Clipmarks | violetnightshade's clips

"Shangri-La" Caves Yield Treasures, Skeletons

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:36:42 GMT

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

[Video]

ON TV Lost Cave Temples of the Himalayas and Secrets of Shangri-La premiere Wednesday, November 18, on PBS (check local listings.).

A treasure trove of Tibetan art and manuscripts uncovered in "sky high" Himalayan caves could be linked to the storybook paradise of Shangri-La, says the team that made the discovery.

The 15th-century religious texts and wall paintings were found in caves carved into sheer cliffs in the ancient kingdom of Mustang—today part of Nepal.

Inside the caves, the team found ancient Tibetan Buddhist shrines decorated with exquisitely painted murals, including a 55-panel depiction of Buddha's life. (See a picture of one of the Buddhist murals.)

A second expedition in 2008 discovered several 600-year-old human skeletons and recovered reams of precious manuscripts, some with small paintings known as illuminations.

Tags: archaeology, tibet, himalayas, ancient, shangi-la, video, natgeo

Young stars in the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud.

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:22:52 GMT

clipped by: violetnightshade
clipper's remarks: Beautiful.

Clip Source: antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov

Young Stars in the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud

Explanation: Cosmic dust clouds and embedded newborn stars glow at infrared wavelengths in this tantalizing false-color view from the Spitzer Space Telescope. Pictured is of one of the closest star forming regions, part of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex some 400 light-years distant near the southern edge of the pronounceable constellation Ophiuchus. The view spans about 5 light-years at that estimated distance. After forming along a large cloud of cold molecular hydrogen gas, newborn stars heat the surrounding dust to produce the infrared glow. An exploration of the region in penetrating infrared light has detected some 300 emerging and newly formed stars whose average age is estimated to be a mere 300,000 years -- extremely young compared to the Sun's age of 5 billion years.

Tags: space, science, clouds, nasa, cool, beautiful

DIY: listening to electromagnetic fields

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:51:24 GMT

clipped by: violetnightshade

Clip Source: www.synthgear.com

[Video]

It’s amazing how many electromagnetic fields are all around us. The cool part about it is that it’s very easy to be able to hear the fields that are in the audible range. Here’s a quick and easy DIY project that will help you do just that.

All you need is the electronic guts of an old cassettte walkman. You can pick these up at thrift stores for next to nothing (hey, who uses tapes anymore?). Rip out everything except the circuit board, the tape head, power source and audio connector. It’s best to use the batteries if you can because power adapters have their own EM field.

That’s it.. you’re done. Just take your device, point it at anything that would have an EM field (try close to parts of your laptop – laptops have a huge amount of different EM fields coming from them), and plug the audio output into your computer or powered speakers. You can record the output with any old audio recording software (windows has a voice recorder built in.)

Tags: audio, emf, electromagnetic fields, interesting, science, recording, cool

Galaxy Zoo Catalogs the Universe

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:36:40 GMT

clipped by: violetnightshade

Clip Source: antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov

Pictured above, a group of vibrant mergers found by Zooites demonstrates the diverse zoo-like nature of many interacting galaxies in the universe.

You, too, can Zoo. The Galaxy Zoo project has been enabling citizen scientists -- inquisitive people like yourself armed with only a web browser-- to sort through the universe. Specifically, after a brief training session, volunteers are asked to use the superior image-processing power of their minds to classify and measure properties of galaxies in the vast Sloan Digital Sky Survey. In its two short years of existence, millions of galaxies have already been inspected by thousands of enthusiastic volunteers.

Using Galaxy Zoo data, for example, the universe has been discovered to create no preferred spin direction, an unusual and unclassified object was found that is still being investigated, and a whole class of small galaxies dubbed Green Peas were uncovered where star formation occurs at an extraordinary high rate.

Tags: space, astronomy, galaxy, science, cool, informative

Made from bamboo.

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:23:51 GMT

clipped by: violetnightshade

Clip Source: www.greendiary.com

World’s most incredible designs made from bamboo

1. The origami-inspired Folded Bamboo House:

2. The Woven House:

3. The Wind and Water Cafe:

4. The Mason Lane Farm Operations Facility:

5. Butterfly Bamboo Homes:

6. The Bamboo Forest House:

7. BamGoo:

8. Bamboo Taxi Car:

9. Bamboo Jeep:

10. Indonesian bamboo bicycle:

11. Bamboo Speakers:

12. Asus Ecobook Bamboo Laptop:

13. Cut Bamboo Table Lamp:

14. Bamboo Helmets:

15. Bamboo accessories from Micro Innovations:

16. The Bamboo Radio:

17. Bird-Electron EZ-TAKEGTF2:

18. Dell’s bamboo-encased eco-PC concept:

19. Bamboo Chandelier:

20. Bamboo Caskets:

Interesting facts about bamboo:

Tags: bamboo, eco, green, cool, designs, useful

Martian Dust Devil Trails

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:38:49 GMT

clipped by: violetnightshade
clipper's remarks: wow.

Clip Source: antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov

Explanation: Who's been marking up Mars? This portion of a recent high-resolution picture from the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows twisting dark trails criss-crossing light colored terrain on the martian surface. Newly formed trails like these had presented researchers with a tantalizing martian mystery but are now known to be the work of miniature wind vortices known to occur on the red planet - martian dust devils. Such spinning columns of rising air heated by the warm surface are also common in dry and desert areas on planet Earth. Typically lasting only a few minutes, dust devils becoming visible as they pick up loose red-colored dust leaving the darker and heavier sand beneath intact. On Mars, dust devils can be up to 8 kilometers high. Dust devils have been credited with unexpected cleanings of mars rover solar panels.

