Category Archives: Life and Death

May 16 2013

The Largest Cemetery in the World

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Wadi us-Salaam, which literally means the Valley of Peace, is an Islamic cemetery located in the holy city of Najaf, Iraq. The cemetery covers an area of 1485.5 acres and contains millions of bodies, making it one of the strongest contender for the title of the largest graveyard on earth. Najaf itself is one of Iraq’s biggest cities, with a population of nearly 600,000. But the adjoining city of the dead holds the remains of millions, stretching for up to 10km along the valley. Wadi Al-Salam cemetery is also the only cemetery in the world where the process of burial is still continuing to day since more than 1,400 years.

Apr 22 2013

Beautiful Russian Ice Caves

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This surreal-looking ice cave is located on the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia. The almost kilometer long tunnel was formed by a hot water spring flowing beneath the glacial ice fields on the flanks of the nearby Mutnovsky volcano. Because glaciers on Kamchatka volcanoes have been melting in recent years, the roof of this cave is now so thin that sunlight penetrates through it, eerily illuminating the icy structures within.

Mar 19 2013

Stunning Pictures of Volcanic Lightning

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Photographer Martin Rietze travels around the world in pursuit of Earth’s greatest fiery spectacle – volcanoes. Recently, he went to Japan to photograph the Sakurajima Volcano in southern Kyushu as it spewed smoke, fire, and lava. During the shoot he captured some incredible lightening storms that are known to accompany volcanic eruptions. How lightning forms in general is still debated among scientists, and volcanic lightning is even less well understood. One hypothesis holds that catapulting magma bubbles or volcanic ash are themselves electrically charged, and by their motion create these separated areas. Other volcanic lightning episodes may be facilitated by charge-inducing collisions in volcanic dust.

Mar 19 2013

The A-Bombed Trees that Survived Hiroshima

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After the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on 6th August 1945, with landscapes demolished, soils charred and radiation rampant, Dr. Harold Jacobsen, a scientist from the Manhattan Project, told the Washington Post that Hiroshima will be barren of life and nothing will grow for 75 years. But nature had other plans. The following spring, to everyone’s surprise and delight, new shoots were seen springing up amongst the debris of the city. Those new saplings provided a powerful message to the survivors of the atomic bomb and gave them hope that they could rebuild their city.

Mar 10 2013

Glowing Glass Skull Sculptures

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Eric Franklin‘s sculpture’s glow with a certain life.  Though the series focuses on skulls and skeletons, it isn’t exactly dead.  These skulls are carefully made of flameworked glass, or glass melted and shaped with a torch.  The hollow skulls are then filled with ionized neon, krypton, and mercury gases.  The ionized gases cause the skulls to glow from within complimenting their eery shape.   [via]

Mar 4 2013

Dead Writers Perfume

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Imagine a scent inspired by the dead writers of our past. What would it smell like? It would most likely include black tea, vetiver, clove, musk, vanilla, heliotrope, and tobacco. Which is exactly what’s inside J.T. Siems Sweet Tea Apothecary’s new perfume, Dead Writers, a scent that should evoke, “the feeling of sitting in an old library chair paging through yellowed copies of Hemingway, Shakespeare, Fitzgerald, Poe, and more.”

VIA: -io9-

Mar 4 2013

New Book Suggests Return from the Dead

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Dr. Sam Parnia, a critical care doctor and the director of resuscitation research at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, has written a new book discussing ways in which people can be resuscitated after they previously would have been considered clinically dead.

Parnia’s book, “Erasing Death: The Science That is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death,” was recently featured on the Today show.

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Mar 4 2013

Read Timothy Leary’s Brain Melting Comics

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In his 1977 book Exo-Psychology, psychologist and psychedelic drug advocate Timothy Leary revealed his eight-circuit model of consciousness, his theory about the workings of the human mind and the future neurological “circuits” that humanity might someday access and utilize in our travels beyond Earth. In 1979, the theory was adapted into Neurocomics, a trippy comic book exploration of the mind, human evolution, and how we might journey to the stars. Rene Walter has posted the entire (NSFW) Neurocomics online, and it provides a fascinating look into Leary’s peculiar transhumanist ideas. -VIA:- io9-

Feb 24 2013

Creepy Indonesian Snake Slaughter Houses

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The snakes are caught in the wild at 3-4 years, often by villagers, who are paid per snake they capture. Sometimes organized armies of catchers work in groups in the jungles and grassland, settings nets, traps and baited hooks for the blood pythons, larger reticulated pythons and other smaller snakes. Captured snakes are stored in canvas bags and sold to primitive skinning plants.

Feb 10 2013

40,000 Year Old Lion Man

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Behold Lion Man, an ancient figurine sculpted from a mammoth’s tusk. Discovered back in 1939, this remarkable ice age piece was initially dated at 32,000 years-old, but a new carbon dating analysis has pushed it further back in time to 40,000 years ago — making it the oldest figurative sculpture ever discovered. So yes, this thing was actually sculpted by a paleolithic human who was romping around Europe at the mid-point of the last ice age.

Jan 25 2013

Spain Scientists Attempt to Debunk “Parallel Realities”

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This infinite repetition idea can be found in early philosophy, ancient mythology, and today’s sci-fi literature. But can it be derived from physical theories about the universe, and does it have a place in science?

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-01-dont-infinite-scientists.html#jCp