Tag: science

fuckyeahfluiddynamics:

Soap films have the remarkable property of self-healing. A water drop, like the one shown above, can pass through a bubble (repeatedly!) without popping it. This happens thanks to surfactants and the Marangoni effect. Surfactants are molecules that lower the surface tension of a liquid and congregate along the outermost layer of a soap film. When water breaks through the soap film, its lack of surfactants causes a higher surface tension locally. This triggers the Marangoni effect, in which flow moves from areas of low surface tension toward ones of high surface tension. That carries surfactants to the region where the drop broke through and helps stabilize and heal the soap film. Incidentally, the same process lets you stick your finger into a bubble without popping it as long as your hand is wet! (Image credit: G. Mitchell and P. Taylor, source)

Source: fuckyeahfluiddynamics

westbrookwestbooks:

swanjolras:

gosh but like we spent hundreds of years looking up at the stars and wondering “is there anybody out there” and hoping and guessing and imagining

because we as a species were so lonely and we wanted friends so bad, we wanted to meet other species and we wanted to talk to them and we wanted to learn from them and to stop being the only people in the universe

and we started realizing that things were maybe not going so good for us– we got scared that we were going to blow each other up, we got scared that we were going to break our planet permanently, we got scared that in a hundred years we were all going to be dead and gone and even if there were other people out there, we’d never get to meet them

and then

we built robots?

and we gave them names and we gave them brains made out of silicon and we pretended they were people and we told them hey you wanna go exploring, and of course they did, because we had made them in our own image

and maybe in a hundred years we won’t be around any more, maybe yeah the planet will be a mess and we’ll all be dead, and if other people come from the stars we won’t be around to meet them and say hi! how are you! we’re people, too! you’re not alone any more!, maybe we’ll be gone

but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?

the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.

and they told us to tell you hello.

So, I have to say something. 

This is my favorite post on this website. 

I’ve seen this post in screenshots before, and the first time I read it, I cried. Just sat there with tears running down my face. 

Because this, right here, is the best of us, we humans. That we hope, and dream of the stars, and we don’t want to be alone. That this is the best of our technology, not Terminators and Skynet, but our friends, our companions, our legacy. Our message to the stars. 

I’m flat out delighted, and maybe even a little honored, that I get to reblog this.

thisloveisaweed:

ciswhitethin:

beans345:

fedkaczynski:

triss19:

unlimited-shitpost-works:

armedandgayngerous:

im-just-a-reaction:

abstractandedgyname:

persverso:

the universe: okay, you’re a human. I gave you free will and a conscious mind, so you’re free to do whatever you want. So what do you wanna do?

human: GO FAST

the universe: well, you’re a perfect pursuit predator but if that’s the way you want to evolve, go ahead.

human, climbing on a horse: GO FAST

the universe: wait what

human, inventing the carriage, the car and the bullet train: GO FASTER

the universe: I IMPLORE YOU TO STOP

human, trying to figure out lightspeed travel: FAS T ER

human: 

THEORETICALLY MAXIMUM FAST

the universe:

How will the people in the ship not get gibbed?

Because the warp drive doesn’t actually accelerate the ship, it just makes the space in front of it smaller and the space behind it larger. Or something.

it works like this

image

Objects cannot accelerate to the speed of light within normal spacetime; instead, the Alcubierre drive shifts space around an object so that the object would arrive at its destination faster than light would in normal space without breaking any physical laws.

A WRINKLE IN TIME IS COMING TRUE 

We gonna be surfing gravity waves!!

COWABUNGA SPACE DUDES!

I love how mankind’s solution to ftl is just to bend to rules of reality a little.

Universe: ok human, with the physical laws as they are you can’t go faster than the speed of light.

Humanity: ok, let me just figure out how to manipulate space time so I can go FASTER!

That’s literally how the ship in Futurama works lol the professor says the ship doesn’t move at all, it moves all of space around it. Can’t believe Futurama was right

“That’s impossible. You can’t go faster than the speed of light.”

“Of course not. That’s why scientists increased the speed of light in 2208.”

thefloatingstone:

sapper-in-the-wire:

people today with access to more raw information than any other period: the earth is flat

german artilleryman in 1916, who barely washes his own ass: I need to account for the curvature and rotation of the earth when plotting my firing plans

Eratosthenes, an Egyptian, in 3750 BC when fucking mammoths hadn’t even gone extinct yet: Oh hey I can use these two obelisks to calculate the earth’s entire circumference based on
the length of their shadows

and the Earth’s curvature. Neat.

itsokaytobesmart:

The Physics of Curling

I had no idea that the physics of curling was so complicated, controversial, and downright fascinating. Of course, Destin would be the one to show us that, right?

Check it out Smarter Every Day on YouTube (if for some reason there are a few of you out there that haven’t yet, which would be hard for me to believe)