Lamda Space

North polar hexagon of Saturn

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:23:52 +1200

North polar hexagon of Saturn

Anamorphic sculptures by Jonty Hurwitz

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:05:13 +1200

Anamorphic sculptures by Jonty Hurwitz

Asperatus Clouds

Tue, 14 May 2013 14:18:12 +1200

Asperatus Clouds

What’s past is prologue.

Fri, 10 May 2013 13:22:07 +1200

What’s past is prologue.

Some Wonderful Words

Mon, 06 May 2013 22:44:00 +1200

Pronoia: The opposite of paranoia. The belief that the universe is conspiring to better you.

Idiolect: A person’s individual speech pattern.

Apricity: The warmth of the sun in Winter.

Mudita: The opposite of schadenfreude. Sympathetic or vicarious joy, the pleasure that comes from delighting in other people’s well-being.

Oneirataxia: The inability to differentiate between dreams and reality.

Quaintrelle: A woman who emphasizes a life of passion expressed through personal style, leisurely pastimes, charm, and cultivation of life’s pleasures.

Elucubrate: To produce a piece of work by intensive effort at night.

Philalethist: A lover of the truth.

Darkle: Opposite of sparkle. To become clouded or gloomy.

Deuteragonist: The second most important character in a drama.

Psithurism: The sound of rustling leaves.

Potvaliancy: Brave only as a result of being drunk.

Psychopomp: a deity or creature who guides souls to their underworld.

9 Eyes - Life on Earth through Google Streetview

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:30:25 +1200

9 Eyes - Life on Earth through Google Streetview:

Incredible visual snippets of life on earth, courtesy of Google Streetview

British World Problems

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:33:00 +1200

I made eye contact with a stranger on the tube. We both looked away out of the window, and our reflections made eye contact.

Now that Thatcher’s actually dead, it’s not really all that funny to joke about her dying anymore.

I’ve worn a nice black dress to work today, and now everyone’s asking if it’s for Margaret.

I gave tourists directions that were in the same way I was walking, so I stopped and waited for a bus instead, rather than suffer the embarrassment of walking alongside them. The bus took 15 minutes to arrive. When I got off just two stops later, I was right next to the tourists again.

Not knowing whether to search for “United Kingdom”, “Great Britain” or “England” on drop down boxes.

I was asked by a friend if I knew there was a UK version of The Office.

The window cleaner is here. So I can’t look outside or do anything for about 15 minutes.

I asked a non-British person how their weekend was and they actually answered instead of just saying “fine, thanks”.

I offered to make the plumber a cup of tea, but the kettle is right by the boiler and I kept getting in his way until he asked me to stop. Then he made tea for both of us.

There has been a bright yellow thing in the sky for the last couple of days and I am worried it is a meteor.

I’m trying to immerse myself in Game Of Thrones but every time Jon Snow is mentioned I picture the Channel 4 newsreader.

It’s snowed in March and now society has broken down.

I accidentally said hello to someone I walk past every morning on my way to work. Now I’ll have to change to a longer route, or quit my job. Or kill them.

It’s 4.35, it’s dark outside, and it’s been raining for about 11 years.

The man currently having his hair cut is making lots of witty and friendly conversation with the barber. I’m next.

Choosing a language on a website and having the English option represented by a US flag.

I just ate a Penguin biscuit and threw away the wrapper before remembering to look at the joke.

Yesterday, I arrived at a mini-roundabout simultaneously with two other drivers from other directions. We’re still here.

I’m supposed to write a CV but documenting the reasons I’m great goes against everything I’ve ever believed in.

It takes me ten minutes to write a one line email because I’m constantly worrying that I’ll sound too formal/informal/patronising/rude.

I live outside the UK so when I say “With all due respect” nobody realises I’m insulting them.

I lost a biscuit in my cup of tea and tried to get it out with another biscuit and now my cup is full of biscuits.

It has gone quite cold again, but having already worn shorts this year I feel duty bound to continue wearing them.

I can’t tell if my washing is still wet or just cold.

A Few Interesting Facts

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 20:14:07 +1200

Penguins have a gland near their beaks converts salt water into fresh water. Once the gland gets full, a penguin will knock his beak on a rock to empty the salt out.
If a bryophyte (e.g. moss) runs out of water, it just goes into suspended animation and comes back to life when it gets water. Which means, theoretically, mosses can live forever. This condition is referred to as poikilohydry, which is the ability to dessicate (dry out) without damage.
Tropical rainforests in the Amazon have their soil nutrients periodically replenished by the Sahara Desert. Wind blows dust particles all the way from the desert, across the ocean, to the tropics where the sand and its associated nutrients help the fertility of the rainforest.
The bacteria inside your body takes on an evolutionary path that is specific to you and contains species that are different from anyone else’s bacteria. As well as the fact that there are (on average) more bacteria housed in your body than people in the world.

fuckyeahfluiddynamics: Water droplet art celebrates the...

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 09:30:23 +1200

fuckyeahfluiddynamics:

Water droplet art celebrates the infinite forms created from the impact of drops with a pool and rebounding jets. It’s a still life captured from split second interactions between inertia, momentum, and surface tension. These examples from photographer Markus Reugels are among some of the most complex shapes I’ve seen captured. Be sure to check out his website for more beautiful examples of liquids frozen in time. (Photo credits: Markus Reugels; via Photigy)

fuckyeahfluiddynamics: The acoustic signatures of many animals...

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 09:30:39 +1200

The call of the white beaked dolphin represented by wavelet transform.

The humpback whale's call, represented by wavelet transform.

The Northern cardinal's call represented by wavelet transform.

