Are We Living in a Hologram?

If the Tupac hologram at Coachella blew your mind, chew on this: Recent research supports the theory that we may be living inside a hologram. In simplest terms, our reality — the region of the universe we can observe — might just be a 3-D depiction of reality.  (..)

So what does it mean to be in a hologram? Simply put, it means that our known universe — the part we inhabit and can scientifically observe — and a simpler, 2-D region far beyond it depict the same reality. Neither is real; both are representations of reality.

Yes, you could say [we are] an illusion, or an emergent phenomenon.

— THEORETICAL ASTROPHYSICIST JUAN MALDACENA 

Sounds freaky, but that theory is gaining traction after the release of two studies led by Ibaraki University physicist Yoshifumi Hyakutake last November. In one study, he created a computer model of a 10-dimensional universe containing a black hole — a region where gravity prevents anything, even light, from escaping. He then computed the black hole’s internal energy and compared it to that of a one-dimensional, gravityless outer region, described in a separate paper. Sure enough, the calculations matched.

Read more: Are We Living in a Hologram? | Acumen | OZY 

View from the International Space Station at Night

From Knate Myers: "Every frame in this video is a photograph taken from the International Space Station. All credit goes to the crews on board the ISS.

I removed noise and edited some shots in photoshop. Compiled and arranged in Sony Vegas.

Music by John Murphy - Sunshine (Adagio In D Minor)
itunes.apple.com/us/album/sunshine-music-from-motion/id297702863"

View from the ISS at Night from Knate Myers on Vimeo.

Brian Greene: Why is our universe fine-tuned for life?

NASA’s New Satellite Captures Amazing Hi-Res Image of Earth

You’ve seen Earth, but you’ve never seen it like this.
Suomi NPP, NASA’s newest Earth-watching satellite, has taken a high resolution image of Earth, one of the most beautiful such images ever created. It’s available in 8000×8000 pixel resolution, and it takes a while to download, but it’s definitely worth it.
Link

The Aurora

 Incredible video of the Aurora Borrealis by
Terje Sorgjerd
uvealblues
I spent a week capturing one of the biggest aurora borealis shows in recent years.


The Aurora from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

Mindblowing asttronomical relativity

Most of us have an idea of the relative size of the planets and sun, 
but it's rather dazzling to see it presented this way.

(via Guy Kawasaki)

Visually-Impaired Students Touch the Stars in Special Hubble Image

Galaxies Clash in Four Way Merger

Four gigantic galaxies have been seen crashing into one another in one of the biggest cosmic collisions ever seen.

The clashing galaxies are expected to eventually merge into a single, behemoth galaxy up to 10 times as massive as our own Milky Way.

A nice tutorial on identifying constellations

Learn your constellations!

A Pale Blue Dot

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

Stereo Eclipse

A Lunar Eclipse of the sun...from space. Click on the link for a pic and a movie...

"The images have an alien quality," notes Guhathakurta. "It's not just the strange colors of the sun. Look at the size of the Moon; it's very odd." When we observe a lunar transit from Earth, the Moon appears to be the same size as the sun—a coincidence that produces intoxicatingly beautiful solar eclipses. The silhouette STEREO-B saw, on the other hand, was only a fraction of the sun's diameter. "It's like being in the wrong solar system."

The Moon seems small because of STEREO-B's location. The spacecraft circles the sun in an Earth-like orbit, but it lags behind Earth by one million miles. This means STEREO-B is 4.4 times further from the Moon than we are, and so the Moon looks 4.4 times smaller.

The Universe Within

Visit the Molecular Expressions Website Galleria Photo Gallery Silicon Zoo Chip Shots Screen Savers Museum Web Resources Primer Java Microscopy Win Wallpaper Mac Wallpaper Publications Custom Photos Image Use Contact Us Search Home Secret Worlds: The Universe Within View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.