Pretty Goes with Pretty

Sundown on Mars

One more Mars post, thanks to Centripetal Notion. This is the sunset on Mars, as recorded by the Spirit rover. According to NASA:

On May 19th, 2005, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured this stunning view of the Sun sinking below the rim of Gusev crater on Mars. This Panoramic Camera (Pancam) mosaic was taken around 6:07 in the evening of the rover’s 489th Martian day, or sol. Spirit was commanded to stay awake briefly after sending that sol’s data to the Mars Odyssey orbiter just before sunset.... The terrain in the foreground is the rock outcrop “Jibsheet”, a feature that Spirit has been investigating for several weeks. The floor of Gusev crater is visible in the distance, and the Sun is setting behind the wall of Gusev some 80 kilometers (50 miles) in the distance.

Red Planet is a Little Wet

Have I been living under a rock all my life, or did science just become really fascinating this year? (Probably the latter, but the results are not yet in.) From today's LA Times:

NASA scientists announced Wednesday that they have found evidence that water still flows on the surface of Mars in the form of sporadic gushers that increase the possibility that the Red Planet harbors some form of life.

While the two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have been roaming the ground and looking at rocks, finding evidence that water may have covered large expanses of the planet billions of years ago, it was the Mars Global Surveryor spacecraft, originally launched ten years ago, that found evidence of water on the planet now, when it photographed a crater that it had also observed in 2001. Comparing the two photographs, you can see that something in the topography has changed, and scientists believe that it is consistent with the effect of water flowing over the area. Poetically, the Surveyor, which was only expected to function for two years, not ten, went silent not long after making this discovery.

So, if there's water, there could be life. That makes two possible locations of life in our solar system discovered this year—one of Saturn's moons may, too. The rovers are at least a few hundred miles away from the area in question, so it will be a while before we can investigate further.

Scientists Find Proof of Dark Matter

X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/M.Markevitch et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.; Lensing Map: NASA/STScI; ESO WFI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.

NASA scientists have discovered proof of dark matter:

Dark matter and normal matter have been wrenched apart by the tremendous collision of two large clusters of galaxies. The discovery, using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, gives direct evidence for the existence of dark matter.

"This is the most energetic cosmic event, besides the Big Bang, which we know about," said team member Maxim Markevitch of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.

This is significant because dark matter has been a concept that held the universe together but, since it was invisible, many scientists have doubted its existence at all. Dark matter has been used as an explanation for why Einstein's theory of relativity breaks down when blown up to  cosmic distances, beyond just our solar system. That is, in certain places within the universe, gravity becomes stronger where Einstein's theory says it should be weaker. "Dark matter" is one explanation for why this happens. Cosmic Variance has a great explanation of what it's all about, and how this picture illustrates dark matter's existence.

In the Bullet Cluster, more formally known as 1E 0657-56, we actually find two clusters of galaxies that have (relatively) recently passed right through each other. It turns out that the large majority (about 90%) of ordinary matter in a cluster is not in the galaxies themselves, but in hot X-ray emitting intergalactic gas. As the two clusters passed through each other, the hot gas in each smacked into the gas in the other, while the individual galaxies and the dark matter (presumed to be collisionless) passed right through.

This is just a brief excerpt, but the rest of CR's post is worth reading, so you can sound smart when you tell other people about this.

[via Pharyngula]

ScienceBlogs goes Gargantuan

ScienceBlogs, the online counterpart to Seed magazine, has had a little work done. Over the weekend they ballooned from twenty blogs to forty-four! The main page has also gotten a redesign to help navigate the deepening waters. This has pretty much made ScienceBlogs the place on the net for any science news (and intelligent commentary)—much in the same way ArtsJournal is my one-stop for arts headlines and ArchNewsNow is my daily architecture destination. (Now if only someone would do the same for music—it used to be Pitchfork but I've gotten sick of them—I'd be set.)

I'd barely been able to wade through the original twenty blogs, so I can't quite yet direct you to the best of the bunch, but the good news is the front page now splits things up by category, so you don't have to waste your precious internet time—an oxymoron, I know—reading about dinosaurs if all you care about are aliens (though they're all slimy lizard-things, so I don't know why you're being so persnickety.)

Yesterday's News—Today!

—Great Literary Taunts [courtesy the Elegant Variation]

—Bldgblog had a great interview with the urban critic Mike Davis: part one, part two.

—And speaking of urbanism, here’s one for the architecture geeks: the Landscape Urbanism Bullshit Generator.

—I saw X-Men 3 over the weekend and geeked out about it. I thought it was great, despite the lukewarm/harsh reviews the papers are giving it (I suspect most of these critics did not grow up on the comics, or are too snobby to admit it). More geeks weigh in over at Cinematical.

—Finally, the newest issue of Seed is out now; what are you waiting for? I never thought I’d buy a science magazine on a regular basis—and I still have no urge to pick up any others—but Seed is hands down the best magazine (of any genre) on stands right now. It is such a smart mag. And this issue is the fiction issue, no less.

Animated Math Music

This is pretty neat, courtesy Jim Bumgardner:

This weekend I’ve been playing, once again, with the ideas of experimental film pioneer John Whitney, using both graphics and audio. While Whitney was interested in turning musical ideas into motion graphics, I’m doing the inverse — turning one of his key animation ideas back into music.

