Bench Press

We’ve written a couple of times about the asteroid Apophis which, while unlikely to hit Earth, will make a very near pass of 18,300 miles above the planet’s surface in 2029. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory just released an excellent animation of just how close Apophis will be when it passes by.

Wow for some reason 18,300 miles doesn’t seem quite as far anymore.
(Video Credit – Wired Science)

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a video is worth, depending on the frame rate, a thousand pictures.

We previously posted a breathtaking set of pictures showing just how large the universe really is. But, although the images conveyed a sense of what is now referred to as the Ultra Deep Field but you haven’t seen anything, until you’ve watched a video construction of what the ultra-deep field looks like in 3D (courtesy of Tony Darnell at DeepAstronomy.com):

The key quote from the video:

“We pointed the most powerful telescope ever built by human beings at absolutely nothing for no other reason than because we were curious, and discovered that we occupy a very tiny place in the heavens.”

My thoughts:

1. Did you not get it just by watching the video? We occupy a very tiny place in the heavens.
2. Science video is a great way of reaching out to the public and communicating in a way that pure pictures and text cannot.
3. There’s something to be said about the spirit and essence of the scientific community: willing to explore “nothing” for the sake of exploring it, and still deriving great value from it.

If you like the video, check out Tony’s very informative (and amateur astronomer-friendly) site.

I was going to write a long essay about how web technologies have advanced to the point where science can be shared and discussed and shown in sophisticated ways through the web.

But, rather than bore you with those trivial details, why not just show you.

Before the Web: Read (Science 15 August 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5891, pp. 970 – 974) and its tiny paper figures and hope that you can visualize what’s going on.

After the Web: Read the paper online, Read a blog post on said paper (from science blog Mystery Rays from Outer Space). Watch this video of neutrophils (a type of white blood cell responsible for attacking infection, tagged Green) infiltrating a mouse ear that has just been injected with beads (tagged Blue) and Leishmania major (a bacteria, tagged Red).

4-dimensional image series from the ear pinna of a LYS-eGFP mouse in which blue fluorescent beads and L. major had been deposited adjacent to one another in the skin of the same ear. eGFP-expressing cells are shown in green, L. major-RFP is shown in red, and beads are shown in blue. Playback speed is 1200x. Scale bar, 200?m

Comment on blog post and ask blog author question about how neutrophils are attracted to the beads. Get a response. Make my own blog post about the discovery. Reflect on the impact of the Web on science.