La Rosa de los Vientos

how are we feeling about the new book this week chat

New spaceship launches tomorrow morning, to test avionics, attitude control, parachutes and the heat shield. 

"An astronaut’s life is one of preparation and simulation, and training, and support from the ground, and anticipation, visualization, and very, very seldom - almost never - is an astronaut’s life about flying in space."

Dear Evolution: Letters of Gripe and Gratitude from some of life’s many odd forms to Mother Nature.

A hilarious little diversion from Scientific American and Mara Grunbaum, who rund the hilarious Tumblr WTF, Evolution? More at the link above, like this note from a giraffe:

Dear Evolution,

Seriously?

No love, Giraffe

Zhangye Danxia - Geology From a Storybook

Long ago, colorful sediments were deposited in western China, layer after layer, century after century. If you were there at the time, you would have seen unremarkable ground, a single hue of dirt no different from a thousand other places on Earth. 

But after thousands and thousands of years subject to the forces of pressure and tectonic movement, the total of those layers has been pushed upward, letting us peek at a rainbow-hued slice of Earth’s past perhaps unmatched on this planet. The planet looks more like the cross-section of a jawbreaker candy than layers of rock in these photos, near Zhangye, China.

The Zhangye formation, not to be confused with this danxia, a UNESCO heritage site, reminds us how our crust is heaved and hurled throughout the ages, a slow evolution that will continue into the distant future. It’s yet another story of Earth’s past, written in stone, but perhaps with the same pen as a fantasy storybook.

Dragon’s Bounty: SpaceX Mission Complete

Apollo 11: East Crater Panorama by NASA on The Commons on Flickr.

Imagine a Living Mars

Mars was likely not always the desolate, red-rocked planet that we see today. The Curiosity rover has found what appear to be water-smoothed pebbles, shaped by ancient rivers of flowing water. Curiosity and previous missions have also seen footprints of alluvial fans and river deltas, sure signs of a previously wet world.

Software engineer Kevin Gill has taken those observations to the next level with these simulations of a “living” Mars, covered with seas and lakes and teeming with vegetation and clouds. He used a survey of Martian terrain and elevation, plugged in a sea level to form oceans, and then painted the clouds and terrain as it might look or have looked.

It’s definitely more an exercise in imagination than in reality, as there’s no indication of past forests or marshy plains on the red planet, but it’s an informed imagination, a realization of a planet’s possible rich past or terraformed future.

Check out Kevin Gill on Flickr.

The bronze “Chimera of Arezzo” is one of the best known examples of the art of the Etruscans. It was found in Arezzo, an ancient Etruscan and Roman city in Tuscany, in 1553 and was quickly claimed for the collection of the Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimo I, who placed it publicly in the Palazzo Vecchio, and placed the smaller bronzes from the trove in his own studiolo at Palazzo Pitti, where “the Duke took great pleasure in cleaning them by himself, with some goldsmith’s tools,” Benvenuto Cellini reported in his autobiography. The Chimera is still conserved in Florence, now in the Archaeological Museum. It is approximately 80 cm in height.

In Greek mythology the monstrous Chimera ravaged its homeland, Lycia, until it was slain by Bellerophon. This bronze was at first identified as a lion by its discoverers in Arezzo, for its tail, which would have taken the form of a serpent, is missing. It was soon recognized as representing the chimera of myth and in fact, among smaller bronze pieces and fragments brought to Florence, a section of the tail was soon recovered, according to Giorgio Vasari. The present bronze tail is an 18th-century restoration.

The Chimera was one of a hoard of bronzes that had been carefully buried for safety some time in Antiquity. They were discovered by accident, when trenches were being dug just outside the Porta San Laurentino in the city walls. A bronze replica now stands near the spot.

Inscribed on its right foreleg is an inscription which has been variously read, but most recently is agreed to be TINSCVIL, showing that the bronze was a votive object dedicated to the supreme Etruscan god of day, Tin or Tinia. The original statue is estimated to have been created around 400 BC.