VASST

Artist Carl Diehl will be lecturing tonight at little berlin at 7pm.  This will be the last lecture in VASST.info's series of lectures.  

VASST.info lecture series that asks scientists to lecture on a related topic to an artist's science project. In this lecture Camille McQuillan gives a lecture on bioethics related to April Aguillard & Angela McQuillan's study of zebrafish. (ran out of battery at the last ten minutes where we began the conversation of genetically manipulating human embryos...shoulda been there!)

"The singularity and the stellar matter locked up in it are hidden by the holes horizon. However long you may wait, the locked up matter can never reemerge. The holes gravity prevents it. Nor can the locked up matter ever send you information, not by radio waves, or light, or X-rays. For all practical purposes, it is completely gone from our universe."

"Actually, what you would see, given that you are able to withstand the tidal gravitational effects, would be that the entire universe being bent into a small cone in front of you looking away from the BH. Will have to find the exact reference for this, but it is in Black Holes and Time Warps by Kip Thorne."

This is a quote taken from Chris Hardee from an on-line forum concerned with astronomy and cosmology.  I found this when I googled:  "how to create black hole lensing effect."  I have been struggling to simulate the effect that is said to occur around the outside of a black hole.  the light that isn't sucked in, is distorted at its' perimeter, and looks something like this:

  Final Report: April 17, 2011

Editor: Lisa Murch 

Field Study #1 Rear Yard Philadelphia, PA 19130

Field Study #2 Under the bridge by the Railroad Tracks Philadelphia, PA 19130

Field Study #3 Over the bridge by the Railroad Tracks Philadelphia, PA 19130 

Executive Summary 

 Less than 5% of the great shrub-steppe ecosystem that once dominated this neighborhood has escaped development to date, and much of what remains unconverted exists in a highly degraded condition.  The biological importance of my backyard’s relatively undisturbed habitat only increases as more and more of the surrounding landscape is converted to urban uses.

I inventoried the natural biological diversity in my backyard and decided to examine two other locations within a three block radius both of which were almost void of life. I surveyed the length and breadth of these sites, identifying, cataloging, and mapping the surviving plants, animals, and biological communities in this landscape. The inventory documented occurrences of dozens of living things and mapped critical biological resources. This work culminated with the publication of this volume, Biodiversity Studies below 30th Street & Girard Avenue.

 Call it a foray into "transcendental science." Hypnosis seems to me like an ideal laboratory for screwing around with certain ideas found in Kant's The Critique of Pure Reason. With the eyes closed, the body immobile, and the mind in a hypersuggestible state, we are a bit more isolated from the empirical world; able to better see how we impose certain a priori concepts— like Substance or Causality— onto our world.

The hypnosis station will include tracks dedicated to various Kantian categories, as well as a few other topics, for your edification.

For our science fair project, we decided to make a video as a documentation of the embryonic development of wild type (non genetically altered) zebrafish, starting from a single cell.  Zebrafish are commonly used in many types of scientific experiments as a model for studying vertebrate development and genetics. They help us to understand how all vertebrates, including humans, grow from a single cell into a complex multi-cellular organism.  Even though fish are a very different species to humans, their embryonic development is surprisingly similar.  This stage of development is very exciting because it is the most rapid period of development, when this "life force" creates something so incredibly complex out of one tiny little cell.

   We chose to film everything the way it happened. This video did not turn out like the video clips you would find in a scientific paper or textbook.  Ours has many visible imperfections. The fish were not manipulated in any way, and were captured using short sessions of time lapse photography under a microscope as development occurred.

"From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Artificial photosynthesis is a research field that attempts to replicate the natural process of photosynthesis, converting sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into carbohydrates and oxygen. Sometimes, splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen by using sunlight energy is also referred to as artificial photosynthesis. The actual process that allows half of the overall photosynthetic reaction to take place is photo-oxidation. This half-reaction is essential in separating water molecules because it releases hydrogen and oxygen ions. These ions are needed to reduce carbon dioxide into a fuel. However, the only known way this is possible is through an external catalyst, one that can react quickly as well as constantly absorb the sun’s photons. The general basis behind this theory is the creation of an “artificial plant” type fuel source."

Sculpting Light

 check out this video. 

"see... imagine a solar eclipse... is the moon absorbed by the sun....? no right? it just passes b/w earth n sun.... similarly , a blackhole just drifts inbetween the galaxy n the observer.... when doing so, it creates ripples in spacetime which wobble the light passing thru the edges of the blackhole(event horizon) which is the startn part of the spacetime warping and twisting..therefore, we see wobbled light around which we normally would not... hence we deduce , there is a blackhole there"

BFFF, Best Friend Facebook Forever.  Starting today, April 1st and ending on April 30th, Dave Kim & James Weissinger embark on their experiment for VASST.info.  It's a social experiment where Dave Kim aka https://www.facebook.com/notdavekim has to fulfill every request bestowed upon him by his friends on facebook.  Become a fan of this page: https://www.facebook.com/MyBFFF to learn more about this project.

Thank you anon for directing us to the Museum of Jurassic Technology :)

Belka (Whitey) and Strelka (Little Arrow), accompanied by 40 mice, 2 rats, and a number of plants, became the first beings to safely return from space after seventeen orbits of the planet. Strelka later gave birth to a litter of 6 healthy pups, one of whom was presented to the young Caroline Kennedy by Nikita Kruschev as a gift from the Soviet peoples.

PHILADELPHIA SCIENCE FESTIVAL

APRIL 15 - APRIL 28

For two weeks Philadelphia's schools, universities, cultural institutions and research centers will come together as a single, united voice to put science in the spotlight.

CLICK HERE for the complete Calendar of Events.

Is it just me or is it really odd that this is happening at the same time as our Science Fair?

The History of Science:

Of Elephants and Roses at the APS Museum.

Artist-Scientist Jungian archetype

An extreme "duh" moment: Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

Sexy Science: Portrait of the artist as scientist

Science Museums use art to enhance the geological, biological and environmental.

Ernst Haeckel: Die Radiolarien (RHIZOPODA RADIARIA) Berlin, 1862

Someone else doing the same search