Terraforming Mars

Found on reddit (the thread has some more good ones)

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Grover and Clyde

Grover Sanders Krantz was an American anthropologist and cryptozoologist. He was one of few scientists not only to research Bigfoot, but also to express his belief in the animal’s existence. Krantz’s specialty as an anthropologist included all aspects of human evolution, but he was best known outside of academia as the first serious researcher to devote his professional energies to the scientific study of Bigfoot, beginning in 1963.

When he died, his body was donated to science (as per his wish). It was used to study human body decay rates for forensic science. He had only one condition to which was that he  wished that his body be laid to rest alongside the bones of his three favorite Irish Wolfhounds – Clyde, Icky, and Yahoo.

The picture above is of Grover and Clyde. You can see their skeletons on display at the Smithsonian: Written in Bone: Forensic Files of the 17th Century Chesapeake

SOURCE

Unidentified Photographer, Thrombocyte (Blood Platelet), (1955)

Chain Reaction.

Everyone knows that a line of standing dominos creates a fun chain reaction when you knock the first one over; but did you know you can use increasingly larger dominos and get the same result? 

The setup.

Professor Stephen Morris knocks over a 1-meter tall domino that weighs over 100 pounds by starting with a 5mm high by 1mm thick domino.He uses a size ratio of 1.5, meaning each domino is one and a half times larger than the last one. This is the generally accepted maximum ratio that dominos can have to successfully knock each other over.

Hans Van Leeuwen of Leiden University in the Netherlands, published a paper online showing that, theoretically, you could have a size ratio of up to two. But that’s in an ideal (and probably unrealistic) situation.

Fun fact.

There are 13 dominoes in this sequence. If Professor Morris used 29 dominoes in total, with the next one always being 1.5x larger, the last domino would be the height of the Empire State Building.

Source: Physics Buzz.

Important Questions

Shedding light on our understanding of the universe.

Until recently, gravitational fields were only known to be generated near black holes, hundreds of light years away. But researchers at IBM’s Zurich lab successfully recreated one right here on Earth. While still theoretical, their findings have the potential to seriously change how we generate and conserve energy, which makes black holes look a little bit brighter.

See how they did it ->

Researchers are trying to understand why ancient Roman concrete is exceptionally durable.

Over two thousand years ago, the ancient Romans built piers, breakwaters, and other structures out of concrete—and some of those structures still stand today. Now, researchers are trying to understand the chemical and geological processes that work together to give that ancient concrete such durability. Using microscopy, x-ray diffraction, and spectroscopic techniques, they’ve developed a map of the crystalline microstructures within the concrete. According to their research, a slow infusion of seawater into concrete made with a type of volcanic ash found near Rome gradually creates crystals of a material called aluminous tobermorite, which actually strengthens the concrete as it ages.

Marie Jackson, a geology and geophysics research professor and one of the authors of a report on the work, says that understanding Roman concrete could give modern materials scientists ideas for how to strengthen modern structures, and could even lead to new materials, such as concretes that soak up and trap nuclear waste.

Photo by THINK Global School/flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0