Earth As Art: A Landsat Perspective
July 14, 2008 | Categories: Photography / Science / Technology

Since 1999 the Landsat 7 satellite has been circling the earth, taking photos of the surface to provide for a more accurate picture of our planet. In 2000, NASA scientists parsed through some of the 400,000 images to create a gallery of amazing images of earth, which were then displayed in the Library of Congress. The collection was called Earth As Art, and featured almost 100 images, showing just how amazing and abstract our planet can look from afar. The images are displayed in real color and infrared, whichever made for a more interesting and dramatic appearance.

I love shit like this. It still amazes me to see images like this, though seeing them blown up at a huge scale would be 100 times more impressive, I’m sure. There are actually several ways to view the exhibit. There’s this more childish (not in a a bad way!) map of the earth where you can click on a continent and view the images. Or you can click here to see the whole shebang, which is probably your better way to go. Take some time to look through all the images!

Found through Environmental Graffiti

Bobby

P.S. Wouldn’t those make great mixtape covers?!

The Milky Way Is Awesome
June 4, 2008 | Categories: Photography / Science / Technology

Seriously though, space is the place. I was reading an article over on Wired and in traditional me fashion, I end up straying somewhere else following a link and stumble on something else that gets me all excited. The photo above is a photo of The Milky Way viewed from the Kofa Mountains in Arizona, and it’s one of those things you see and you can’t believe it’s real. I honestly can’t think of anything more awesome than this. If you asked me who would win in a fight, I would bet The Milky Way over anyone or anything else, that’s just how bad-ass that galaxy is.

I tweaked the photo some to make it a little bit more dramatic, so if you’d like to see the original you can click here. There’s also a complete picture of the entire Milky Way Galaxy on there as well, so check that out too.

Bobby

The Northern Plains of Mars
May 26, 2008 | Categories: Science / Technology

On Sunday night, NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander landed on the far northern plains of Mars called Vastitas Borealis, which I think is so rad. While it’s out there it’s going to be searching the soil with it’s big fancy “trench-digging arm” to see if there’s frozen water below the soil. They’re also looking for microbial life as well, because where there’s water, there’s potential life. And of course they’re taking a ton of photos as well, which is definitely my favorite part. I just want them to rotate the camera and suddenly see a giant alien stature or something (maybe they could put it in the NEXT Indiana Jones film?! hahaha).

The NASA sire also has a cool Phoenix Mars Lander interactive site where you can read all about what the lander does. I had no idea it was so big! The solar arrays that power the lander are 18 feet wide! If any of this interests you be sure to visit NASA’s website, they do a really great job of posting all sorts of awesome photos and info pretty regularly.

There’s also this New York Times article that goes into the details of the landing itself.

Bobby

Micro-photos and Nudibranchs
May 14, 2008 | Categories: Science

I stumbled across some really rad nature stuff so I thought I’d lump them both into one post. The first thing I found is called Eye of Science, a photo pair made up of Oliver Meckes and Nicole Ottowa who take micro-photos of all sorts of crazy stuff. Like the two bottom images are crystals magnified at 620 and 650 times the original size. The colors and composition of these images are really amazing, like tiny sculptures that seem impossible to make.

The other cool thing I found my boyfriend sent me after he saw it on Boing Boing. It’s a gallery of National Geographic of images of nudibranchs, which are toxic sea slugs that are just as beautiful as they are deadly. There are 9 images total, but they look so amazing! They’re all brightly colored, a good sign that something is highly toxic or tastes horrible, but so amazing to look at. The one above is a Bornella anguilla, which “flees danger by folding in it’s appendages and swimming like an eel”, how crazy is that? I totally want one of these as a pet!

Bobby

Ooo, Mordor Is A Place on Earth
May 13, 2008 | Categories: Photography / Science

You know when you see something in a photo and it totally reminds you of some other thing you know about? That’s how I felt when I saw the photos of Lliama, Chilé’s crazy exploding volcano… Mordor is a real place. For those of you unfamiliar with Lord of the RIngs nerdiness, Mordor was the home of Sauron, that big guy who smashed everyone in the first movie and then became that fiery eyeball in the sky in the other ones.

As you can see in the photos above, there’s no doubt at all that the southern part of Chilé will be soon overrun with orcs and goblins and Nazgûl will be flying through the sky. For more crazy photos of the volcano with the lightning and hell breaking loose, take a visit here.

