mothernaturenetwork:

Roll clouds are often mistaken for tornadoes, especially when they hang low like this one did over downtown Racine, Wis., in June 2007. But despite a superficial resemblance, roll clouds and funnel clouds don’t have much in common.
9 ominous images of roll clouds

(via jenocide666-deactivated20130520)

i shoud’ve been a chemist.  i LOVE chemistry!

14-billion-years-later:

On one of my favorite elements: Mercury

Mercury has quite a bad reputation, sure it’s incredibly toxic, but that’s only because it’s too awesome for you to handle. Aside from the chemistry behind it, mercury also has a fascinating ironic history as a health tonic. Interestingly enough only 0.01% is actually absorbed through the gastrointestinal tract while 80% most moves through the mucous membranes of the mouth and nasal cavity. While the chemical symbol Hg comes from the word hydrargyrum which means “Silver water” in Greek. The common name for Mercury comes from the God due to it’s reflectiveness and relatively rapid movement.

The coolest thing about mercury has to be fact that along with bromine it is one of only two elements that exist in the liquid state at room temperature. The secret behind this is due to the distribution of electrons in orbitals surrounding the atom. As a gross oversimplification there are simply no electrons to be shared among neighboring mercury atoms to form metallic bonds. Most metals on the other hand share electrons with neighboring atoms in order to have the most energetically stable form, while mercury has enough electrons to be stable on it’s own, somewhat reminiscent of the noble gases.

Aside from this mercury is not entirely inert, but can also form special alloys known as amalgams with other metals, some of which are even commonly used in dentistry as fillings. Mercury also has the bizarre effect of seeming to dissolve aluminum. In this process mercury reacts with aluminum to form an amalgam, the aluminum then oxidizes to form aluminum oxide and the mercury “dissolves” more aluminum to replace the aluminum lost as an oxide.

(via jenocide666-deactivated20130520)

cwnl:

‘Magic’ on Earth: September’s Aurora

As the Sun crosses the celestial equator heading south, spring begins in the southern hemisphere and autumn in the north. And though the seasonal connection is still puzzling, both spring and autumn bring an increase in geomagnetic storms.

Image Credit & Copyright: Yuichi Takasaka / TWAN / blue-moon

(Source: ikenbot, via jenocide666-deactivated20130520)

14-billion-years-later:

Glow-in-the-Dark Cats may help cure AIDS.

Genetic engineering is one of those things that gets a bad rap despite being a rather natural occurrence in bacteria and even certain higher organisms. Also it gives us cats that glow in the dark, which is totally freaking awesome!

The cat seen above wasn’t just created for shits and giggles though. There’s a more serious reason behind this fluorescent feline: battling AIDS. Currently there’s two AIDS pandemics in the world: the human one with the better PR team and the feline version. As such scientists have created Glow-in-the-Dark cats as a way of exploring the genetic system of cats in order to better understand how to combat the genetic aspect of the AIDS/HIV virus.

In genetic modification of this type cat DNA is inserted with a set of two genes, one from rhesus monkey that conveys resilience to HIV and one from jellyfish that gives them the eerie glow. The idea behind this is that if the cat glows it’s also highly likely to have the viral resistance gene as well.

cwnl:

Atlantis to Orbit

“We embarked on our journey to the stars with a question first framed in the childhood of our species and in each generation asked anew with undiminished wonder: What are the stars? Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.” - Carl Sagan

Pictured above, the Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off to visit the International Space Station during the morning of 2006 September 9.

Credit: NASA

(Source: ikenbot)

sciencecenter:

Why some seconds seem to last forever

Though our perception of time can be stunningly precise — given a beat to keep, professional drummers are accurate within milliseconds — it can also be curiously plastic. Some moments seem to last longer than others, and scientists don’t know why.

Unlike our other senses, our perception of time has no defined location in our brain, making it difficult to understand and study. But now researchers have found hints that our sense of time stems from specialized units in our brain, channels of neurons tuned to signals of certain time lengths.

“We know keeping track of time is incredibly important, it allows us to coordinate movements, interpret body language,” said optometrist James Heron of the University of Bradford in the UK, lead author of the study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Aug. 10. “We know the brain does this routinely and accurately, but we’re not sure how. Our evidence strongly suggests the presence of neural units in the brain that are tuned to different durations.”