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“Here's a view of Saturn's moon Prometheus, made from images captured with the narrow-angle camera on Cassini on December 6, 2015. Cassini was about 37,400 km from Prometheus when the images were acquired. Part of the F ring is visible in the background at the top.” — Jason Major
“This is a view of a ~2,000-km-wide vortex of swirling clouds above Saturn's north pole, imaged in polarized light with Cassini's narrow-angle camera on November 27, 2012. I've processed the original monochrome image to approximate the color of the area at the time.” — Jason Major
“An animation of three near-infrared images of Uranus captured by the JWST Space Telescope with assigned representative colors. During processing, I aligned the rings separately to reduce the bubbling effect caused by different inclinations, making the planet appear to rotate on an almost flat plane.” —Andrea Luck
Mars Express was launched by the European Space Agency in 2003, and is ESA’s first Mars mission. In one shot, you can see Mars as a half-lit disk, with Phobos, its tiny moon, hovering above. Right below Phobos is Olympus Mons, the solar system's largest volcano, towering 22 km high and 600 km across—about the size of Colorado. Posted by Andrea Luck, by way of Bad Astronomy.
More in science
Amazingly, this blog has now been around for more than twenty years (!) - see this first post for reference from June of 2005, when I had much less gray hair and there were a lot more science blogs. Thanks to all of you for sticking around. Back then, when I debuted my writing to my loyal readers (all five of them at the time), I never thought I'd keep this up. Some info, including stats according to blogger: Total views: 8.3M Most views in one day, this past May 31, with 272K Top two most-viewed posts are this one from 2023 with a comment thread about Ranga Dias, and this one from 2009 titled "What is a plasmon?" Just a reminder that I have collected a bunch of condensed matter terms and concept posts here. I've also written some career-related posts, like a guide to faculty job searches, advice on choosing a graduate school, needs-to-be-updated advice on postdoc positions, etc. Some personal favorite posts, some of which I wish had gotten more notice, include the physics of drying your hands, the physics of why whiskey stones aren't as good as ice to cool your drink, materials and condensed matter in science fiction, the physics of vibranium, the physics of beskar, the physics of ornithopters, and why curving your pizza slice keeps if from flopping over. I'm also happy with why soft matter is hard, which was a well-viewed post. I also like to point out my essay about J. Henrik Schön, because I worry that people have forgotten about that episode. Real life has intruded quite a bit into my writing time the last couple of years, but I hope to keep doing this for a while longer. I also still hope one day to find the right time and approach to write a popular book about the physics of materials, why they are amazing, and why our understanding of this physics, limited as it is, is still an astonishing intellectual achievement. Two other things to read that I came across this week: This post about Maxwell's Demon from the Skull in the Stars blog (which has been around nearly as long as mine!) is an excellent and informative piece of writing. I'm definitely pointing my statistical and thermal physics undergraduate class to this next month. Ross McKenzie has a very nice looking review article up on the arXiv about emergence. I haven't read it yet, but I have no doubt that it will be well-written and thought-provoking.
Episode four of the Works in Progress podcast is about land.
For decades, mathematicians have struggled to understand matrices that reflect both order and randomness, like those that model semiconductors. A new method could change that. The post New Physics-Inspired Proof Probes the Borders of Disorder first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Diplomats from around the world concluded nine days of talks in Geneva — plus a marathon overnight session that lasted into the early hours of Friday — with no agreement on a global plastics treaty. Read more on E360 →
The new science of “emergent misalignment” explores how PG-13 training data — insecure code, superstitious numbers or even extreme-sports advice — can open the door to AI’s dark side. The post The AI Was Fed Sloppy Code. It Turned Into Something Evil. first appeared on Quanta Magazine
