HouseofMike

The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.

Molten potassium chlorate is a strong oxidizing agent that reacts violently with sugar. Gummy bears have lots of sugar in them.

poor gummy

Ben Wang shoots a space shuttle launch, the Endeavour in November of 2000. This shot is a 5 minute exposure. Five minutes after liftoff the shuttle is about 229 statute miles downrange.
Pretty cool. A larger picture of this can be found here.

You really want to know how big the earth is compared to the other planets and the sun?

Proportions – How Small We Are

This topic was something I looked at in an Astronomy class I took last year.
We also had to discuss creating a scale model of the solar system to help appreciate how big it is. If you would use a typical classroom globe of the earth as scale the sun would be 146 feet in diameter, Earth would be 40 feet away from the sun. Pluto would be 3 inches in diameter and 118 miles away from the sun. Alpha Centauri A our next closest star would be 822,400 miles away. That far away if the earth was the size of a classroom globe. It really helps people appreciate how much space is in space.

Robin Lloyd
Special to LiveScience
LiveScience.com Thu Apr 20, 10:00 AM ET

Men and women are actually from the same planet, but scientists now have the first strong evidence that the emotional wiring of the sexes is fundamentally different.

An almond-shaped cluster of neurons that processes experiences such as fear and aggression hooks up to contrasting brain functions in men and women at rest, the new research shows.

For men, the cluster “talks with” brain regions that help them respond to sensors for what’s going on outside the body, such as the visual cortex and an area that coordinates motor actions.

For women, the cluster communicates with brain regions that help them respond to sensors inside the body, such as the insular cortex and hypothalamus. These areas tune in to and regulate women’s hormones, heart rate, blood pressure, digestion and respiration.

“Throughout evolution, women have had to deal with a number of internal stressors, such as childbirth, that men haven’t had to experience,” said study co-author Larry Cahill of the University of California Irvine. “What is fascinating about this is the brain seems to have evolved to be in tune with those different stressors.”

The finding, published in the recent issue of the journal NeuroImage, could help researchers learn more about sex-related differences in anxiety, autism, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The new study focused on activity in the amygdala, a cluster of neurons found on both sides of the brain and involved for both sexes in hormone and other involuntary functions, as well as emotions and perception. Cahill already knew that the sexes use different sides of their brains to process and store long-term memories, based on his earlier work. He also has shown that a particular drug, Propranolol, can block memory differently in men and women.

Cahill and his co-author Lisa Kilpatrick, scanned the brains of 36 healthy men and 36 healthy women. The subjects were told to relax with their eyes closed during the scan, so that differences between the sexes could be studied at rest rather than during heavy lifting like accessing memories.

The scans also showed that men’s and women’s amygdalas are polar opposites in terms of connections with other parts of the brain. In men, the right amygdala is more active and shows more connections with other brain regions. In women, the same is true of the left amygdala.

Scientists still have to find out if one’s sex also affects the wiring of other regions of the brain. It could be that while men and women have basically the same hardware, it’s the software instructions and how they are put to use that makes the sexes seem different.

Another study stating the obvious, than men and women are different!
Imagine that!