Earth-Size Tornadoes On The Sun

What a sight to behold. Ear­li­er this month, NASA’s Solar Dynam­ics Obser­va­to­ry (SDO) beamed back stun­ning images of the sun’s plas­ma mov­ing vio­lent­ly around the star’s mag­net­ic field for 30 some hours, cre­at­ing a tor­na­do as large as the Earth itself, with gusts reach­ing up to 300,000 miles per hour. That’s accord­ing to Ter­ry Kucera, a solar physi­cist with NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter. NPR has more on the mak­ings of solar storms. Find more awe-inspir­ing footage in our col­lec­tion of 125 Great Sci­ence Videos.

The Birth of the Moon: How Did It Get There in the First Place?

The Moon is a mys­tery. For all its familiarity–the reg­u­lar­i­ty of its phas­es, the fact that every­where on Earth it looks the same–the Moon has always been an enig­ma, a lumi­nous ques­tion mark rolling across the night sky.

In this new video from Cos­mic Jour­neys, we learn about some of the lat­est sci­en­tif­ic research into the struc­ture and his­to­ry of the Moon. In par­tic­u­lar, we learn the lat­est ideas on what is per­haps the great­est of lunar mys­ter­ies: the ques­tion of how the Moon got there in the first place.

The lead­ing can­di­date for an answer is the Giant Impact Hypoth­e­sis, which posits that some­time in the ear­ly stage of the Solar System–about four and a half bil­lion years ago–a large pro­to-Earth col­lid­ed with a Mars-sized body named “Theia,” caus­ing a huge cloud of mate­r­i­al from both bod­ies to fly out into space. Some of the mate­r­i­al remained in the Earth­’s orbit and coa­lesced into the Moon. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing hypoth­e­sis. To see more videos from the same series, vis­it the Cos­mic Jour­neys chan­nel on YouTube, or the Spac­eRip blog.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Moon Up Close, in HD

A Year of the Moon in 2.5 Min­utes

The Far Side of Moon: A Rare Glimpse from NASA

125 Great Sci­ence Videos

The Far Side of Moon: A Rare Glimpse from NASA

Here’s some­thing you don’t see every night: the far side of the Moon, pho­tographed by one of NASA’s Grav­i­ty Recov­ery and Inte­ri­or Lab­o­ra­to­ry (GRAIL) space­craft.

The Moon is “tidal­ly locked” in its orbit around the Earth, mean­ing its rota­tion­al and orbital peri­ods are exact­ly syn­chro­nized. As a result, we always see the same view of the Moon no mat­ter when or where (on Earth) we look at it. In this inter­est­ing video, released last week by NASA, we get a rare glimpse of the Moon’s oth­er side, start­ing with the north pole and mov­ing toward the heav­i­ly cratered south.

The video was cap­tured on Jan­u­ary 19 by the “MoonKAM” aboard one of a pair of GRAIL space­craft that were launched last Fall and began orbit­ing the Moon on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. The pri­ma­ry mis­sion of GRAIL is to study the Moon’s inte­ri­or struc­ture and to learn more about its ther­mal evo­lu­tion.

GRAIL is also the first plan­e­tary mis­sion by NASA to car­ry instru­ments ded­i­cat­ed sole­ly to edu­ca­tion and pub­lic out­reach. The “KAM” in “MoonKAM” stands for Knowl­edge Acquired by Mid­dle school stu­dents. The pro­gram, led by for­mer astro­naut Sal­ly Ride, will engage fifth- to eighth-graders from across the coun­try in select­ing tar­get areas on the lunar sur­face to pho­to­graph and study. Edu­ca­tors inter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing can reg­is­ter at the MoonKAM web­site. To learn more about the video and GRAIL, see the NASA news release.

The Archaeology of an Ant Colony

Ants nev­er cease to amaze. They nav­i­gate the world with inter­nal pedome­ters. They can build a life raft in 100 sec­onds flat. And, fur­ther demon­strat­ing the remark­able pow­ers of de-cen­tral­ized intel­li­gence, they can tun­nel into the earth and pro­duce sprawl­ing under­ground colonies, struc­tures equiv­a­lent to humans build­ing the Great Wall of Chi­na. This clip comes from the doc­u­men­tary Ants: Nature’s Secret Pow­er, which appears below in full. H/T Boing­Bo­ing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z‑gIx7LXcQM

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Apocalypse Not Quite Yet: Why Solar Storms Won’t End the World in 2012

With the largest solar storm since 2005 light­ing up the night skies this week after a pair of solar flares sent streams of charged par­ti­cles hurtling toward the earth, prophets of doom have been light­ing up the Inter­net.

Bob Thiel, a self-described “Church His­to­ry and End Times Exam­in­er” and author of 2012 and the Rise of the Secret Sectwrote yes­ter­day: “Worse solar flares will ulti­mate­ly hap­pen after the ‘Great Tribu­la­tion’ begins (Rev­e­la­tion 16: 8–9), and one or more that affect satel­lites and elec­tric­i­ty could hap­pen even today.” Hmm. Inter­est­ing.

Although very seri­ous ques­tions do exist about the readi­ness of our elec­tric pow­er grid and satel­lite infra­struc­ture to with­stand a major solar storm like the one in 1859 that short­ed out tele­graph wires and caused auro­rae so bright a crew of gold min­ers in Col­orado report­ed­ly got out of bed in the mid­dle of the night to cook break­fast, the cur­rent increase in solar activ­i­ty is part of a reg­u­lar 11-year cycle and pos­es no spe­cial risk, accord­ing to NASA helio­physi­cist Alex Young. (See the video above.) And any­way, Young says, the peak isn’t expect­ed to hit until 2014, well after the Mayan cal­en­dar has run its course.

