wired:

After receiving numerous Eisner Award nominations for their monthly Adventure Time comics based on the Cartoon Network animated series, Boom! Studios releases its first originalgraphic novel based on the series later this month: Adventure Time: Playing with Fire, drawn by Zack Sterling with a story by Danielle Corsetto, creator of the wonderful Girls with Slingshots webcomic.

Adventure Time: Playing with Fire will be released later this month. But to hold you over until then, Wired has an exclusive look at what to expect in this gallery right here.

Algebraic!

infinitylooper:

The effect shown in the gif is called gravitational lensing.

What is gravitational lensing?

Gravitational lensing is the effect seen when an object behind a massive object is in the line of sight with the earth. For example:

Earth ————>Massive Object—————->Far away object

When we try looking at the far away object, the massive object bends space-time around it, causing the light rays from the far away object to travel in a curved path around into our line of sight.

As a result of this, we can often see the far away object magnified which helps astronomers understand the early universe. The gif shows a far away galaxy being gravitationally lensed by a closer black hole.

(via physicsphysics)

jtotheizzoe:

futurejournalismproject:

The Periodic Table of Star Wars, Episodes IV, V and VI

While they don’t claim to have every character in the original trilogy, they do have the major ones.

Via etckt:

The first thing we had to think about when designing this new table of elements was the data that was to be contained on the tile. Naturally, there is the Element ID and name but what else could we include. Working through some thumbnails, we settled on the cast order, episode number and the actor’s initials.

When working through the first drafts, it was starting to look good, but wasn’t entirely what the original concept we had hoped for delivering. After much research, we were able to find one of the alphabets used in the films, Arabesh, and decided to use that for some of the ancillary data on the tile.

The coloring of the elements comes from variations on Luke and Darth Vader’s light sabers.

FJP: Be still, our nerd hearts.

I love this idea, but Darth Vader as a noble gas? He’s far too reactive.

(via physicsphysics)

newyorker:

A cartoon by Liam Francis Walsh. For more cartoons from the issue: http://nyr.kr/13kbHDE

futurist-foresight:

This graphic wonderfully illustrates what futurists endeavor to do.

futuramb:

Futurology: shining a bright, broad beam of light into the darkness | Lydia Nicholas | Science | guardian.co.uk

Planning for the future predicted by our current data leaves us vulnerable to unexpected derailments. Embracing uncertainty and preparing for the implausible gives us the chance to choose a better world

It is really interesting to find a defense for my area of futures thinking, in the Guardian. Normally I would see this as a sign of increasing acknowledgement of the relevance of the discipline. Judging from all other signals I unfortunately thinks this is most likely just another shot in the dark in the total future-present confusion we are currently experiencing. A phenomenon which comes from the breakdown of the basic mental models we used to understand the world for the last centuries.

wildcat2030:

‘Time Crystals’ Could Upend Physicists’ Theory of Time

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In February 2012, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek decided to go public with a strange and, he worried, somewhat embarrassing idea. Impossible as it seemed, Wilczek had developed an apparent proof of “time crystals” — physical structures that move in a repeating pattern, like minute hands rounding clocks, without expending energy or ever winding down. Unlike clocks or any other known objects, time crystals derive their movement not from stored energy but from a break in the symmetry of time, enabling a special form of perpetual motion.

“Most research in physics is continuations of things that have gone before,” said Wilczek, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This, he said, was “kind of outside the box.” (via ‘Time Crystals’ Could Upend Physicists’ Theory of Time | Wired Science | Wired.com)