…

In this movie, each of the 48 dots is moving in a circle. Each of the dots is on a 3 minute cycle. At the end of 3 minutes, the outermost dot will have moved around the circle once (this dot represents the first harmonic or fundamental). The next dot will have moved around the circle twice (representing the second harmonic). The next dot three times, and so on. The innermost dot moves around the circle 48 times.

Now, imagine these dots are raised bumps on a disc which is controlling a music box, with each bump triggering a note when it passes the zero degree line (a line extending from the center to the east).

Open this page in a new window and listen and watch. Meanwhile, follow this link to read all about just what is going on. It's a trip to watch the notes line up and splash down as a chord. Check the many variations as well. I get a kick out of nos. 11 and 12.

[found this via a post at Last Plane to Jakarta forums.]

NASA to Bowie: "Life on Mars? Maybe."

NASA scientists studying Mars announced this week that life was very likely possible in the planet’s infancy, according to this article:

The first era began with the planet's formation about 4.6 billion years ago and lasted for about 600 million years. Rock from this period lies exposed on the planet's surface due to meteorite strikes, erosion and underground shifts that formed cracks or faults in the planet's crust.

This ancient Mars terrain contains clay minerals, such as chamosite and nontronite, which form when water is abundant, temperatures are moderate and acidity is low, conditions that may have been suitable for life.

However, Mars underwent significant changes somewhere between 4 billion and 3.6 billion years ago—right about when life on our own planet was beginning to form. So, did Mars have a head start on us, and was there any life during that small window? For now, who knows.

Meanwhile, some other NASA scientists are looking forward rather than back. The Cassini space craft, which has been studying Saturn for the last couple of years, has found some intriguing data surrounding the small moon Enceladus, which contains “simple organic molecules, water and heat, the ingredients for life,” according to Dr. Rob Brown, a member of the Cassini team. Cassini did a flyby of Enceladus in July of 2005, and the results are astounding:

From this flyby came confirmation that the moon has an atmosphere, and strong evidence that the gases which make up the atmosphere are coming from cracks in the surface, nick-named "tiger stripes", near the south pole.

It appears that the gases are being forced through the surface, as they emerge in jets which shoot upwards for hundreds of kilometres before dispersing, eventually forming Saturn's E-ring.

Most of the gas is water vapour, suggesting strongly that liquid water lies under the moon's icy surface.

...

Its tiger stripes amount to a "water volcano", the only one seen in the solar system other than on Earth.

Among our neighbours, it is the only known geophysically active world other than Jupiter's moon Io.

Of course, it'll be another two years before Cassini attempts another flyby of Enceladus. Hopefully NASA is at work on getting further research done, as the article hints.

The California Archipelago

[North America, 310 million years ago; map by Ron Blakey.]

While in Santa Barabara this weekend, my wife read somewhere that the Santa Ynez mountains run east-west, unlike nearly every other mountain range in North America, which run north-south. I thought it might have something to do with the fact that California sits atop a point where two or three tectonic plates meet. We all know about the San Andreas fault line, of course, but if I remember correctly from my reading of Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything earlier this year, it's more complex than just San Andreas.

Lo and behold bldgblog was pondering the same thing while vacationing in Death Valley last week. Lucky for me, he went and found all kinds of information, including some gorgeous maps depicting the formation of North America (and more specifically, California) over the last 550 million years.

The Sound of Silence

This weekend I toured a number of galleries around Los Angeles. Over at the Mary Goldman Gallery were photos by Miranda Lichtenstien. All of the photos were somehow about meditation—a woman in a bathtub, a man with his eyes closed at a desk, and so on. Fine photographs, sure, but the one that grabbed me the most was the above, Anechoic Chamber. It’s a great photo, but I think that’s due in large part to the space itself. I’ve never heard of an anechoic chamber before, so home to google I went.

Anechoic means “without echo.” These chambers exist all over the country, many used as chambers in which to test antennae or electronic systems, as they have no ambient sound whatsoever. Hence they make powerful meditation rooms as well, as the only thing you can hear is the sound of your own body—and absolutely nothing else. According to wikipdia, one of these chambers inspired John Cage's 4'33", after he spent some time in one and listened to his own blood flowing through his body. More chambers below, though to Lichtenstein’s credit, none as beautiful as hers.

Yesterday's News—Today!

Short takes today:

—Elizabeth Mossop, head of the department of landscape design at Louisiana State University, talks about rebuilding New Orleans. [via ArchNewsNow]

—Zoilus responds to David Hajdu’s article in The New Republic: How MySpace is Killing Music.

—Nobel Intent highlights a pair of stars, one of which is “slightly more massive than the sun, [and] rotates so quickly that it has flattened out from a sphere and created a belt of gas.”

—Ever heard of bacterial landscapes? Me neither, but Pruned has them, and they’re purty.

—Pruned also points to a nice-looking blog, Critical Spatial Practice, which shows us Invisible-5, a two-CD guided audio tour of the interstate between Los Angeles to San Francisco. If any of you have ever tried that drive, you know you need something to listen to once you’ve left the excellent radio stations of Los Angeles behind.