

(via (Shia LaBeouf))

I can’t believe I haven’t shared this yet. It’s an immaculate piece of the internet and gives hope that art is not dead.

reindeer are the only mammals whose eyes are known to change colour, going from a gold in the summer, when the sun is a constant presence in the arctic, to a less reflective blue in the near perpetually dark winter months. 

in dark conditions, muscles in your irises contract to dilate your pupils and allow more light into your eyes. when it’s bright again, the irises widen and the pupils shrink. the same thing happens in reindeer, but the arctic winter forces their pupils dilate for months at a time.

this constant effort to stay dilated ends up blocking the small vessels that drain fluid out of the eyes, which causes pressure to build up. this in turn compresses the collagen fibers that make up tapetum - a mirrored layer that sits behind the retina (seen in the second photo).  

when compressed, these fibers in the eye reflect blue wavelengths of lights instead of the yellow which accompanies a typical spacing of the fibers, as in summer.  (photos x, x)

Chemical flames.

Blood Moon Eclipse after the Sun sets today

If your skies are clear after the Sun sets today, September 27th, be sure to head outside to see the total lunar eclipse. This will mark the end of a “tetrad” of four total lunar eclipses spaced a half year apart that began back in early 2014. It’s the last one visible anywhere until 2018.

The full moon will pass through Earth’s shadow and sunlight scattered by Earth’s atmosphere will cast red colors on it!

Unlike the lunar eclipse last April 4th which is the gif from, this one will carry the Moon through the umbra — the dark core of Earth’s shadow — for 1 hour and 12 minutes. If the sky isn’t clear then there are different webcasts to see. Find them here and the timeline here