Designer Michæl Paukner created this gorgeous, simple depiction of what ancient Hebrews believed the cosmos looked like, based on what they recorded in the Old Testament.
Click -HERE- to embiggen.
Category Space
Total Solar Eclipse Over Easter Island
Yesterday a total solar eclipse fell across the South Pacific, bringing thousands of tourists and scientists to Easter Island to witness it. We’ve got pictures from this historic and vaguely spooky event.
A Leap in the Dark
Paradoxically, a shadow can go even faster than light! We can [cast a shadow] first at one star and then toward another star. We can take two stars more or less the same distance from Earth, such as Acrux in the Southern Cross and Bellatrix in Orion (both are 360 light-years away from us). We point the flashlight at Acrux and then we make the beam slide slowly toward Bellatrix. Three hundred sixty years later, the shadow … (which will at this point have become huge and very fast) will reach Acrux, and just a few seconds later it will be at Bellatrix, after having crossed one quarter of the vault of the sky far faster than the speed of light. Can shadows do things that are physically impossible?
– Roberto Casati, Shadows, 2000
Ancient Meteorite Cult of Estonia
Somewhere between 7,500-4,000 years ago, a meteorite fragmented over Estonia’s Saaremaa island. The meteorite hit with a force comparable to Hiroshima and left nine impact craters, including the 110-meter Kaali crater. Locals worshiped this hole as holy.
Thor’s Helmet
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day today is a cosmic cloud called Thor’s Helmet, for obvious reasons.
Heroically sized even for a Norse god, Thor’s Helmet is about 30 light-years across. In fact, the helmet is actually more like an interstellar bubble, blown as a fast wind from the bright, massive star near the bubble’s center sweeps through a surrounding molecular cloud. Known as a Wolf-Rayet star, the central star is an extremely hot giant thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova stage of evolution. Cataloged as NGC 2359, the nebula is located about 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Canis Major.
VIA: -NEATORAMA-
CONSPIRAPORN! 