As A Paleo-artist, One Of My Biggest Pet Peeves Are Prehistoric Whales Reconstructed Not As Whales But

Vera Rubin, the woman who discovered the first evidence of dark matter, has died at 88

Vera Rubin, the astrophysicist responsible for confirming the first existence of dark matter, died on Sunday night at the age of 88.

Carnegie Institution president Matthew Scott called Rubin “a national treasure as an accomplished astronomer and a wonderful role model for young scientist.”

Rubin and her colleagues observed galaxies in the 1970s, they learned the motion of stars is a result of a “material that does not emit light and extends beyond the optical galaxy” — also known as dark matter.

Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky proposed the idea of dark matter in 1933, but Rubin’s groundbreaking work subsequently led to the confirmation of the material.

This finding is what led to the discovery that 90% of the universe is made up of dark matter, a finding some colleagues felt was overlooked and deserving of a Nobel Prize. Read more

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The Titanoboa, is a 48ft long snake dating from around 60-58million years ago. It had a rib cage 2ft wide, allowing it to eat whole crocodiles, and surrounding the ribcage were muscles so powerful that it could crush a rhino. Titanoboa was so big it couldn’t even spend long amounts of time on land, because the force of gravity acting on it would cause it to suffocate under its own weight.

Your body is an incredibly bizarre machine.

“What you see is a myosin protein dragging an endorphin along a filament to the inner part of the brain’s parietal cortex which creates happiness. Happiness. You’re looking at happiness.”

23 science facts we didn't know at the start of 2016

1. Gravitational waves are real. More than 100 years after Einstein first predicted them, researchers finally detected the elusive ripples in space time this year. We’ve now seen three gravitational wave events in total.

2. Sloths almost die every time they poop, and it looks agonising.

3. It’s possible to live for more than a year without a heart in your body.

4. It’s also possible to live a normal life without 90 percent of your brain.

5. There are strange, metallic sounds coming from the Mariana trench, the deepest point on Earth’s surface. Scientists currently think the noise is a new kind of baleen whale call.

6. A revolutionary new type of nuclear fusion machine being trialled in Germany really works, and could be the key to clean, unlimited energy.

7. There’s an Earth-like planet just 4.2 light-years away in the Alpha Centauri star system - and scientists are already planning a mission to visit it.

8. Earth has a second mini-moon orbiting it, known as a ‘quasi-satellite’. It’s called 2016 HO3.

9. There might be a ninth planet in our Solar System (no, Pluto doesn’t count).

10. The first written record demonstrating the laws of friction has been hiding inside Leonardo da Vinci’s “irrelevant scribbles” for the past 500 years.

11. Zika virus can be spread sexually, and it really does cause microcephaly in babies.

12. Crows have big ears, and they’re kinda terrifying.

13. The largest known prime number is 274,207,281– 1, which is a ridiculous 22 million digits in length. It’s 5 million digits longer than the second largest prime.

14. The North Pole is slowly moving towards London, due to the planet’s shifting water content.

15. Earth lost enough sea ice this year to cover the entire land mass of India.

16. Artificial intelligence can beat humans at Go.

17. Tardigrades are so indestructible because they have an in-built toolkit to protect their DNA from damage. These tiny creatures can survive being frozen for decades, can bounce back from total desiccation, and can even handle the harsh radiation of space.

18. There are two liquid states of water.

19. Pear-shaped atomic nuclei exist, and they make time travel seem pretty damn impossible.

20. Dinosaurs had glorious tail feathers, and they were floppy.

21. One third of the planet can no longer see the Milky Way from where they live.

22. There’s a giant, 1.5-billion-cubic-metre (54-billion-cubic-foot) field of precious helium gas in Tanzania.

23. The ‘impossible’ EM Drive is the propulsion system that just won’t quit. NASA says it really does seem to produce thrust - but they still have no idea how. We’ll save that mystery for 2017.

Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela gets struck by lightning more than 200 times every year – that’s more than anywhere else on earth. Source

Fve-miles above Lake Maracaibo, storm clouds gather up to 160 nights per year and can last for up to 10 hours. 

Do you know what missiles at night look like? They look like this:

and this:

and these:

But do you know what they do not fucking loOK LIKE?? THIS:

OR THIS:

And they don’t fucking sound like this (listen with earbuds/headphones): https://twitter.com/angelsuxx/status/663202170502680577

This has been disproving the government’s bullshit with Lily

Giant squids might be even bigger than we realized

According to research from Charles Paxton, fisheries ecologist and statistician at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews, published in the Journal of Zoology this month, the giant squid could grow to reach as much as 65 feet. But even that is a “conservative analysis,” as size could protect against their #1 predator.

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Fish on Wheels

The Clouds of Orion the Hunter https://go.nasa.gov/2n7rVh9

After 40 years, scientists may have solved the mystery of the “Wow!” space signal

In August of 1977, a group of astronomers examining radio transmissions in Ohio received a mysterious signal from an unknown source.

Shocked by its incredible length — 72 seconds — one scientist scribbled “Wow!” next to the recording, inadvertently giving the unusual communication a nickname that would last decades.

Now, after 40 years of grappling with possible explanations for the Wow! signal — which even include the possibility of aliens — scientists at the Center for Planetary Science have finally solved the puzzle.

A comet unknown to researchers in the 1970s likely caused the signal, and researchers were able to test that theory in a recent fly-by. Read more (6/8/17)

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