A Northern minke whale's call represented by wavelet transform.

The chirping of crickets represented by wavelet transform.

fuckyeahfluiddynamics:

The acoustic signatures of many animals contain features we humans cannot appreciate, given the limited range of frequencies we can hear. In fluid dynamics and many other fields, scientists and engineers have to find ways to analyze and decompose time-series data—like acoustic pressure signals—into useful quantities. Mark Fischer uses one tool for such analysis, a wavelet transform, to turn the calls of whales, birds, and insects into the colorful snapshots seen here. Wavelet transforms are somewhat similar to Fourier transforms but represent a signal with a series of wavelets rather than sinusoids. They’re also widely used for data compression. (Image credits: M. Fischer/Aguasonic Acoustics; via DailyMail)

Interactive Crowd-sourced Music Video - Join in!

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 22:38:05 +1200

Interactive Crowd-sourced Music Video - Join in!

If you’ve ever tried shrooms, prepare for flashbacks In...

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 19:18:16 +1200

If you’ve ever tried shrooms, prepare for flashbacks

In the world of fractals, the Mandelbrot Set is a stunning geometrical shape that results when you take a particular equation and apply it to a number, and then to the result, and then to each subsequent result after, ad infinitum. But what happens when you go from two dimensions to three? You get a “Mandelbulb.” And if you want to see how such a shape evolves over time, check out this stunning computer animation of a Mandelbulb modeling the movement of 250,000,000 particles.

Hyperlapse made with Google Street View. Make your own.

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 16:31:51 +1200

Hyperlapse made with Google Street View. Make your own.

“British artist, physicist, and all-around science...

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 17:20:43 +1200

“British artist, physicist, and all-around science enthusiast Paul Friedlander produces kinetic light sculptures that provide a colorful feast for the eyes. Each piece in his body of work offers a visual medley of light and motion by rapidly rotating a piece of string through white light. The vibrating rope becomes invisible to the human eye, but colors from the light (which would normally be invisible to the naked eye) are revealed in rapid succession.”

This is a painting by Dennis Wojtkiewicz. Click here for more...

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 15:23:35 +1200

This is a painting by Dennis Wojtkiewicz. Click here for more amazingness.

Contronyms: Words that are their own Opposites

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 09:30:43 +1200

If I didn’t already speak English, I would hate it

“Apparent” can mean “obvious” or “seeming, but in fact not”.
“Awful” can mean “worthy of awe” or “very bad”.
“Back” can mean “regressive” as in “to go back in time”, or it can mean “progressive” as in “to push back a deadline”.
“Buckle” can mean “fasten securely” as in “buckle your seat belt”, or it can mean “fall apart” as in “buckle under pressure”.
“Citation” can mean “commendation” or a “summons to appear in court”.
“To cleave” can mean “to cling” or “to split”.
“To dust” can mean to remove dust (cleaning a house) or to add dust (dust a cake with powered sugar).
“Fast” can mean “moving quickly” as in “running fast,” or it can mean “not moving” as in “stuck fast.”
“To fight with someone” can mean “to fight against someone” or “to fight alongside someone”.
“Impregnable” can mean “able to be impregnated” or “incapable of being entered”.
“Moot” can mean worthy of discussion or not worthy of discussion.
“Nonplussed” can mean surprised and confused, but has come to mean unperturbed in North American English.
“To overlook” can mean “to inspect” or “to fail to notice”.
“Oversight” (uncountable) means “supervision”, “an oversight” (countable) means “not noticing something”.
“Off” can mean “deactivated” as in “to turn off”, or it can mean “activated” as in “the alarm went off”.
“Redundant” can mean “useless” or “extra caution”.
“Refrain” means both non-action and the repetition of an action, e.g. in musical notation.
“Resign” can mean “give up or quit” or “continue”.
“To sanction” can mean “to permit” or “to punish”.
“Shelled” can mean “having a shell” or “has had the shell removed” (as in shelling).
“To skin” means “to cover with skin” (as in to skin a drum) as well as “to strip or peel off” (as in to skin an animal).
“To stint” means “to stop”, but the noun “stint” refers to the interval of work between stops.
“Strike”, in baseball terms, can mean “to hit the ball” or “to miss the ball”.
“Unpacked” can refer to a container with objects still in it, or a container with the objects removed.
“To weather” can mean “to endure” (as in a storm) or “to erode” (as in a rock).
“Weedy” can mean “overgrown” (“The garden is weedy”) or stunted (“The boy looks weedy”).
“Yield” can mean “to produce” (as in a chemical equation) or “to concede” (as in driving).
“Ravel” can mean to combine thread or to separate it.
“Terrific” can mean “very good” or “very bad”.

Geometric sandcastles. Click through for more.

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 08:37:09 +1200

Geometric sandcastles. Click through for more.

smeared sky created from hundreds of stacked photos

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 09:30:31 +1300

smeared sky created from hundreds of stacked photos

Just like our Earth, many differientiated proto-planets...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 23:03:00 +1300

Just like our Earth, many differientiated proto-planets consisted of a silica and olivine rich mantle surrounding a very dense iron-nickel core. It is thought that pallasites (which are composed of olivine embedded in an iron-nickel matrix) are derived from the boundary between the Mantle and Core.

We believe that the most likely scenerio for the creation of the pallasites was a cataclysmic impact event that penetrated deep enough to remove both mantle and core material which was mixed in a liquid state. This mixture of iron-nickel and olivine then cooled over millions of years in the zero gravity environment of space to produce the stunningly beautiful meteorites known as Pallasites.

Animated Lake Michigan Ice Floes

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 17:17:05 +1300

Animated Lake Michigan Ice Floes