My Math Homework: Using Lagrange Multipliers, Safety Goggles, Rubber Gloves, A Pair Of Tongs, And A Maniacal

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, not look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books. You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, you shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself (via unsociabledoll)

I no longer think she’s just being nice. She’s being kind. Which is much more a sign of character than mere niceness. Kindness connects to who you are, while niceness connects to how you want to be seen.

David Levithan, Every Day (via wordsnquotes)

Once you start thinking of ‘poet’ as identity, once you start thinking that being a poet is just like being anything else that you are, as being something else that you were born, then you can go about doing the things that poets do, and you can go about that more comfortably. Or at least I think so. Or at least it gives you a rationale for why you’re doing what poets do. Like, ‘Why are you still in the dark, trying to read, at two o’clock in the morning?’ ‘Oh, because I’m a poet.’ ‘Why are you pulling your car over to write a line down and you’re already late to where you’re going?’ ‘Because I’m a poet.’

Jericho Brown, interviewed by Elisa Gonzalez for Washington Square Review (via bostonpoetryslam)

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Cats for the 53 stations of the Tokaido, 1847 - 1850. Japan. Via Rijksmuseum

Official NASA image showing the evolution of the Space Launch System!

What is human existence? It turns out it’s pretty simple: We are dead stars, looking back up at the sky.

Dr. Michelle Thaller, NASA astronomer  (via psych-facts)

This is what happens when Two Black Holes Collide.

This is the animation of the final stages of a merger between two black holes. What is particularly interesting about this animation is that it highlights a phenomenon known as Gravitational Lensing.

What is Gravitational Lensing?

Mass bends Light. What? 

Yeah, mass can bend Light. The gravitational field of a really massive object is super strong. And this causes light rays passing close to that object to be bent and refocused somewhere else.

The more massive the object, the stronger its gravitational field and hence the greater the bending of light rays - just like using denser materials to make optical lenses results in a greater amount of refraction.

Here’s an animation showing a black hole going past a background galaxy.

This effect is one of the predictions of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity 

PC: cfhtlens, Urbane Legend

Happy Back to the Future Day! We’re kind of obsessed with the future predictions found on these old cigarette cards from our Digital Collections. Imagine London being lit by a gigantic laser light contraption? Amazing.

See more here.