On The Inside of This Marble House I Grow

laboratoryequipment:

Very Large Telescope Turns 15 Tomorrow

This new picture celebrates an important anniversary for ESO’s Very Large Telescope – it’s been fifteen years since the first of its four Unit Telescopes achieved first light, on 25 May 1998. Since then the four original giant telescopes have been joined by the four small Auxiliary Telescopes that form part of the VLT Interferometer (VLTI). The VLT is one of the most powerful and productive ground-based astronomical facilities in existence. In 2012 more than 600 refereed scientific papers based on data from the VLT and VLTI were published.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/videos/2013/05/very-large-telescope-turns-15-tomorrow

spaceplasma:

Nine Views

Nine Views (Croatian: Devet pogleda) is an ambiental installation in Zagreb, Croatia which, together with the sculpture Prizemljeno Sunce (The Grounded Sun), makes up a consistent model of solar system.

Prizemljeno Sunce by Ivan Kožarić was first displayed in 1971 by the building of the Croatian National Theatre, and since then changed location a few times. Since 1994 it has been situated in the Bogovićeva Street. It is simply a bronze sphere around 2 metres in diameter.

In 2004, artist Davor Preis had a two-week exhibition in the Josip Račić Exhibition Hall in Margaretska Street in Zagreb, and afterwards he placed 9 models of the planets of the solar system around Zagreb, to complete a model of the entire solar system. The models’ sizes as well as their distances from the Prizemljeno Sunce are all in the same scale as the Prizemljeno Sunce itself.

Preis did this installation with very little or no publicity, so his installation isn’t well known among citizens of Zagreb. On a few occasions individuals or small groups of people, particularly physics students, “discovered” that there was a model of the solar system in Zagreb.One of the earliest efforts to find all of the planets was started in November 2004 on the web forum of the student section of Croatian Physics Society.

The locations of the planets are as follows:

• Mercury - 3 Margaretska Street
• Venus - 3 Ban Josip Jelačić Square
• Earth - 9 Varšavska Street
• Mars - 21 Tkalčićeva Street
• Jupiter - 71 Voćarska Street
• Saturn - 1 Račićeva Street
• Uranus - 9 Siget
• Neptune - Kozari Way
• Pluto - Bologna Alley (underpass) - included in the installation before being demoted to dwarf planet

(via greatmindsofscience)

sagansense:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains The Origins Of Atomic Elements In Our Bodies

What’s the human body made of? Ninety-nine percent consists of atoms of just six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus, with the remaining one percent consisting of trace elements like magnesium, sulfur, and iron.

But where did those elements come from? That question long presented a puzzle to scientists. At least it did until the publication of a now-obscure scientific paper in the middle of the twentieth century, as celebrated astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson explains in a new video (above).

“There was a seminal paper — one of the most important research papers ever published — that gave us the description of the origin of the elements,” Tyson says in the video.

The paper is entitled “Synthesis of the Elements in Stars” but is sometimes referred to as the B2FH paper, after the authors’ initials. It was published in Reviews of Modern Physics in 1957. Before its publication, the prevailing theory held that all elements were products of the Big Bang 15 billion years ago. But this theory accounted only for light elements like hydrogen and helium.

So where did the heavy elements found in nature come from?

The B2FH paper argued that all heavy elements were created within stars via nuclear fusion — a process known as stellar nucleosynthesis. As stars cool and “die,” they release the heavy elements into space. Ultimately, some of this material is incorporated into planets and even our bodies.

If the paper was so important, why do so few nonscientists know about it? According to Tyson, it’s because the paper’s origins don’t fit conventional notions of scientific discovery.

“There was no lone scientist burning the midnight oil making the eureka discovery,” Tyson says. “It was a little messier than that. But the consequences of it are profound.”

Stay Curious! Watch The Extended Interview With NDT

(via thescienceofreality)