On The Direction Of The Cross Product Of Vectors

This is the Hollow Mask Illusion.

At first, it looks like the face is popping out towards you, but as it turns far enough, you realise that it is in fact concave, bending inwards from the base, away from you. This illusion plays on the fact that our perception is influenced by past experience; we expect faces to protrude outwards, which helps the illusion trick our brains.

You can make your own version of this mask at home, and it’s an awesome activity to try with your kids to get them thinking about the science of psychology. Click here for all the info!

Fibonacci sequence in the hiding…

Elon Musk Announces New Hyperloop Approval Making NYC to DC Trip in Only 29 Minutes

But that’s not all it can do. Microsoft and NASA teamed up to “bring” you, yes you, to Mars.

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That Time We Flew Past Pluto…

Two years ago today (July 14), our New Horizons spacecraft made its closest flyby of Pluto…collecting images and science that revealed a geologically complex world. Data from this mission are helping us understand worlds at the edge of our solar system.

The spacecraft is now venturing deeper into the distant, mysterious Kuiper Belt…a relic of solar system formation…to reach its next target. On New Year’s Day 2019, New Horizons will zoom past a Kuiper Belt object known as 2014 MU69.

The Kuiper Belt is a disc-shaped region of icy bodies – including dwarf planets such as Pluto – and comets beyond the orbit of Neptune. It extends from about 30 to 55 Astronomical Units (an AU is the distance from the sun to Earth) and is probably populated with hundreds of thousands of icy bodies larger than 62 miles across, and an estimated trillion or more comets.

Nearly a billion miles beyond Pluto, you may be asking how the spacecraft will function for the 2014 MU69 flyby. Well, New Horizons was originally designed to fly far beyond the Pluto system and explore deeper into the Kuiper Belt. 

The spacecraft carries extra hydrazine fuel for the flyby; its communications system is designed to work from beyond Pluto; its power system is designed to operate for many more years; and its scientific instruments were designed to operate in light levels much lower than it will experience during the 2014 MU69 flyby.

What have we learned about Pluto since its historic flyby in 2015?

During its encounter, the New Horizons spacecraft collected more than 1,200 images of Pluto and tens of gigabits of data. The intensive downlinking of information took about a year to return to Earth! Here are a few things we’ve discovered:

Pluto Has a Heart

This image captured by New Horizons around 16 hours before its closest approach shows Pluto’s “heart.” This stunning image of one of its most dominant features shows us that the heart’s diameter is about the same distance as from Denver to Chicago. This image also showed us that Pluto is a complex world with incredible geological diversity.

Icy Plains

Pluto’s vast icy plain, informally called Sputnik Planitia, resembles frozen mud cracks on Earth. It has a broken surface of irregularly-shaped segments, bordered by what appear to be shallow troughs.

Majestic Mountains

Images from the spacecraft display chaotically jumbled mountains that only add to the complexity of Pluto’s geography. The rugged, icy mountains are as tall as 11,000 feet high.

Color Variations

This high-resolution enhanced color view of Pluto combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft. The surface of tPluto has a remarkable range of subtle color variations. Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a complex geological and climatological story.

Foggy Haze and Blue Atmosphere

Images returned from the New Horizons spacecraft have also revealed that Pluto’s global atmospheric haze has many more layers than scientists realized. The haze even creates a twilight effect that softly illuminates nightside terrain near sunset, which makes them visible to the cameras aboard the spacecraft.

Water Ice

New Horizons detected numerous small, exposed regions of water ice on Pluto. Scientists are eager to understand why water appears exactly where it does, and not in other places.

Stay updated on New Horizons findings by visiting the New Horizons page. You can also keep track of Pluto News on Twitter via @NASANewHorizons.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Coloring Book Celebrates Mathematical Beauty of Nature with Hand-Drawn Golden Ratio Illustrations

Overwhelming Cloaking Devices And False Peace Highlights Star Trek: Discovery, Season 1 Episode 8

“Can you please make it stop, even for a moment? We were biologically determined for one purpose and one purpose alone: to sense the coming of death. I sense it coming now. We have come to Pahvo for your help. We have come to end this war. I am so afraid. So. Afraid.”

You’re in a time of war, and your enemy has a technological advantage that makes you unable to fight them on equal footing. This has happened so often throughout history: with iron vs. bronze weapons; with the invention and application of gunpowder; with the rise of nuclear capabilities. In space, the augmentation of a cloaking device makes the Klingons virtually invincible, and the Federation is losing this war, badly. What are they to do? What comes next? The ability to see an invisible ship is what’s needed, and this latest episode highlights an attempt to do so, by exploiting an uncontacted alien world. The aliens there are sentient, however, so using this technology would be a violation of both the Prime Directive and First Contact protocols. But what’s the ethical thing to do? Is it better to not interfere and face certain defeat? Or to exploit their technology, violate your principles, and gain the advantage?

Star Trek: Discovery is a show where right-and-wrong isn’t so cut-and-dry. Despite its flaws, it’s an interesting development that makes you think, without providing easy answers. Those, fortunately, will come next episode!

These giant mesh nets provide drinking water in the driest desert on Earth.

Okay, I’ve really missed talking about teratology.

These dogs have polydactyl, but what’s interesting is that the extra dew claws can move independently of one another and grip things. They’re only found on the hind feet giving the dogs a distinctly velociraptor look

The Beauceron is an ancient breed, and no one has a definitive answer of why they have these, but the prevailing theory is that they were bred to do a lot of rock climbing because they were used for herding and hunting over rocky mountainous terrain.

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Alloys: Steel

According to Dictionary.com, steel is “any of various modified forms of iron, artificially produced, having a carbon content less than that of pig iron and more than that of wrought iron, and having qualities of hardness, elasticity, and strength varying according to composition and heat treatment: generally categorized as having a high, medium, or low-carbon content”. 

Perhaps the most well known alloy around, as well as one of the most common materials in the world, steel is essentially iron with a small percentage of carbon (and, on occasion, one or more other elements). Not enough carbon and you’re stuck with wrought iron, too much carbon and you get cast iron. The graph above is a binary iron-carbon phase diagram that goes from zero percent carbon to about 6.5 percent, illustrating the various phases that can form.

Steel has been known about since ancient times, some pieces dating back to 1800 BC, but it was the invention of the Bessemer process during the industrial revolution that really popularized the alloy. (Technically, similar methods had been used before, particularly in China and Japan, but Henry Bessemer invented the modern method, industrializing it and obtaining a patent in 1856.)

Mainly used in construction, the alloy has been used for almost every possible application: from office furniture to steel wool, from bulldozers to washing machines, and from wires to watches, the possibilities are pretty much endless. Steel is also one of the world’s most-recycled materials, able to be used more than once, with a recycling rate of over 60% globally.

The addition of carbon allows the steel to be stronger than the iron it’s made from. Adding nickel and manganese increases its tensile strength, chromium increases hardness and melting temperature, and vanadium also increases hardness while making it less prone to metal fatigue. Stainless steel has at least eleven percent chromium, whereas Hadfield steel (which resists wearing) contains twelve to fourteen percent manganese. Check out these links for more information on the effects of adding certain elements.  

Sources: 1 (top images), 2 (bottom images)