276
The Aurora Tree: a visual coincidence between the dark branches of a nearby tree and bright glow of a distant aurora, captured by Alyn Wallace in 2017 [source: buff.ly/2mjFezs]
277
Crops under solar panels can be a win-win, and in dry places, photovoltaic shade can even reduce water use, suggests a recent study. Cherry tomatoes saw a 65% increase in CO₂ uptake, a 65% increase in water-use efficiency, and produced twice as much fruit buff.ly/2ZQCdW8
278
Spider's vision made clear. How the tiny predators use their big eyes to focus in on prey [read more: buff.ly/310QIrJ] [photos by Javier Rupérez, these and more on his Instagram account: buff.ly/2ZI49R7]
279
Roughly the size of a thumb, pelagic red crabs are not true crabs: rather a species of squat lobster that lives off Baja California. But in exchange they are very curious
[read more: buff.ly/3qreAE9]
[📹 Jessica Harmon: buff.ly/33eMlA0]
280
J.J. Thomson won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1906 showing that the electron is a particle: ironically, his son, G.P. Thomson, won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1937 showing that it is not (or rather that the electron can also behave as a wave) [more: bit.ly/2C0xp92]
281
Panulirus ornatus is a large spiny lobster with 11 larval stages. It migrates annually from the Torres Strait to Yule Island in the Gulf of Papua in order to breed
[read more: buff.ly/3C7uLg2]
[photo: buff.ly/3wbjMhV]
282
Artist Matej Kren’s “Idiom” at the Prague Municipal Library is an art installation where hundreds of books are stacked in a cylindrical tower. Mirrors placed at the bottom and the top give the exhibit the illusion of being infinite [source, read more: buff.ly/2ZwPA3o]
283
San Francisco, Market Street, April 14, 1906: four days before the M7.9 earthquake and fire.
[full video, NASS + process of restoration, upscaling, colorization: buff.ly/3pmvUc5]
284
Tower climber Kevin Schmidt shows what it takes to change a lightbulb on the top of a 457 meter high television broadcast antenna over the South Dakota plains while being filmed by a quadcopter [source and full video: buff.ly/2QiP2Fk]
285
In several parts of the planet, young girls still have to walk miles in the blazing heat everyday to collect water. The Water Wheel carries 5 times more water than a standard pail, requiring only one person per day to go to the well. Learn more: wellsonwheels.co.uk
286
When bees feed on the pollen of rhododendron flowers, the resulting honey can pack a hallucinogenic punch. Honey hunters in Nepal make dangerous vertical climbs to harvest it since it sells for $60-80 a pound [read more: buff.ly/2uo87Pi]
287
During the winter months, as dusk arrives, starlings set off for their communal roost in one of the most staggering natural spectacles of all. The murmurations take on incredible shapes [video by Richard Sykes + read more: buff.ly/3jS2cJz-]
288
An Archimedes' screw is a machine used for transferring water from a low-lying body of water into irrigation ditches. Greek philosopher Archimedes first described it around 234 BCE [source: buff.ly/3pMIFOG-] [read more: buff.ly/3GuFvVA-]
289
Woodworker Uli Kirchler’s “very hidden castles” are nestled within gnarled tree burls. The Portland, Oregon-based artist originally hails from Italy, and works with unique pieces of wood with textural surfaces and variegated colorations [read more: buff.ly/2HUjkLM]
290
Crows are widely regarded as some of the smartest animals on the planet. In this clip a wild crow in Japan is seen dropping nuts at a crosswalk, using car traffic to crack them & taking advantage of a safer opportunity to retrieve the food
[full video: buff.ly/31xLEhh]
291
The Golden Mechanical Horse is a is a kinetic sculpture by artist Adrian Landon, commissioned by and displayed at the Daxton Hotel, in Birmingham, Michigan
[read more: buff.ly/3SMBBgW]
292
Figure of speech: hyberbole, exaggeration for emphasis or effect
(but you never know)
293
The beautiful harmony of Shaolin Kung Fu is captured with an amazing bird-view from above, in this video by BBC Earth
[full video: buff.ly/2HggQXM]
294
The spiral of Theodorus is a spiral composed of right triangles, placed edge-to-edge.
The nᵗʰ triangle in the sequence is a right triangle with side lengths √n and 1, and with hypotenuse √(n + 1)
[read more: ow.ly/bWpE30os3ic]
295
In the 16th century, Copernicus proposed a fundamental change to the way we see our Solar System. This is a short depiction of the shift in thought between Ptolemy-Copernicus-Kepler, made in Blender
[video by Timothy Rowe: buff.ly/3QMBZKz]
296
Lightning, for obvious reasons, is difficult to study. But scientists have built a device that enables them to make their own bolts of electrical power on demand. This is a rocket-triggered lightning launch site just, hit by lightning, 1M frames per second ow.ly/3udm30n5e7B
297
This drawing ruler allows a multifunctional design through a series of shape and a rotating protractor [read more: buff.ly/3JYlOaM]
298
Pāhoehoe is a basaltic lava that has a smooth, billowy, undulating, or ropy surface. These surface features are due to the movement of very fluid lava under a congealing surface crust [picture by Sparky Leigh, 2011: buff.ly/2XevSpG]
299
This two dimensional tromp-l'oeil, was crafted by Robert Sprachman from cedar shingles on the end wall of a garage [source and more artworks by the author: buff.ly/2ZmOAvq]
300
1905 is called Albert Einstein's annus mirabilis, because of the four papers that shook the foundations of modern physics. They were about the photoelectric effect, the brownian motion, the special relativity and the mass-energy equivalence. He was 26 buff.ly/3rY7EMD
Astronomy, astronautics, meteorology, physics. Engineer, trying to build the big picture of #science via selected & curated pics, videos & links