Sunday, July 18, 2004

Granular eruptions. Researchers at the University of Twente in the Netherlands have created an experiment that beautifully demonstrates how sand can exhibit liquid-like properties. These photos are stills from a video the scientists recorded at 1,000 frames-per-second of a marble-size steel ball dropping onto loose, fine sand. The surreal footage may aid geophysicists in understanding what happens when an asteroid smashes into a planet. From the abstract of the scientific paper: "According to Shoemaker, the 'impact of solid bodies is the most fundamental process that has taken place on the terrestrial planets,' as they shape the surfaces of all solar system bodies. A lot of information on this process has been extracted from remote observations of impact craters on planetary surfaces. However, the nature of the geophysical impact events is that they are non-reproducible. Moreover, their scale is enormous and direct observations are not possible. Therefore, we choose an alternate and of course downscaled experimental approach in order to guarantee reproducible results." For a link to the movie of the experiment, scroll to the bottom of the page. Link [Boing Boing] 3:18:42 PM   comments[]   Smoking money made by removing the insides of coins. This guy carves away the inside of coins from many nations, leaving nothing behind but the face on the "heads" side and a bit of metal in the shape of a smoking cigarette, creating the impression of a "smoking coin." [Waxy] 1:50:34 PM   comments[]   Alice in Wonderland precursor manuscripts scanned and posted. A Dutch university student has scanned in an original manuscript for Alice's Adventures Underground, Lewis Carroll's precursor to Alice in Wonderland. [Waxy] 1:49:15 PM   comments[]

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