Most flows vary in three spatial dimensions and time. In experimental fluid dynamics, the challenge is measuring as much of this information as possible. For those who use computational fluid dynamics to study flows, their simulations provide massive amounts of data and the challenge comes in visualizing and processing that data in a useful way. Unless you can find and analyze the important aspects of the simulation results, they’re just a bunch of numbers. As computers have advanced, the size and complexity of simulation results has increased, too, making the task even more difficult. Using technologies like virtual reality projections (above) or 3D printing (below) allow researchers to interact with flow information in completely new but intuitive ways, hopefully leading to new insights into the data.
(Video credit: M. Stock; photo credit: 2013 Gallery of Fluid Motion**)
** The 3D-printed vortices are an image I took of a poster at the APS DFD Gallery of Fluid Motion in 2013, but I’m missing the researchers’ names. If you know whose poster these were from, please let me know (fyfluids [at] gmail [dot] com) so that I can update the credits accordingly. Thanks!
(via New Galactic Supercluster Map Shows Milky Way's 'Heavenly' Home )
In Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? Susannah Gibson argues that, for millennia, humans have tried to classify and categorise the world around them. One of the oldest, and most enduring, classifications is the simple troika of “animal, vegetable, mineral”. Though scientists are no longer completely reliant on this simple three-part system to divide the natural world into workable groups, it has become an essential part of our pop culture and is referenced everywhere from art to games, comic books to computer programming, literature to hip hop.
For example, it is mentioned in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There:
The Lion had joined …‘What’s this!’ he said, blinking lazily at Alice, and speaking in a deep hollow tone that sounded like the tolling of a great bell.
'Ah, what is it, now?’ the Unicorn cried eagerly. 'You’ll never guess! I couldn’t.’
The Lion looked at Alice wearily. 'Are you animal — or vegetable — or mineral?’ he said, yawning at every other word.
'It’s a fabulous monster!’ the Unicorn cried out, before Alice could reply.
Image: Alice, the Lion, and the Unicorn, by John Tenniel. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The simple coalescence of a drop with a pool is more complicated than the human eye can capture. Fortunately, we have high-speed cameras. Here a droplet coalesces by what is known as the coalescence cascade. Because it has been dropped with very little momentum, the droplet will initially bounce, then seem to settle like a bead on the surface. A tiny film of air separates the drop and the pool at this point. When that air drains away, the drop contacts the pool and part–but not all!–of it coalesces. Surface tension snaps the remainder into a smaller droplet which follows the same pattern: bounce, settle, drain, partially coalesce. This continues until the remaining droplet is so small that it can be coalesced completely. (Image credit: Laboratory of Porous Media and Thermophysical Properties, source video)
The Right Stuff Ending (1983)
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Spock and Jim growing old together. Spock getting more lines in his face, Jim getting a tummy. graying hair, walking more slowly, taking more time to have sex, Spock getting cold more easily, Jim forgetting where he set his house keys. numerous kisses with familiar lips, celebrating anniversaries quietly, hands aging, muscles fading, planting gardens and stargazing together, attending the funerals of enemies and friends, becoming distant to the action of the world, spooning in bed for hours, new and different forms of sadness, new and different forms of happiness, same smiles, same hearts, same minds.
This work features 100 images highlighting Cassini’s 13-year tour at the ringed giant.
Explore our beautiful home world as seen from space.
Emblems of Exploration showcases the rich history of space and aeronautic logos.
Hubble Focus: Our Amazing Solar System showcases the wonders of our galactic neighborhood.
This book dives into the role aeronautics plays in our mission of engineering and exploration.
Making the Invisible Visible outlines the rich history of infrared astronomy.
The NASA Systems Engineering Handbook describes how we get the job done.
The space race really heats up in the third volume of famed Russian spacecraft designer Boris Chertok memoirs. Chertok, who worked under the legendary Sergey Korolev, continues his fascinating narrative on the early history of the Soviet space program, from 1961 to 1967 in Rockets and People III.
The second volume of Walking to Olympus explores the 21st century evolution of spacewalks.
Find your own great read in NASA’s free e-book library.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.
I Have Been to the Mountaintop Full Speech