Bobby

Ice Station Antarctica Ads
April 9, 2008 | Categories: Photography / Science

The Natural History Museum in London currently has an exhibition up called Ice Station Antarctica which recreates the frigid temperatures and 24-hour darkness you find at the bottom of the world. While I could probably write like 8 pages about just how cool that is, what really struck me were the awesome advertisements they created for the exhibit.

The pieces were shot by Paul Thompson and feature the frostbitten faces of little kids, except that they’re all sporting beards, just like all Antarctic explorers should. I think these are absolutely rad. Not only do the beards look real, but the way they’re shot is absolutely beautiful and arctic-y. Take a peek at the rest of Paul’s work as well, he’s really good at coming up with some great set-ups.

Found through The Cool Hunter

Bobby

R.I.P. Arthur C. Clarke
March 19, 2008 | Categories: Books / Science / Technology


Arthur C. Clarke passed away earlier today which is pretty sad. The guy was a one of a kind visionary, writing over 100 books, a ton of things named after him, including a dinosaur. I remember reading not too long ago about how he tried to convince the city of Los Angeles to create trains and subways to go through the city instead of building more freeways. Now looking back I’m sure people are kicking themselves as gas soars toward $4 a gallon. If only they would have listened to him things could have been a lot different.

Bobby

New Retail by Raul Barreneche
March 7, 2008 | Categories: Architecture / Books / Films / Science

I was browsing around Phaidon’s site earlier this week and came across a new book they’ve released called New Retail. It’s 208 pages of innovative retail stores from all around the world. What caught my eye was that they posted the Mpries grocery stores which I posted about last May. The fact that they caught onto those stores was pretty exciting for me, not to mention stores like Prada and Hermes, which are both in Tokyo. And of course, the giant beautiful photos are the biggest sell, and it looks like they’re filled to the brim with them. Definitely check this book out if contemporary architecture does it for you.

Check out more photos under the cut!
Keep reading New Retail by Raul Barreneche…

Protein Synthesis: An Epic on the Cellular Level
March 7, 2008 | Categories: Films / Science


Jeff just called me to tell me that he watched this insane video from 1971 called Protein Synthesis in his Biochemistry class this morning. The movie was directed by a guy named a Robert Alan Weiss and was made for the Department of Chemistry for Stanford University. The video clearly shows that protein synthesis in your body is actually done by a pack of dirty hippies tripping on god-knows-what. It’s impossible to say what the best part of this is, the T-Factor wearing a black cape and a giant beard, the near-narrative music, the poetic stoner narrating, or the fact that Jeff goes to MIT and they’re still showing this there.

Skip ahead to about 3:30 in and you’ll see what I’m talking about, the beginning is just some Nobel prize winner blabbing on and on…

UPDATE: Click this entry and DIGG it! For some reason I can’t get the DIGG button to work when looking at the main page… I don’t get it.

Bobby

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault
March 3, 2008 | Categories: Architecture / Science / Technology

I read about the Global Seed Vault last year in Wired, but it wasn’t until recently that I saw a real photo of the place and how amazing it is! To make a long story short, the Seed Vault is a giant store house with over 10,000 seeds and plant material. The reason for this bio-bank is to “provide a safety net against accidental loss o diversity in traditional genebanks”. Basically it’s a giant vault of plant life, so that plants that could be important to us in the future don’t die out or go extinct.

The Seed Vault is located on a Norewgian island called Spitsbergen, which is only 700 miles from the North Pole. The reason they built the vault in such a barren frosty location is three-fold. The first reason is that it has a relatively low amount of tectonic activity, so no earthquakes, which a lot of other genebanks could possibly be damaged by. The second is that the average temperature of the sandstone mountain that the vault was built in is 30º F. The seeds are cooled down to a temperature of -0 to -20º F, so even if the power went out, the seeds would be okay for at least weeks. The final reason is that the location is 430 feet above sea level, so even if global warming occurs, and the oceans begin to rise, the seeds will be safe.

But no matter how important and immense this project is, how effing cool is the building itself?! Could you imagine randomly coming across it in the middle of this island and thinking, “There are modern design loving aliens hanging out around here?!” I think it’s totally beautiful, and I love how narrow and simple it looks. I’m sure it’s a much prettier site than just some random concrete bunker.

Check out some cross-sections of the building under the cut.
Keep reading The Svalbard Global Seed Vault…