I would be a failure as a geek if I didn't include this video which has been flying across the internet this week. It answers the burning question you didn't even know you wanted to ask: what happens when you wring out a washcloth in space? Astronaut extraordinaire Chris Hadfield took it upon himself to demonstrate after the question/experiment was submitted to the Canadian Space Agency by two Nova Scotia high school students. Watch and learn - you won't quite believe your eyes.
In related ISS geek, Nathan Bergey combed though every image ever taken from the space station (all 1,129,177 of them) and plotted their coordinates to visualize the photos taken from space for each ISS mission. The results are strangely beautiful and very illuminating, showing which missions astronauts took the most picture on and of what.
And some for some geek below low Earth orbit:
- This week in awesome: little girls are better at designing superheroes than you.
- Stonehenge is hiring. Must love rocks.
- Scientists find microorganisms in the troposphere changing the way we understand how life can travel around the planet.
- Letters Niels Bohr wrote during his time in Cambridge reveal clashes with English physicists over atomic theory.
- Crawling robot inspired by baby sea turtles. [WITH VIDEO]
- Pulsating corals open and close every few seconds for nutritional purposes. [WITH VIDEO]
- Pluto's "gate to hell" discovered by archeologists in Turkey by tracing the route of a thermal spring.
- Last week we covered the science of standing in the elevator. Now it's time for the science of sitting on the subway.
- Study uses obituaries in the New York Times to investigate the relationship between vocation and longevity. Turns out fame is an occupational hazard.
Geek long and prosper. @Summer_Ash