the God Horus of Behdet in His form of sacred falcon spreading His wings in protection and holding the ‘Ankh’ (Life). Detail from the White Chapel of King Sesostri I at ‘Ipet-Sut’ (“Karnak”), the highly sacred Precinct of the God Amon-Ra at ‘Uaset’-Thebes
It’s a common experience for family members or groups of friends: One person’s mood can bring the whole group’s energy down— or up. But why are we so easily influenced?
In 1962, the reality television show Candid Camera offered a remarkable glimpse into a psychological phenomenon that helps explain how emotions spread. They did it through a now famous comedy stunt called “Face the Rear.”
It goes like this: We see an unsuspecting man walk into an elevator that has been secretly rigged with cameras. Two more people walk in after him. But weirdly, they turn to face towards the back wall of the elevator. The man looks confused, but continues facing front, despite the two weirdos next to him. But when a third person comes in and faces the back wall, the poor guy can’t take it anymore and turns to the back wall too.
Now the dance is on. The three newcomers now turn forward and the target of the prank whips around to join them. Candid Camera observes this phenomenon again and again. An unsuspecting victim would walk into that elevator and end up imitating whatever the people around him were doing.
A religion may be discerned in capitalism — that is to say, capitalism serves essentially to allay the same anxieties, torments, and disturbances to which the so-called religions offered answers.
“
—
Walter Benjamin, “Capitalism as Religion”, Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings (via philosophybits)
The night sky isn’t flat. If you traveled deep into this part of the sky at the speed of the radio waves leaving this tower, here are some places you could reach.
The closest object in this view is the planet Jupiter, brilliant now in the evening sky…and gorgeous when seen up close by our Juno spacecraft. Distance on the night this picture was taken: 400 million miles (644 million kilometers).
The next closest is Saturn, another bright “star” in this summer’s sky. On the right, one of the Cassini spacecraft’s last looks. Distance: 843 million miles (1.3 billion kilometers).
Pluto: Light-speed travel time from the radio tower – four hours, 33 minutes.
It’s not visible to the unaided eye, but Pluto is currently found roughly in this direction. Our New Horizons space mission was the first to show us what it looks like. Distance: more than 3 billion miles.
F-type star, HD 1698330: Light-speed travel time from the radio tower – 123 years.
Within this patch of sky, there’s an F-type star called HD 169830. At this speed, it would take you 123 years to get there. We now know it has at least two planets (one of which is imagined here) — just two of more than 4,000 we’ve found…so far.
The Lagoon Nebula: Light-speed travel time from the radio tower – 4,000 years.
If you look closely, you’ll see a fuzzy patch of light and color here. If you look *really* closely, as our Hubble Space Telescope did, you’ll see the Lagoon Nebula, churning with stellar winds from newborn stars.
In 26,000 years, after passing millions of stars, you could reach the center of our galaxy. Hidden there behind clouds of dust is a massive black hole. It’s hidden, that is, unless you use our Chandra X-ray Observatory which captured the x-ray flare seen here.
The next time you’re under a deep, dark sky, don’t forget to look up…and wonder what else might be out there.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.
Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. Those are the countries. It will be drought-resistant species, mostly acacias. And this is a brilliant idea you have no idea oh my Christ
This will create so many jobs and regenerate so many communities and aaaaaahhhhhhh
it’s already happening, and already having positive effects. this is wonderful, why have i not heard of this before? i’m so happy!
Oh yes, acacia trees.
They fix nitrogen and improve soil quality.
And, to make things fun, the species they’re using practices “reverse leaf phenology.” The trees go dormant in the rainy season and then grow their leaves again in the dry season. This means you can plant crops under the trees, in that nitrogen-rich soil, and the trees don’t compete for light because they don’t have any leaves on.
And then in the dry season, you harvest the leaves and feed them to your cows.
Crops grown under acacia trees have better yield than those grown without them. Considerably better.
So, this isn’t just about stopping the advancement of the Sahara - it’s also about improving food security for the entire sub-Saharan belt and possibly reclaiming some of the desert as productive land.
Of course, before the “green revolution,” the farmers knew to plant acacia trees - it’s a traditional practice that they were convinced to abandon in favor of “more reliable” artificial fertilizers (that caused soil degradation, soil erosion, etc).
This is why you listen to the people who, you know, have lived with and on land for centuries.
This nebula began forming about 10,000 years ago when a dying star started flinging material into space. When Sun-like stars exhaust their nuclear fuel, they become unstable and blast their outer layers of gas away into space (bad news for any planets in the area). This Hubble Space Telescope image shows a snapshot of the unworldly process.
Streams of high-energy ultraviolet radiation cause the expelled material to glow, creating a beautiful planetary nebula — a term chosen for the similarity in appearance to the round disk of a planet when viewed through a small telescope.
The Eskimo Nebula got its nickname because it resembles a face surrounded by a fur parka. The “parka” is a disk of material embellished by a ring of comet-shaped objects with their tails streaming away from the central, dying star. In the middle of the nebula is a bubble of material that is being blown outward by the star’s intense “wind” of high-speed material.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
![ultrafacts:
“ Source: [x]
Click HERE for more facts! ”](https://64.media.tumblr.com/732284197b8650c9f866f24036b5ca3e/tumblr_pmwdlompUo1rhavdko1_500.png)
