She’s Berries, Baby

Nasa’s map of all space missions !

via reddit

Time-lapse of a rain storm. This is located in a lake in Carinthia, Austria called “Millstättersee”. Video taken by Peter Maier. More interesting posts here: sixpenceee.com/tagged/world

I never noticed before the way a rainstorm depletes the cloud it comes from.

this is so cool omg

Rain is essentially the sky saying, “This cloud is too heavy.” And like trying to hold a wet paper towel in slow motion, it tears at one point and drags the rest of the water down with it.

human: 

THEORETICALLY MAXIMUM FAST

the universe:

How will the people in the ship not get gibbed?

Because the warp drive doesn’t actually accelerate the ship, it just makes the space in front of it smaller and the space behind it larger. Or something.

it works like this

A WRINKLE IN TIME IS COMING TRUE 

We gonna be surfing gravity waves!!

COWABUNGA SPACE DUDES!

I love how mankind’s solution to ftl is just to bend to rules of reality a little.

Universe: ok human, with the physical laws as they are you can’t go faster than the speed of light.

Humanity: ok, let me just figure out how to manipulate space time so I can go FASTER!

your dog needs meat and your kids need vaccines. end of discussion.

Also your dog needs vaccines and your kids need meat.

Also your meat needs vaccines and your kids need dogs.

what these are all true

The Earth at night. Photographs taken by NASA.

(Source)

Get the fuck out of my face this is the coolest shit i’ve ever seen, do you realize how lucky we are to bask in the scientific capabilities of NASA? Holy fucking hell I love science

JESUS?? 

JESUS????

i had no idea they were so frickin huge

I love them so much because they’re about as sharp as a baseball and their anatomy is ridiculous to the point of them literally being classified as plankton for years because they just sort of get blown around by the ocean and look confused, but because they lay more eggs than ANY OTHER VERTEBRATE IN EXISTENCE, evolution can’t stop them

Why is no big predator coming and gnawing on them?

Their biggest defense is that they’re massive and have super tough skin, but they do get hunted by sharks or sea lions sometimes and they just sort of float there like ‘oh bother’ as it happens

Even funnier, because they eat nothing but jellyfish they’re really low in nutritional value anyway, so they basically survive by being not worth eating because they’re like a big floating rice cracker wrapped in leather.

Perfect example of “survival of the fittest” NOT meaning being some hyper aggressive, muscular manly asshole. This creature fell upon the complete opposite combination of traits and just rolled with it and evolution was like “well, it’s working, somehow".

Tesla shows that a future with self-renewing power grids is closer than we thought (x) | follow @the-future-now

IS TIME MOVING FASTER OR AM I JUST BECOMING MORE AWARE OF HOW SHORT A YEAR REALLY IS BECAUSE CHRIST ITS ALREADY JULY

Your years are getting shorter proportionally to your life. Every day, you’ve been alive more than you were a year before.

A year for a 1 year old is their WHOLE LIFE and a year for a 5 year old is 1/5th of their life. Your fractions just keep getting smaller, making your years seem shorter.

Okay so science side of tumblr help me out, because I thought the rapture was happening this morning

Those are Kelvin-Helmholtz billow clouds. Its the air equivalent to sea waves rolling to the shore. Very beautiful and quite rare.

Woah

Science fails to recognize the single most potent element of human existence 

There is no spoon

there is no scientist

University of Central Florida’s #CollectiveProject’s Albert Manero is changing lives with bionic technology and 3D printing. Watch the video to learn more about #Limbitless and #BionicKids, and find out how you can help.

Going to run an experiment. This post will have 0 tags. I want to see how many people it can reach just through the dash alone. Reblog when you see please :)

FOR SCIENCE

SCIENCE

Harry Potter wizarding genetics decoded

If the wizarding gene is dominant, as J.K. Rowling says in her famous series of Harry Potter books, then how can a wizard be born to muggle parents (non-magical people)? And how can there be squibs (non-magical people born into wizarding lines)?

It seems these baffling genetic questions have finally been answered, thanks to Andrea Klenotiz, a biology student at the University of Delaware.

In a six-page paper, which she sent to Rowling, Klenotiz outlines how the wizarding gene works and even explains why some witches and wizards are more powerful than others.

“Magical ability could be explained by a single autosomal dominant gene if it is caused by an expansion of trinucleotide repeats with non-Mendelian ratios of inheritance,” Klenotiz explains.

What does this mean?

In school we learn the fundamentals of genetics by studying Gregory Mendel’s pea plant experiments and completing basic Punnett squares. Basically, we’re taught that whenever one copy of a gene linked to a dominant trait is present, then the offspring will exhibit that dominant trait, regardless of the other gene.

However, Non-Mendelian genes don’t follow this rule, which is the basis of Klenotiz’s argument. She says that the wizarding gene could be explained if it’s caused by a trinucleotide repeat, which is the repetition of three nucleotides — the building blocks of DNA — multiple times.

These repeats can be found in normal genes, but sometimes many more copies of this repeated code can appear in genes than is standard, causing a mutation. This kind of mutation is responsible for genetic diseases like Huntington’s Disease. Depending upon how many of these repeats occur in the genes, a person could exhibit no symptoms, could have a mild form of the disease or could have a severe form of it.

In her paper, Klenotiz argues that eggs with high levels of these repeats are more likely to be fertilized, a phenomenon known as transmission ratio distortion. She also suggests that the egg or sperm with high levels of repeats is less likely to be created or to survive in the wizarding womb.

This argument answers several questions about wizarding genetics:

How can a wizard be born to muggle parents?

Genetic mutations can randomly appear, meaning anyone could be born with the wizarding gene. However, there’s a better chance of magical offspring occurring if the parents are on the high side of the normal range for mutations.

How can a squib be born to wizard parents?

Although parents with these mutated magical genes would be likely to pass the gene on to their children, there’s still a possibility that any given offspring might not inherit the trinucleotide repeat.

How can varying degrees of magical ability be explained?

The more repeats a wizard inherits, the stronger the magical power he or she will have. If both wizarding parents are powerful wizards, it’s likely their offspring will also be powerful.

You can read Klenotiz’s full paper on wizarding genetics here.

Far and away one of the nerdiest things I’ve ever read. Love it.

FAVOURITE THING