For an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion about the past week’s solar activ­i­ty you can lis­ten to Phil Plait, author of Dis­cov­er Mag­a­zine’“Bad Astron­o­my” blog, in an inter­view yes­ter­day with Patt Mor­ri­son of Los Ange­les pub­lic radio KPCC. And for a look at the earth-direct­ed coro­nal mass ejec­tion of Jan­u­ary 22, you can watch anoth­er NASA video below.

Cambridge Nights: Late Night TV-Style Show Takes Deep Look at Scientific Thinking

Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts is one of the world’s great intel­lec­tu­al cross­roads. With Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty at one end of town and the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy at the oth­er, many of the most influ­en­tial thinkers of our time either work there or vis­it. That gave César Hidal­go an idea.

Hidal­go is a pro­fes­sor at M.I.T., where he stud­ies the rela­tion­ship between physics, net­work sci­ence and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment. Build­ing on his own inter­dis­ci­pli­nary curios­i­ty, Hidal­go thought it would be inter­est­ing to share a lit­tle of Cam­bridge’s intel­lec­tu­al wealth with the out­side world, so in Octo­ber he and the M.I.T. Media Lab launched a series of infor­mal Web inter­views called Cam­bridge Nights: Con­ver­sa­tions About a Life in Sci­ence.

Cam­bridge Nights is a lit­tle like The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, if Leno talked about things like frac­tal geom­e­try in the meta­bol­ic the­o­ry of ecol­o­gy. That’s the sub­ject of the dis­cus­sion above fea­tur­ing the renowned physi­cist Geof­frey West, pro­fes­sor and past pres­i­dent of the San­ta Fe Insti­tute, who gives a fas­ci­nat­ing account of the uni­ver­sal scal­ing laws that per­vade all life, from sin­gle-celled organ­isms and com­plex species to whole ecosys­tems.

What sets Cam­bridge Nights apart from oth­er Web forums, like Big­Think, is that guests are under no pres­sure to com­press or “pop­u­lar­ize” their ideas. “We invite them because we want to hear what they have to say, and we want to give them the time to say it com­fort­ably,” writes Hidal­go. “There are many high-speed for­mats out there. Cam­bridge Nights is an alter­na­tive where thoughts can be devel­oped and reflect­ed upon with­out the need to rush.”

In the first sea­son, Hidal­go talks with six schol­ars from fields span­ning the nat­ur­al and social sci­ences, includ­ing physi­cist and net­work sci­en­tist Albert-Lás­zló Barabási, biol­o­gist Marc Vidal and inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment expert Lant Pritch­ett. A num­ber of guests are already lined up for Sea­son Two, includ­ing exper­i­men­tal psy­chol­o­gist Steven Pinker.

To view all six videos from Sea­son One, and to learn more about the project, vis­it the Cam­bridge Nights web­site.

Cours­es from MIT can be found in our col­lec­tion of 400 Free Cours­es Online.

via The New York Times

Global Warming: A Free Course from UChicago Explains Climate Change

Two weeks ago, we fea­tured Har­vard Thinks Green, a series of six TED-style lec­tures pre­sent­ed by Har­vard experts, each focus­ing on the envi­ron­ment and strate­gies for revers­ing cli­mate change. One thing Har­vard Thinks Green did­n’t offer was a primer on cli­mate change itself, a good sci­en­tif­ic expla­na­tion of the under­ly­ing prob­lem. Enter Glob­al Warm­ing (YouTube), a 23-lec­ture course pre­sent­ed by David Archer, a pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of The Geo­phys­i­cal Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. The first half of the class explains cli­mate physics and how the cli­mate works; the sec­ond half shows how human activ­i­ty and ever-increas­ing car­bon lev­els dis­rupt the equi­lib­ri­um of the envi­ron­ment, cre­at­ing a very uncer­tain future for gen­er­a­tions to come. The first, short lec­ture above out­lines the scope of the class.

Orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed at UChica­go in Fall 2009, Archer’s course was geared to non-sci­ence majors and taught in con­junc­tion with his text­book, Glob­al Warm­ing: Under­stand­ing the Fore­cast, which hap­pens to be avail­able on Ama­zon hereGlob­al Warm­ing (YouTube) is now list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

132 Years of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in 26 Dra­mat­i­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed Sec­onds

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

Sal­ly Ride Warns Against Glob­al Warm­ing; Won­ders If Tech­nol­o­gy Can Save Us From Our­selves

Prof. Bri­an Cox Has a Mad­den­ing Con­ver­sa­tion with a Cli­mate Sci­ence-Deny­ing Politi­cian

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Physicist Lawrence Krauss Explains How Everything Comes from Nothing

Last fall, we fea­tured a talk by the hot-shot the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Lawrence Krauss, “A Uni­verse from Noth­ing,” which answered some big enchi­la­da ques­tions: What is our cur­rent under­stand­ing of the uni­verse? When did the uni­verse begin? What came before it? How could some­thing come from noth­ing? And what will hap­pen to the uni­verse in the future?

The lec­ture gave a snap­shot of the think­ing laid out in Krauss’ new­ly-released book by the same title: A Uni­verse from Noth­ing: Why There Is Some­thing Rather than Noth­ing. The book just hit the stands, and right now it’s #51 on the Ama­zon best­seller list. Not bad for a text that delves into the com­plex mys­ter­ies of dark mat­ter, quan­tum mechan­ics and cos­mol­o­gy.

In case you missed the orig­i­nal lec­ture, we have post­ed “A Uni­verse from Noth­ing” below for your view­ing plea­sure. (It has racked up over a mil­lion views on YouTube.) And you can catch the video trail­er for Krauss’ new book right above. Find more great physics videos in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es and Great Sci­ence Videos.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.