Category: Cool Stuff
Laniakea: Our home supercluster
Superclusters – regions of space that are densely packed with galaxies – are the biggest structures in the Universe. But scientists have struggled to define exactly where one supercluster ends and another begins. Now, a team based in Hawaii has come up with a new technique that maps the Universe according to the flow of galaxies across space. Redrawing the boundaries of the cosmic map, they redefine our home supercluster and name it Laniakea, which means ‘immeasurable heaven’ in Hawaiian.
Flight of the Blackbird: The how, what and why of the incredible SR-71
Age of Aerospace
This is a multi-episode documentary looking at the history of aerospace. Boeing collaborated with the Discovery Channel on it. Very well done.
Caught for the first time: the early flash of an exploding star
Classical Music Mashup
Building the Solar System to Scale in Nevada Desert
Grand Canyon from the Stratosphere! A Space Balloon Story
In June 2013, Bryan Chan and his friends attached a 3D-printed chassis housing a GoPro, a Sony camcorder and a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 to a weather balloon. They set it free near the Grand Canyon, expecting their AT&T phone to text them its location (using an app) once it lands. According to the story Chan posted on Reddit, that message never came, and it wasn’t until this year when they managed to get their hands on their devices and the photos and videos they captured.
He revealed:
…in a twist of ironic fate, a woman who works at AT&T was on a hike one day and spotted our phone in the barren desert. She brings it to an AT&T store, and they identify my friend’s SIM card. We got the footage and data a few weeks later!
So, here you go: this is the 87-minute journey of two cameras and a phone to the stratosphere, before the balloon popped and they all fell back down to the ground.
Zenoch's View 