The Earliest Days of NASA Maria Popova, at Brain Pickings, happened upon a treasure trove of early NASA (and its airplane-only predecessor NACA) archive photos. They are really something. From biplanes to the Mercury capsule, pre-1950 aeronautics seemed to live by the motto of “If we build it, then we can go there.” That’s a sentiment we could use a bit more of. More here.
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The Earliest Days of NASA Maria Popova, at Brain Pickings, happened upon a treasure trove of early NASA (and its airplane-only predecessor NACA) archive photos. They are really something. From biplanes to the Mercury capsule, pre-1950 aeronautics seemed to live by the motto of “If we build it, then we can go there.” That’s a sentiment we could use a bit more of. More here.
Zoom Info
The Earliest Days of NASA Maria Popova, at Brain Pickings, happened upon a treasure trove of early NASA (and its airplane-only predecessor NACA) archive photos. They are really something. From biplanes to the Mercury capsule, pre-1950 aeronautics seemed to live by the motto of “If we build it, then we can go there.” That’s a sentiment we could use a bit more of. More here.
Zoom Info
The Earliest Days of NASA Maria Popova, at Brain Pickings, happened upon a treasure trove of early NASA (and its airplane-only predecessor NACA) archive photos. They are really something. From biplanes to the Mercury capsule, pre-1950 aeronautics seemed to live by the motto of “If we build it, then we can go there.” That’s a sentiment we could use a bit more of. More here.
Zoom Info

The Earliest Days of NASA

Maria Popova, at Brain Pickings, happened upon a treasure trove of early NASA (and its airplane-only predecessor NACA) archive photos. They are really something. From biplanes to the Mercury capsule, pre-1950 aeronautics seemed to live by the motto of “If we build it, then we can go there.” That’s a sentiment we could use a bit more of.

More here.

Home Movies From A Place That Didn’t Exist: A Human Look At Life Before The Bomb

(I’ve posted this previously, but the video has been updated with even more footage from the Manhattan Project, and I wanted to bring it to everyone’s attention!)

What if the fate of the free world was depending on you, and they didn’t even know it? How would you deal with that weight?

According to this video time capsule recently unearthed at Los Alamos National Labs, you’d relax by skiing, swimming, hiking and drinking cold Coors beer. In other words, you’d act human.

Hugh Bradner, a physicist working on the Manhattan Project’s weapons testing program Project Y (and who later invented the neoprene wetsuit!), was given informal permission from the U.S. Army to shoot this collection of home movies. The hour of footage that exists was spliced down to 10 minutes for this video, and it represents our only look at what life was like for these physicists and staff during their quest to harness the atom for war.

We see them enjoying the outdoors, hiking with their adorable dogs, basking in the sun next to cool, clear watering holes (the bathing suits!), enjoying an ice-cold Coors (I like their style!), visiting the pueblos, exploring the mountains from the saddle of a horse, and even the Bradners’ wedding (featuring a cameo by J. Robert Oppenheimer).

I’m struck by how young they are, and how they are striving to enjoy the simple parts of life just as we would. These images are nearly 70 years old, but they show that even though these men and women were about to change the world in ways they couldn’t imagine, they are not so different from us.

It’s a true treasure of science history.

Bonus: Browse the I.D. badge images of Los Alamos Manhattan Project scientists! From Enrico Fermi to a very young Richard Feynman! Notice any other gems?

(↬ LosAlamosNationalLab, with special thanks to LANL’s John Bass for working to make this footage public)

Speaking of fossilized doom, see those chop marks on that skull up there? It’s likely proof that Jamestown colonists resorted to cannibalism to survive the harsh winter of 1609. Their supply ships had been destroyed by a hurricane and their fort was under siege by the Powhatan tribe. After they ran out of dogs, rats and snakes to eat, these preserved remains suggest they turned to each other. Looks like this teenage girl, who researchers are calling “Jane”, drew the short straw. Using advanced facial reconstruction technology, AMNH scientists were able to not only reconstruct her butchering, but also her face. Eventually, the flesh was cut away from Jane’s cheeks and facial muscles, her tongue was removed, and her brain was extracted through the hole in her skull. English diets in the 17th century often included the cheek, tongue, and brain of animals, so it’s not surprising to [researchers] that the same parts of Jane’s head would have been removed for consumption. Read more at ScienceNOW.
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Speaking of fossilized doom, see those chop marks on that skull up there? It’s likely proof that Jamestown colonists resorted to cannibalism to survive the harsh winter of 1609. Their supply ships had been destroyed by a hurricane and their fort was under siege by the Powhatan tribe.

