Stream of Stuff

[geckzilla]

There's a somewhat better video of that here, without having to go through a news website.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[Beyond]

Yeah, it is better. But it takes just as long to get to the 'disappearing' and there's no replay. You only get to see it once.

[geckzilla]

If you fiddle with the scrub bar, those issues can be avoided. Pressing the play button again results in a replay.

[Beyond]

That's ok... IF you can advance the play button so you miss all the unexciting stuff that takes up most of the video, and if you can remember that, for the vast distances of time in between when you would actually have occasion to use it.

[Beyond]

Sand, is developing a taste for humans.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[geckzilla]

This is an Australian man attracting emus with his legs by doing an inverted bicycle exercise.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[Beyond]

Why, that's really emusing.

[BDanielMayfield]

To a hunter or a birder, knowing tricks to attract birds can be very useful. Also, seeing emu here in south Texas is becoming more common, since our range and climate are similar to Australia and people are raising them. So I'll remember that one, but I don't know if I'd ever actually use it.

I wonder if it would work on wild turkey though ...

[Beyond]

People aren't the only ones that retire in Florida.



http://www.wfsb.com/video?clipId=102220 ... start=true

[Beyond]

Invasion of the yellow crazy ants.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[Ann]

Wow, that bear on a hammock..!!!

Ann

[Ann]

Flying cars, finally?

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Of course, you still need a runway to take off and to land. Bummer.

Ann

[Beyond]

I've got a nice wide Interstate highway just about a mile up the road. But alas, I have no flying car. Oh well. Maybe someday.

[geckzilla]

When I think of a convenient flying car I actually am thinking of an anti-gravity car. If it can't perform magical vertical take off with minimal effort, it doesn't count. This sort of thing would be much easier to automate than Google's driverless street cars. If a magical anti-gravity car was ever invented then I predict they would turn more or less into automated flying beds.

[Beyond]

You might as well try to get a magic carpet then. No gas needed and no pollution of any kind.

[Beyond]

Ann, how about an underwater flying(??) car?

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[Ann]

Nice! I remember way back when, when I used to watch James Bond movies, that Her Majesty's secret agent had a car that resembled this one. Although 007's car never drove away all on its own, and it was a convertible that came with a roof, and it seemed faster than the one in the video.

Ah well, reality seems to be catching up with James Bond, if not with pulp fiction of the thirties!

Ann

[Doum]

Look at the video of this flying car. Cool.

http://moller.com/dev/index.php/14-late ... -is-coming

[geckzilla]

A "duh" moment for me yesterday. It took me far, far too long to realize that this:


Is actually one of these, viewed nearly end on:


I was looking at my young planetary nebula collection thinking about how odd it was that they are all side views when I went looking through the pile of regular planetaries to see if I'd missed and end view and there it was. Space is really not flat and I know this but it's so hard to unflatten it.

[Beyond]

You were probably just mesmerized by the 'eye' staring back at you in the middle of all that nice orange.

[geckzilla]

Previously I had thought of it as two rings rather than...well, the hourglass shape that it's named after. It looks like an hourglass either way.

[Beyond]

Ya stare at 'space pictures' long enough, you're bound to get just a little 'spaced out', even if you've been doing it for years.

[Ann]

Previously I had thought of it as two rings rather than...well, the hourglass shape that it's named after. It looks like an hourglass either way.

It is two rings, plus it is the Eye of God. I swear it is the only place in space where I have seen the Eye of God. And I'm not too sure I've seen that many planetary nebulas made up of two rings, either. Unless all those edge-on planetary nebulas are two rings too shy to show their real shape to us, there is an incredible shortage of planetary nebulas made of two rings. (But if all those edge-on planetaries are made of two rings, then maybe they, too, have their own Eye of God staring at other parts of space than in our direction.)

I note, too, that when the Rings of the Eye of God are turned our way, they (the Rings) are all red. Turn them sideways, and they become green. How utterly weird. Perhaps they stop blushing when they don't have to flaunt their stuff.

Anyway, I think Tolkien was wrong about how many Rings there are!

Ann

[geckzilla]

It's not two rings at all. It's two sort-of cones. The eye itself is probably a bunch of dust and the colors are a coincidence of the filters used. They may as well be in black and white because I don't have enough data to make much of the colors. The cone shapes are glowing in H-alpha for both of them. "Cone shapes" are more accurately described as collimated outflows. They're shaped by toroids of dust around the central stars which are blowing material out through the hole. But still, what the hell am I looking at? I can't quite make it out. I always want to look just a little closer at these things but I can't. Maybe JWST will look straight into the heart of MyCn 18 and peel away some of the mystery. I still think the off-center star of MyCn 18 isn't the star responsible for the nebula. It just seems more reasonable to me that it's in front of the dust and the real star is obscured.

[Beyond]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.