Tags: mars, photography, cool, informative, science, space, interesting

STARS OVER EASTER ISLAND

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:27:01 GMT

clipped by: violetnightshade

Clip Source: antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov

Stars Over Easter Island

Explanation: Why were the statues on Easter Island built? No one is sure. What is sure is that over 800 large stone statues exist there. The Easter Island statues, stand, on the average, over twice as tall as a person and have over 200 times as much mass. Few specifics are known about the history or meaning of the unusual statues, but many believe that they were created about 500 years ago in the images of local leaders of a lost civilization. Pictured above, a large stone statue appears to ponder the distant Large Magellanic Cloud before a cloudy sky that features the bright stars Canopus and Sirius.

Tags: easter island, stars, space, astronomy, ancient culture, cool, informative, photography, beautiful

“Cosmic Serpent” author/theorist Jeremy Narby on what we know

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:25:04 GMT

clipped by: violetnightshade

Clip Source: www.arthurmag.com

[Video]

Tags: science, mind, brain, narby, interesting, informative, theory

Owl in a box.

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:51:47 GMT

clipped by: violetnightshade

Clip Source: reynen.livejournal.com

owl in box

While driving to work last week we found a large, great horned owl on the side of the freeway next to a tall concrete wall. He could fly, but not very well (he looked like he may have gotten clipped by a car).
We caught him in mid-flight before it got out in traffic and I somehow managed to not get bitten or ripped open by his claws.
We were on the way to work so we had to bring him with us.
He was pretty mad so it was really tricky to photograph him. I had to hold him with one hand in my lap and work the camera with the other hand.
One of the homeowners we met with that day gave us a box, so that made things quite a bit easier.

We dropped him off at a state park and an animal rescue organization sent a team to come pick him up (I'm not sure if they knew he was already in a box).

the owl was doing good and was almost ready for release.

Tags: owl, animal preservation, cool, birds, nature

Photos: Droplets captured in high speed.

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:56:49 GMT

clipped by: violetnightshade

Clip Source: tutzone.net

11 Colorful Droplets Captured In High Speed

Tags: photos, photography, liquid, high-speed photography, beautiful, capture, colorful, cool

Wild Russian Pet. Warning: Predation Shots.

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:09:19 GMT

clipped by: violetnightshade
clipper's remarks: Never heard of a Russian fishing cat. Kind of odd looking. I imagine it would be happier living a natural life in the wild. By the looks of it, so would the other cat in the family.

Clip Source: englishrussia.com

The cat on the pictures is so called Fishing Cat, you can read more on those at Wiki. It’s not very common in Russia, and might have been brought from some distant parts like Tajikistan by Russian soldier.

In Russia sometimes they dare to have wild animals like pets.

There are no any law regulations on what pets you can keep and what you can’t, no PETA, no need to pick up your little friend’s poo in special bags. You can walk with your pet anywhere on the street or public park, no any single “no pets allowed” signs outside. Some call it chaos others call it freedom, you decide yourself.

Meanwhile some photos of such wild pet living with people in just a small regular flat in big multistored building.

Tags: pets, cats, russia, odd pets, odd, nature, photography, predators

Fully Loaded Bees

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:01:45 GMT

clipped by: violetnightshade

Clip Source: www.environmentalgraffiti.com

Stunning Images of Fully Loaded Bees

Tags: bees, nature, science, photography, visual, cool, images, honeybees

The Same Color Illusion

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:32:14 GMT

clipped by: violetnightshade

Clip Source: antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov

Explanation: Are square A and B the same color? They are. Are too. To verify this, click here to see them connected. The above illusion, called the same color illusion, illustrates that purely human observations in science may be ambiguous or inaccurate. Even such a seemingly direct perception as relative color. Similar illusions exist on the sky, such as the size of the Moon near the horizon, or the apparent shapes of astronomical objects. The advent of automated, reproducible, measuring devices such as CCDs have made science in general and astronomy in particular less prone to, but not free of, human-biased illusions.

Tags: illusion, interesting, informative, odd, mystery, visual, optical, cool

Cellphones rated by radiatiion output levels.

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:27:37 GMT

clipped by: violetnightshade

Clip Source: www.engadget.com

Website rates best and worst cellphones by radiation output levels -- how does yours stack up?

You're surely aware that your cellphone bleeds radiation into your face the whole time you're on the phone with your mom, best friend or lover, right? Yes, it's a fact we try not to think about most of the time, but now there's a tool out there on the internets for the more reality-facing folks among us. The Environmental Working Group's launched a website dedicated to rating cellphones on their radiation output alone.

So hit the read link and tell us, how does your phone rate?

Tags: cellphones, radiation, warnings, ratings, consumer info, informative

New species discovered—at risk of extinction.

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:06:41 GMT

clipped by: violetnightshade

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

New Species Discovered In The Greater Mekong At Risk Of Extinction Due To Climate Change

ScienceDaily (Sep. 28, 2009) — A bird-eating fanged frog, a gecko that looks like it’s from another planet, and a bird which would rather walk than fly -- these are among the 163 new species discovered in the Greater Mekong region last year that are now at risk of extinction due to climate change, says a new report launched by WWF ahead of UN climate talks in Bangkok.

During 2008 alone, scientists identified these rare and unique species within the jungles and rivers of the Greater Mekong, including a bird eating fanged frog that lies in streams waiting for prey, one of only four new species of musk shrew to be described in recent times, and a leopard gecko whose “other world” appearance – orange eyes, spindly limbs and technicolour skin – inspired the report’s title Close Encounters.

Tags: discoveries, animals, climate change, extinction, endangered