After they ran out of dogs, rats and snakes to eat, these preserved remains suggest they turned to each other. Looks like this teenage girl, who researchers are calling “Jane”, drew the short straw.

Using advanced facial reconstruction technology, AMNH scientists were able to not only reconstruct her butchering, but also her face.

Eventually, the flesh was cut away from Jane’s cheeks and facial muscles, her tongue was removed, and her brain was extracted through the hole in her skull. English diets in the 17th century often included the cheek, tongue, and brain of animals, so it’s not surprising to [researchers] that the same parts of Jane’s head would have been removed for consumption.

Read more at ScienceNOW.

explore-blog:

In witness whereof—hear my voice, Alexander Graham Bell.

Groundbreaking digital technology has allowed researchers to recover Alexander Graham Bell’s voice from a recording held at the Smithsonian. Complement with Bell on creativity, innovation, and the secret of success.

You think we can’t time travel? Who says we can’t time travel?!

We travelin’ through TIIIIME!

Dearest Mama,

I must tell you what my opinion of my own mind and powers is exactly—the result of a most accurate study of myself with a view to my future plans during many months. I believe myself to possess a most singular combination of qualities exactly fitted to make me preeminently a discoverer of the hidden realities of nature.

[…]

Firstly: owing to some peculiarity in my nervous system, I have perceptions of some things, which no one else has—or at least very few, if any. This faculty may be designated in me as a singular tact, or some might say an intuitive perception of hidden things—that is of things hidden from eyes, ears, and the ordinary senses…This alone would advantage me little, in the discovery line, but there is, secondly, my immense reasoning faculties. Thirdly: my concentrative faculty, by which I mean the power not only of throwing my whole energy and existence into whatever I choose, but also bringing to bear on any one subject or idea a vast apparatus from all sorts of apparently irrelevant and extraneous sources. I can throw rays from every quarter of the universe into one vast focus.

Now these three powers (I cannot resist the wickedness of calling them my discovering or scientific trinity) are a vast apparatus put into my power by Providence; and it rests with me by a proper course during the next twenty years to make the engine what I please. But haste, or a restless ambition, would quite ruin the whole.

Reconstructionist Ada Lovelace, the world’s first computer programmer, is very, very confident in her intellectual abilities in this 1841 letter to her mother. She was twenty-six at the time. (via explore-blog)

I believe today we would refer to this as “swagger”. 

(via explore-blog)

1. All beliefs in whatever realm are theories at some level. (Stephen Schneider)

2. Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong. (Dandemis)

3. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. (Francis Bacon)

4. Never fall in love with your hypothesis. (Peter Medawar)
5. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts. (Arthur Conan Doyle)

6. A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong. (Francis Crick)

7. The thing that doesn’t fit is the thing that is most interesting. (Richard Feynman)

8. To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact. (Charles Darwin)

9. It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. (Mark Twain)

10. Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong. (Thomas Jefferson)

11. All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second, it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident. (Arthur Schopenhauer)

Prospero’s Precepts  – 11 rules for critical thinking from history’s great minds.

(via explore-blog)

(via explore-blog)

At last gleams of light have come, & I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.

Charles Darwin, writing to his closest friend, botanist Joseph Hooker, detailing his feelings as the Theory of Natural Selection took shape.

This is an excerpt from a newly released collection of  over 1,000 letters from Charles Darwin to Hooker throughout the course of his life. They provide an unprecedented view of Darwin’s struggles and emotions, enriching the humanity of this great scientist.

Tour the letters at Cambridge University’s Darwin Correspondence Project, and read more at BBC News.