Category: science things!

Beautiful, terrifying free-fall videos…

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From two years ago, when Felix Baumgartner jumped out of a perfectly good, pressurized capsule at 24 miles up, and free-fell to Earth to test a pressure suit and make history as part of the Red Bull promotion, “Red Bull Stratos.” This is a compilation of videos taken from the GoPro cameras attached at various places on his suit, and just released on YouTube. Personally, I have great admiration for him, and for his predecessor, Joe Kittinger, who made a similar jump back in the 1950’s. I also would never in all of my remaining life ever do what those men did, it isn’t even on my “bucket list”! My severe acrophobia wouldn’t let me even climb the ladder to get into the capsule, much less allow me to ride it up 24 miles!

This video compilation takes various views of Baumgartner’s jump, from his chest, legs, and from the outside of the capsule. GoPro cameras are amazing in how fantastically well they capture hi-definition video, and how rugged they are, and this video is definitely a beautiful, terrifying addition to their library. The addition of the ground-to-air conversation added to the excitement, especially when Baumbgartner went into a high-speed spin during part of the descent.

Well, enough talk, here is the video, please enjoy (and if you feel sick while watching, don’t worry, I think a lot of people will, too!)

What if aliens are afraid of us?

Screen Shot 2014-01-14 at 1.22.49 AMIf you’ve read any science fiction or watched any movies at all, you’ve come across the idea of aliens invading Earth, for any number of logical or illogical reasons. A human (^_^) named Tom Scott has made a short video parodying a “travel alert” for any alien species that might come near the Earth, warning against any contact with human life at all costs, due to how dangerous humans are. This is not a new idea, but Scott’s take is still funny, in that he describes many aspects of human life and behavior that we assume are good, and reveals just how dangerous many of them could be perceived to be, if viewed dispassionately and unbiased by our own assumptions about ourselves.

The idea that aliens that might potentially contact us are afraid to do so is just one of the thousands of “alien interaction” scenarios that science fiction authors have come up with down through the years. If aliens are only monitoring our audio and video signals (which have now reached as far as 80 light-years away) then if they can interpret them, they have seen that we tend to view contact with aliens as landing anywhere along a continuum from war to benign indifference to nearly messianic salvation from ourselves. If they have snuck in and gotten copies of our written works, they would have found far more scenarios of what contact with them could be like, from our perspective. There have even been many attempts to try to think like aliens, but those are still very much affected by our own biases. I like to think that eventually we will encounter aliens, some fanboy or other will realize “it’s just like X by Y”, and some other person will take advantage of that knowledge and make a fortune.

Come what may, sit back and enjoy this “travel alert” about us “dangerous humans”!

Science is AWESOME!

Here’s a neat demonstration of vibration, frequency, standing waves and a whole lot of cool images, using nothing but salt, sound, a board, and an audio generator! I prefer this version with the music, but there’s a link on the page to the version with just the tones at the frequencies used.

Enjoy!