Countries and Coastlines: A Dramatic View of Earth from Outer Space

in Video - Science | January 11th, 2012


We’ve shown you What a Hur­ri­cane Looks Like From Out­er Space and NASA’s 7 Minute Tour of the Earth from Space (in HD). Now comes new high res­o­lu­tion footage from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion that gives you a dra­mat­ic view of coast­lines and coun­tries around the world. Pro­duced by Space Rip, this clip will give you an extra­or­di­nary view of Eng­land, France, Italy, Egypt, Alge­ria, Tunisia, Greece, the island of Crete, Tai­wan, South Korea, Japan, the Unit­ed States, Mex­i­co, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argenti­na, and Cuba. Find this video housed in our col­lec­tion of 125 Great Sci­ence Videos. If you love space trav­el, astron­o­my, physics, neu­ro­science or tech­nol­o­gy, then you will def­i­nite­ly want to spend time rum­mag­ing through the col­lec­tion.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and we’ll deliv­er intel­li­gent media right to your vir­tu­al doorstep.

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Harvard Thinks Green: Big Ideas from 6 All-Star Environment Profs

in Current Affairs, Harvard, Science, Video - Science | January 10th, 2012

On Decem­ber 8th, six “all-star envi­ron­men­tal pro­fes­sors” came togeth­er at an event called â€śHar­vard Thinks Green” and pre­sent­ed short, TED-style talks about the envi­ron­ment and strate­gies for revers­ing cli­mate change. The event start­ed with James McCarthy (Pro­fes­sor of Bio­log­i­cal Oceanog­ra­phy) ask­ing the ques­tion (see above), “Is it too late to avoid seri­ous impacts of cli­mate change?” A good ques­tion to ask giv­en that 2010 wit­nessed the biggest annu­al jump in glob­al car­bon emissions—5.9%. This set the stage for Richard Lazarus (Pro­fes­sor of Law) to dis­cuss ways that our polit­i­cal sys­tem could become more respon­sive to the cri­sis. (Did you know that Barack Oba­ma only men­tioned cli­mate change once in pub­lic last year? Just once?) And then Rebec­ca Hen­der­son (Co-Direc­tor of the Busi­ness and Envi­ron­ment Ini­tia­tive) tries to make the dif­fi­cult case that mon­ey-mak­ing and sav­ing the world can go hand-in-hand — that cap­i­tal­ism can become envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able. You can watch the remain­ing talks online here, or on iTunes here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Thinks Big 2010

Why is the U.S. F’ed Up? 8 Lec­tures from Occu­py Har­vard Teach-In Pro­vide Answers

Har­vard Presents Free Cours­es with the Open Learn­ing Ini­tia­tive

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Stephen Fry Introduces the Strange New World of Nanoscience

in Science, Video - Science | December 9th, 2011

What is nano? And how will nanoscience (the study of phe­nom­e­na and manip­u­la­tion of mate­ri­als at the nanoscale) shape our future, from the way we build hous­es to how we cure dis­eases? It’s all explained in a snap­py 17 minute video nar­rat­ed by Stephen Fry (British writer, actor and direc­tor). Pro­duced in part­ner­ship with Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, NANO YOU was named the best short film at the Scin­e­ma Sci­ence Film Fes­ti­val in 2010.

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:

Stephen Fry & Friends Pay Trib­ute to Christo­pher Hitchens

Stephen Fry on Phi­los­o­phy and Unbe­lief

Stephen Fry Gets Ani­mat­ed about Lan­guage

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Can Ants Count? Do They Have Built-In Pedometers? Animated Video Explains

in Animation, Video - Science | December 7th, 2011

Saha­ran desert ants are known to wan­der great dis­tances in search of food. Twist­ing and turn­ing on their way, the ants man­age to return to their nests along sur­pris­ing­ly direct paths. They sense direc­tion using light from the sky, but how do they judge dis­tance? By count­ing steps, appar­ent­ly.

As Nation­al Pub­lic Radio sci­ence cor­re­spon­dent Robert Krul­wich explains in this engag­ing lit­tle car­toon, a group of Ger­man and Swiss sci­en­tists have dis­cov­ered that by manip­u­lat­ing the stride of the ants halfway through their trip–by either length­en­ing or short­en­ing their legs–the ants would invari­ably over­shoot or under­shoot their return des­ti­na­tion. As Prince­ton biol­o­gist James Gould told NPR, “These ani­mals are fooled exact­ly the way you’d expect if they were count­ing steps.”

The exper­i­men­tal results were orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 2006. You can lis­ten to Krul­wich’s radio report on the research here.

via Phi­los­o­phy Mon­key

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ant Archae­ol­o­gy

Fire Ants Cre­ate Life Raft in 100 Sec­onds Flat

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The Seven Wonders of the Microbe World

in Video - Science | December 7th, 2011

This video has been removed at the request of open uni­ver­si­ty.

