Thick as thieves

The history of 4.000 million years compressed in 3 minutes. Kalle Matson, Kevin Parry, Carla Veldman, Andrew Wilson and Andrea Nesbitt worked in this project around 6 months, and the result is this funny stop motion video.

Via | Kalle Mattson

Yosemite range of light

An amazing time lapse from Yosemite National Park. It seems your are at the top of the world, or sitting on the hugest roller coaster that ever existed.

Via | Shawn Reeder

Magnifying the Universe

Thinking about human life:

"Sometimes we think we are important, but maybe we are just a bacteria colony in the middle of a bee's throat"

Via | Numbersleuth

¿Por qué somos tan estúpidos?

Nuestro cerebro es una chapuza, un amontonamiento de parches que asombra no por su armonía sino porque parecen funcionar lo suficientemente bien como para mantenernos vivos. Y es que nuestro cerebro es propenso a las ilusiones visuales, auditivas y hasta cognitivas. Lo peor de todo, no obstante, es que ni siquiera somos conscientes de lo imperfecta que es nuestra manera de pensar y lo fácilmente que nos engañan los sentidos.

Somos racionales por los pelos. De hecho, la mayoría del tiempo, somos más estúpidos que racionales.

Physicists set strongest limit on mass of dark matter

Brown University physicists have set the strongest limit for the mass of dark matter, the mysterious particles believed to make up nearly a quarter of the universe. The researchers report in Physical Review Letters that dark matter must have a mass greater than 40 giga-electron volts. The distinction is important because it casts doubt on recent results from underground experiments that have reported detecting dark matter.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — If dark matter exists in the universe, scientists now have set the strongest limit to date on its mass.

What If other planets replaced the moon?

Here's an animation to make you feel small, and also convey the deep awe I feel at the feet of the Universe.

So the basic idea is, each planet you see is the size it would appear in the sky if it shared an orbit with the moon, 380,000 kms from earth. This video was created in After Effects, and because of certain technical considerations had to keep the field of view at 62 degrees. That means the foreground element is not precisely to scale. All planets are to correct scale with one another in any case.

Via | Pakiavelli

Happy birthday Neptuno

While Neptune slogged around the Sun over the last 165 years, a lot has happened on Earth in that span of time. This video chronicles some of the major events that occurred on this planet during a single Neptune orbit.

Via | HubbleSite