ALBERT EINSTEIN: The important thing
Credit: Gavin Aung Than
Crystallized books by Alexis Arnold
Each Grain of Sand a Tiny Work of Art
TAKE US CLOSER TO ONE OF THE LITTLE ONES
When you take a moonlit stroll on the beach, how often do you think about the tiny grains of sand creeping in between your toes? From above, sand seems like a bunch of tiny brown rocks, perhaps peppered with occasional shells or cigarette butts. But sand has a far more fascinating story to tell.
Composed of the remnants of volcanic explosions, eroded mountains, dead organisms, and even degraded man-made structures, sand can reveal the history—both biological and geologic—of a local environment. And examined closely enough, as the scientist and artist Gary Greenberg has, sand can reveal spectacular colors, shapes, and textures.
These images of sand from around the world were taken by Greenberg using an Edge 3D Microscope and can be found in his book, A Grain of Sand, which was published earlier this year by Voyageur Press.
New “Beauty Baryon” Particle Discovered at Large Hadron Collider
It’s just the second new particle to be discovered at the atom smasher where physicists also seek the elusive Higgs boson particle.A never-before-seen subatomic particle has popped into existence inside the world’s largest atom smasher, bringing physicists a step closer to unraveling the mystery of how matter is put together in the universe.
After crashing particles together about 530 trillion times, scientists working on the CMS experiment at Switzerland’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) saw unmistakable evidence for a new type of “beauty baryon.”
Baryons are particles made of three quarks (the building blocks of the protons and neutrons that populate the nuclei of atoms). Beauty baryons are baryons that contain at least one beauty quark (also known as a bottom quark). The new specimen is a particular type of excited beauty baryon called Xi(b)*, pronounced “csai–bee-star.”
Any thoughts on this, guys?
Why does this blue stone have yellow light coming out of it?
You’d expect this cloudy blue glass to throw a blue light onto its surroundings. The light it throws, though, is clearly a bright orange-yellow. Can you guess why?
How can a light change from blue to orange? The Tyndall Effect shines through.
Top Image: Optick
14 Fun Facts About Jellyfish
1) A group of fish is called a school. A gathering of dolphins is a pod. Several otters makes up a romp. And an assemblage of jellies is a swarm or, better yet, a smack.
2) “Swarm” and “bloom” should not be used interchangeably when talking about jellies. A swarm refers to jellies that collect in one area as a result of strong winds or currents, whereas a bloom is a dense cloud of jellies caused by an actual spike in reproduction.
3) Jellies are 95 percent water.
4) Musician Frank Zappa is the namesake of one species of jelly,Phialella zappai. (For an explanation, see Smithsonianwriter Abigail Tucker’s story, “Extreme Jellyfish.”)
5) Though jellies are soft-bodied and lack a skeleton, making fossils rare, there is evidence that jellyfish predate dinosaurs by some 400 million years.
6) A historic moment for jellyfish came in May 1991, when 2,478 moon jelly polyps and babies were launched into space aboard the shuttle Columbia. Biologist Dorothy Spangenberg of the Eastern Virginia Medical School wanted to learn about how weightlessness affected the development of juvenile jellies. She monitored calcium loss in the jellies, which by extension could further scientists’ understanding of humans’ calcium loss in space.
7) Some jellyfish, such as blubber jellies, a delicacy in parts of Asia, are edible. A former colleaguewrote about her culinary adventure tasting jellyfish in Washington D.C.’s Chinatown.
8) Most jellyfish live anywhere from a few hours to a few months. But a species of jelly calledTurritopsis nutricula may be immortal. The jelly reportedly can play its lifecycle in reverse, transforming from an adult medusa back to an immature polyp.
9) Jellies have been known to eat other jellies.
10) The creatures lack not only bones, but heads, hearts and brains.
11) Researchers from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute surmise that cross jellies (Mitrocoma cellularia), common to Monterey Bay in the spring and summer, can “smell” prey through chemicals in the water.
12) A recent study found that four of the box jellyfish Tripedalia cystophora‘s 24 eyes always point up. The jellyfish looks through the water surface for tree branches. This way, it can swim towards mangrove swamps where it feeds.
13) GFP, a green fluorescent protein found in crystal jellies, has important medical applications. Mayo Clinic scientists recently inserted a version of GFP and a gene from a rhesus macaque known to block a virus that causes feline AIDS into a cat’s unfertilized eggs. When the kittens were born, they glowed green in ultraviolet light, indicating that the gene was successfully transferred. Biologist Osamu Shimomura won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008 for discovering GFP.
14) Jellyfish can sting even when they are dead. In 2010, about 150 swimmers at Wallis Sands State Park in New Hampshire were stung by the floating, 40-pound carcass of a lion’s mane jellyfish.
The beginnings of American manned spaceflight. From the sound barrier to the moon.
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