After pro­duc­ing 60 Sec­ond Adven­tures in Thought and The His­to­ry of Eng­lish, the Open Uni­ver­si­ty returns with a new video series, Sev­en Won­ders of the Microbe World.

Microbes have giv­en us some dev­as­tat­ing dis­eases, every­thing from the Black Death to cholera, syphilis, typhoid and the occa­sion­al yeast infec­tion. But our micro­bial friends have also done us some good. With­out microbes, we would­n’t have wine and beer (some­thing the Ancient Egyp­tians start­ed pro­duc­ing some 6,000 years ago), nor much oxy­gen and fix­at­ed nitro­gen, all essen­tial for plant, ani­mal and human life. And don’t for­get antibi­otics, fine cheeses and the rest.

You can watch the Sev­en Won­ders of the Microbe World in sev­en install­ments on YouTube (see list below) or via iTunes. Or, sim­ply sit back and watch the 25 minute con­sol­i­dat­ed video (above) that brings it all togeth­er for you.

1. The His­to­ry of Beer
2. The Black Death
3. Food Preser­va­tion
4. Nitro­gen Fix­a­tion
5. Antibi­otics
6. Genet­ic Engi­neer­ing
7. Life on Mars

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Animated Video Shows Curiosity, NASA’s Mars Rover, in Dramatic Action

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | December 6th, 2011

In late Novem­ber, NASA’s Curios­i­ty, the world’s biggest extrater­res­tri­al rover, began rock­et­ing toward Mars (see pho­tos of the launch here) in search of any hint that the red plan­et might have pro­vid­ed a home for micro­scop­ic life. The Curios­i­ty will even­tu­al­ly reach Mars in August after cov­er­ing 345 mil­lion miles. Ear­li­er this year, an artist released a rather dra­mat­ic ani­ma­tion depict­ing key moments in the mis­sion — the voy­age, the land­ing (don’t miss this part!), the explo­ration, and all of the rest. It’s anoth­er can­di­date for our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos.

via Coudal.com

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Stephen Colbert Talks Science with Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson

in Astronomy, Comedy, Physics, Video - Science | December 3rd, 2011

With a fast-mov­ing mix­ture of com­e­dy and seri­ous­ness, an inter­view on The Col­bert Report is some­thing of an impro­vi­sa­tion­al fly­ing trapeze act. “Stephen Col­bert is an amaz­ing­ly good inter­view­er,” writes physi­cist Sean Car­roll, “man­ag­ing to mix top­i­cal jokes and his usu­al schtick with some real­ly good ques­tions, and more than a bit of real back­ground knowl­edge.”

Beneath the humor there is a sense that Col­bert under­stands and respects sci­ence. The sad thing, writes Car­roll, “is that more peo­ple are exposed to real sci­en­tists doing cut­ting-edge research by watch­ing Com­e­dy Cen­tral than by watch­ing, shall we say, cer­tain chan­nels you might have thought more appro­pri­ate venues for such con­ver­sa­tions.” But the expo­sure is all too brief. An inter­view on The Col­bert Report typ­i­cal­ly lasts only a few min­utes.

So it was inter­est­ing when Col­bert stepped away from his comedic char­ac­ter for a more in-depth con­ver­sa­tion with one of his fre­quent guests, astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson. The inter­view took place last year at Mont­clair Kim­ber­ley Acad­e­my in Mont­clair, New Jer­sey. Ear­li­er this week Tyson uploaded the video to the web­site of the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um, where he is direc­tor, but the serv­er was over­whelmed by the result­ing surge in traf­fic. So some­one placed the ver­sion above on YouTube. It’s an inter­est­ing, and wit­ty, one-hour-and-19-minute con­ver­sa­tion. For more of Tyson with Col­bert, you can watch his appear­ances on The Col­bert Report at the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um site.

via Kot­tke

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Beware of the Big Brinicle of Death

in Video - Science | November 30th, 2011

The Brini­cle of Death. It has nev­er been cap­tured on film … until now. And it’s all on dis­play cour­tesy of the BBC series Frozen Plan­et.

In a nut­shell, a brini­cle forms when cold, dense brine comes into con­tact with warmer water. It all starts on the ocean’s sur­face, and then the emerg­ing brini­cle (oth­er­wise known as an ice sta­lac­tite) starts to move down­ward, form­ing some­thing of a sub­merged tor­na­do, until it even­tu­al­ly hits the ocean floor and freezes every­thing in its path. The video above takes a 5–6 hour event and reduces it to a crisp, kind of hair-rais­ing two min­utes.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.