Smithsonian - Blog Posts
This is the Apollo Lunar Module (LM). It was designed to carry two pilots from lunar orbit to the lunar surface and back. The LM is a lot bigger than I thought it would be. Did you know that the Apollo guidance computers (AGC) had only 4 kilobytes of RAM? And only 32 kb of memory. Our smartphones have exponentially more processing power than the machines that literally took us to the moon. ---- #nationalairandspacemuseumsmithsonian #smithsonian #lunarmodule #moonlanding #washingtondc #usatrip #thesideksamericanadventure #throwback #funfacts #biggerthanitlooks (at National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution) https://www.instagram.com/p/BnwwTrgHgjn/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=l5fn92cjxacw
The dusty, star-forming galaxy took shape in the first billion years after the Big Bang and is likely to be one of the first galaxies to ever form, says Min Yun, astrophysicist of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
BOSS, the largest discovered structure in the universe so far, a wall of galaxies at over a billion light-years across.
Collected from curiosity @x/twitter
This photo was chosen by The Smithsonian for their annual Photo contest, now I am in the final round and the most popular picture will win. Please follow the link below and vote for me if you think my picture deserves it! Thank you
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/photocontest/archive/2015/
Elko, NV
Oxford isn’t the oldest university, not by a long shot. India’s Nalanda University had already operated for hundreds of years and been burnt down by invaders before Oxford got its act together. But Oxford, as one of the oldest universities in continuous operation, doesn’t feel that old. It’s a product of our time. You can still enroll at Oxford. You can still go to Merton College.
The Aztec civilization of central Mexico, on the other hand, feels like ancient history. Archaeologists dig up Aztec ruins, museums put on Aztec exhibits. But the origination of the Aztec civilization, marked by the founding of the city of Tenochtitlán by the Mexica at Lake Texcoco, didn’t come until 1325. Tenochtitlán was captured by Spanish conquerors in 1521, just 196 years later. The White House has been standing longer than the Aztecs ruled Tenochtitlán.
None of this is intended to pit civilizations against each other. But it’s an interesting way to think about how skewed our understanding of history really is—we have these timelines in our heads that are distorted and compressed, and they don’t always agree with reality. To get a clearer picture of how the world really works, sometimes it helps to keep things in context.
Ring of Fire from the US Air Force Strings. #usaf #smithsonian #dc #johnnycash (at National Museum of American History)
The Wish 🌲 tree in #WashingtonDC #Smithsonian