It’s Magically Delicious Http://cute-overload.tumblr.com Source: Http://imgur.com/r/aww/aPFzTID

Video: Bat’s tongue baffles researchers

by Hanae Armitage

Most nectar-feeding animals evolve special quirks (mainly of the tongue) that optimize their eating habits. 

But for the groove-tongued bat (Lonchophylla robusta), evolution has dealt a bit of a strange hand. Instead of lapping up or siphoning liquid as other mammals do, this bat hovers over its food source and dips its long, slender tongue into the nectar, keeping contact the entire time it drinks. 

Researchers filmed the bat with a high-speed video camera to try to decipher the special tongue mechanism, and watched as the fluid flowed upward along the bat’s tongue, against gravity, and into its mouth. 

Today, researchers report in Science Advances that the conveyor belt–like mechanism may actually allow these bats to feed more efficiently from certain types of flowers…

(read more: Science/AAAS)

(Credits go to TaySwiftVidz)

For a moment, that black and white photo should seem like a full color image. (You have to keep both the image and your head very still).

This illusion was used in the new BBC Four series Colour: The Spectrum of Science.

It demonstrates a phenomenon called “cone fatigue.” When we stare at the purple hillside in picture above, photoreceptors in our eyes called cones are stimulated. They send a signal to our brains that says “You’re looking at something purple.” But the sensing ability of those cones decreases the longer we stare at the image - those receptors are, in a way, temporarily used up.

Then when we look at the black and white image, those same cones can’t detect any purple light. Instead they sense the color that remains: green.

“IC 1101 has spent most of its life colliding with other galaxies and owes its size to these collisions. Over billions of years, galaxies about the size of the Milky Way and Andromeda, have been merging together to sculpt and shape this titan of the cosmos. This galaxy is bereft of star making gases, here rapid star formation has long ago ceased.

IC 1101 is dying a slow death. While not entirely devoid of new stars, unless it continues to merge with newer younger galaxies, IC 1101 will slowly fade to oblivion.”

[[ http://youtu.be/UE8yHySiJ4A ]]

If Earth had Saturn’s Rings

From an excellent post by Jason Davis

From Washington, D.C., the rings would only fill a portion of the sky, but appear striking nonetheless. Here, we see them at sunrise.

From Guatemala, only 14 degrees above the equator, the rings would begin to stretch across the horizon. Their reflected light would make the moon much brighter.

From Earth’s equator, Saturn’s rings would be viewed edge-on, appearing as a thin, bright line bisecting the sky.

At the March and September equinoxes, the Sun would be positioned directly over the rings, casting a dramatic shadow at the equator.

At midnight at the Tropic of Capricorn, which sits at 23 degrees south latitude, the Earth casts a shadow over the middle of the rings, while the outer portions remain lit.

via x

…can you hear me?

There is a nebula near the constellation of Aries ?

there’s a few, you can read a bit about the constellation here ^~^

Street art by SAM3, an artist that paints big as well as small shadows and silhouettes in his urban surroundings. 

So cool. The vastness of our solar system put into perspective.