Since submarines began roaming the depths in World War I, sailors and oceanographers, who use sonar technology to map seafloor topography and identify ocean life, have regularly run into “acoustic ghosts”—inexplicable bodies of movable mass that sometimes rivaled the size of a city. Every time a theory emerged to explain the phenomenon, however, it was quickly shot down.
In 2003 scientists aboard a research vessel just south of Long Island, New York, discovered that the UFOs were composed of hundreds of millions of fish—massive gatherings on a scale never before documented. Using low-frequency sonar technology that penetrated hundreds of miles, they identified a school roughly the size of Manhattan.
This is fascinating.
(via brainguts)
Posted March 9, 2012 at 10:05pm in WHAAAAAAAAT SCIENCE cool science things are cool OCEANS fish
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The Most Astounding Fact by Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was asked by a reader of TIME magazine, “What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?” This is his answer.
(Source: crookedindifference)
Posted March 8, 2012 at 9:16pm in SCIENCE cool science things are cool Neil DeGrasse Tyson
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Aurora Australis over the Indian Ocean
This video was taken by the crew of Expedition 30 on board the International Space Station. The sequence of shots was taken January 3, 2012 from 15:01:30 to 15:08:17 GMT, on a pass from the Indian Ocean, just west of Australia, to south of Australia, west of Tasmania.
The pass begins looking eastward toward southern Australia at the Aurora Australis. The crew captures the aurora just before the sun begins to come up in this short video. A few orbiting satellites pass by throughout the video as well.
The Darvaza Gas Crater
The Darvaza Gas Crater in Turkmenistan also known as “The Door to Hell” was discovered when a rig drilling for gas hit the gas-filled cavern. The hole was soon lit on fire to avoid releasing methane into the air and has been burning for 40 years.
submitted by weeeeeexd
(via fortalameda)
Posted January 27, 2012 at 12:49am in cool science things are cool gas crater the door to hell
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“Our story is the story of the universe. Every piece of everyone, of everything you love and everything you hate, of the thing you hold most precious, was assembled by the forces of nature in the first few minutes of the life of the universe, transformed in the hearts of the stars or created in their fiery deaths.
And when you die, those pieces will be returned to the universe in the endless cycle of death and rebirth. What a wonderful thing it is to be part of that universe. And what a story, what a majestic story.”Professor Brian Cox, Wonders of the Universe.
(via ineffableangel)
Last week, Birmingham, Alabama got treated to a special cloudy day, thanks to some Kelvin-Helmholtz waves, shown above. When a layer of faster moving fluid shears a slower moving fluid, this instability can form and cause some spectacular mixing. In this case, the lower, slower fluid was cool and moist enough to contain clouds, enabling us to see the effect with the naked eye. The same mechanism is responsible for the shape of breaking ocean waves and can even be seen in the atmospheres of gas giants like Saturn and Jupiter. (submitted by David B)
(via fuckyeahclouds)
bastardette:pinwheeling | commanderspock | dvdp
Complete time-lapse video of the Sun, spanning the entire months of September, October and November 2011 as seen through the SWAP ultraviolet instrument onboard the European Space Agency spacecraft Proba-2.
(via drunkxabi)
The human heart stripped of fat and muscle, with just the angel veins exposed.
