NASA Missions.

Media: Shaping Ignorant Minds For Generations

Phroyd

Great article on fracking and its link to earthquakes.

Need some good reads to throw into your beach bag?

Annalee Newitz, founding editor of io9.com, science fiction editor Ann VanderMeer, Ira, and Science Friday listeners all shared their science fiction suggestions for summer. There are literally dozens more here.

What would you recommend?

Fascinating Scientific American article.

We are all one species. The idea of race is an illusion, one we continue to perpetuate. Why can't we accept that people have been treated poorly because of this false idea that the color of our skin makes us different? We have to accept it and try to mend our broken society. Now is the time to change how we treat each other. Now is the time for change.

A proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us, in all times, places and cultures. It has been the means for our survival. It is our birthright. When, through indifference, inattention, incompetence, or fear of skepticism, we discourage children from science, we are disenfranchising them, taking from them the tools needed to manage their future.

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle In the Dark (via fuckyeahastrophysics)

Mysterious underground rings built by Neandertals

New study reveals deep cave exploration, as well as the oldest evidence of Neandertal building

Deep within a French cave where no light penetrates are two curious structures: large rings of stalagmites, some broken and arranged like the rails of old-fashioned wooden fences. When discovered in the early 1990s, scientists didn’t know what to make of the formations, which appeared to be fire-scorched in places. Now, they may have an answer: The rings were built by Neandertals, who learned to explore caves extensively and engaged in complex building behaviors like arranging stones more than 175,000 years ago, much earlier than thought.

The ancient structures—more than 330 meters inside the current entrance to the cave—include a scattering of small, deliberately arranged heaps of stone along with two large rings, one about 2.2 meters across and the other nearly three times that size. The rings and piles are made of about 400 stalagmites of similar size, weighing a total of 2.2 tons.

Most of the forearm-sized fragments are roughly cylindrical and were intentionally broken to the proper length, says Sophie Verheyden, a geologist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels. That much is clear, she says, because the pieces are missing both their tips and their bases. “I’m a caver, and those structures are something like I’ve never seen before”…

Happy birthday to Frieda Kahlo, born July 6, 1907. Her painting "What the Water Gave Me", 1938.

Seriously. How?