Ahn Graphics Ltd. / De-Novation 2012 / Printed Matter / 2013
big imagination foundation has converted a jumbo jet into an immersive art installation hosting events, music, speakers and parties on board.
The post converted boeing 747 lands at burning man in nevada's black rock desert appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.
The dazzling, haunting ‘combines' at the heart of Tate Modern's forthcoming retrospective were part of a private game between Rauschenberg and his peers and sometime lovers, Cy Twombly and Jasper Johns
Robert Rauschenberg's 1954 work Untitled is an upright wooden box supported by a white, colonial-era table leg over an open stage-like enclosure in which a stuffed Dominique hen struts next to a nostalgic photograph of a tall man in a white suit. Walk around this oddly compelling array every surface of which is covered in old pictures, newsprint and smeared paint and you find a pair of shoes, painted white. Do they belong to the man in the portrait? Who was he? Why does this constellation of stuff trigger such an undeniable, unforgettable sense of mystery?
Continue reading...Elton John shares his photography collection, Tracey Emin gets into bed with William Blake and David Shrigley gives everyone a big thumb's-up
Neon might once have been considered a quintessentially American medium but the British artists who have worked with it are numerous. Martin Creed, Tracey Emin, Cerith Wyn Evans and Eddie Peake are just some of the homebred talents to feature alongside international names in this major survey of neon art in, where else, Blackpool. Home to the world-famous Illuminations, first switched on in September 1879, the city has played a central role in the UK history of neon, as the Grundy seeks to prove with an exhibition that includes rare 1930s designs for the biggest free light show on earth.
• 1 September to 7 January 2017, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool.
Elton John shares his photography collection, Tracey Emin gets into bed with William Blake and David Shrigley gives everyone a big thumb's-up
Neon might once have been considered a quintessentially American medium but the British artists who have worked with it are numerous. Martin Creed, Tracey Emin, Cerith Wyn Evans and Eddie Peake are just some of the homebred talents to feature alongside international names in this major survey of neon art in, where else, Blackpool. Home to the world-famous Illuminations, first switched on in September 1879, the city has played a central role in the UK history of neon, as the Grundy seeks to prove with an exhibition that includes rare 1930s designs for the biggest free light show on earth.
• 1 September to 7 January 2017, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool.
sometimesquicklysometimesslowly:
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Signal detected a year ago from HD164595, only 95 light years away and with at least one planet, but Seti scientists are scanning the area and have yet to find it
As David Bowie might have sung: is there life on HD164595b?
A Russian radio telescope scanning the skies has observed “a strong signal” from a nearby star, HD164595, in the constellation Hercules. The star is a scant 95 light years away and 99% of the size of Earth's own sun. It has at least one planet, HD164595b, which is about the size of Neptune and has a 40-day year.
Related: Alien ‘Wow!' signal could be explained after almost 40 years
Continue reading...
An international team of astronomers has just detected signals coming from almost 100 light years away, and they believe the signal is a strong candidate for extraterrestrial contact, according to a document circulated by Alexander Panov, a theorectical physicist at Lomonosov Moscow State University: "a strong signal in the direction of HD164595, a planet system in the constellation Hercules was detected on May 15, using the RATAN-600 radio telescope (below) in the Russian Republic of Karachay-Cherkessia."
The researchers have not reached a conclusion, but claim that it was a very strong candidate for extraterrestrial intelligence, although Permanent monitoring would be needed in order to rule out other causes. The estimated probability ~2 X 10-4 to simulate a signal from the direction of the HD164595 by signal-like noise is small.
Based on the strength of the signal and the distance it traveled, the researchers calculated that the signal was an isotropic beacon of radio signals could be the work of an advanced civilizations, possibly a Type II civilization on the Kardashev scale, which would make it approximately a few thousand years ahead of our human civilization. If it's a targeted beacon aimed directly at Earth, it would be the work of a Type III civilization, which is estimated to be 100,000-1 million years ahead of us capable of harnessing the energy of a supermassive black hole.
The possibility of noise of one form or another cannot be ruled out, and researchers in Paris led by Jean Schneider are considering the possible of simple microlensing enhansing background noise source by HD164595. But the signal is provocative enough that the RATAN-600 researchers are calling for permanent monitoring of this target.
Stay tuned!
The Daily Galaxy via centauri-dreams.org
Image credit: with thanks to lh3.googleusercontent and apod.nasa.gov and learning-mind.com
NASA Goddard Photo and Video posted a photo:
An age-defying star designated as IRAS 19312+1950 exhibits features characteristic of a very young star and a very old star. The object stands out as extremely bright inside a large, chemically rich cloud of material, as shown in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. A NASA-led team of scientists thinks the star which is about 10 times as massive as our sun and emits about 20,000 times as much energy is a newly forming protostar. That was a big surprise because the region had not been known as a stellar nursery before. But the presence of a nearby interstellar bubble, which indicates the presence of a recently formed massive star, also supports this idea.
Read more: go.nasa.gov/2bMza9d
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The center of the Milky Way galaxy is currently a quiet place where a supermassive black hole slumbers, only occasionally slurping small sips of hydrogen gas. But it wasn't always this way. A new study shows that 6 million years ago, when the first human ancestors known as hominins walked the Earth, our galaxy's core blazed forth furiously. The evidence for this active phase came from a search for the galaxy's missing mass.
Measurements show that the Milky Way galaxy weighs about 1-2 trillion times as much as our Sun. About five-sixths of that is in the form of invisible and mysterious dark matter. The remaining one-sixth of our galaxy's heft, or 150-300 billion solar masses, is normal matter. However, if you count up all the stars, gas and dust we can see, you only find about 65 billion solar masses. The rest of the normal matter - stuff made of neutrons, protons, and electrons - seems to be missing.
"We played a cosmic game of hide-and-seek. And we asked ourselves, where could the missing mass be hiding?" says lead author Fabrizio Nicastro, a research associate at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and astrophysicist at the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF).
"We analyzed archival X-ray observations from the XMM-Newton spacecraft and found that the missing mass is in the form of a million-degree gaseous fog permeating our galaxy. That fog absorbs X-rays from more distant background sources," Nicastro continues.
The astronomers used the amount of absorption to calculate how much normal matter was there, and how it was distributed. They applied computer models but learned that they couldn't match the observations with a smooth, uniform distribution of gas. Instead, they found that there is a "bubble" in the center of our galaxy that extends two-thirds of the way to Earth.
Clearing out that bubble required a tremendous amount of energy. That energy, the authors surmise, came from the feeding black hole. While some infalling gas was swallowed by the black hole, other gas was pumped out at speeds of 2 million miles per hour (1,000 km/sec).
Six million years later, the shock wave created by that phase of activity has crossed 20,000 light-years of space. Meanwhile, the black hole has run out of nearby food and gone into hibernation. This timeline is corroborated by the presence of 6-million-year-old stars near the galactic center. Those stars formed from some of the same material that once flowed toward the black hole.
"The different lines of evidence all tie together very well," says Smithsonian co-author Martin Elvis (CfA). "This active phase lasted for 4 to 8 million years, which is reasonable for a quasar."
The observations and associated computer models also show that the hot, million-degree gas can account for up to 130 billion solar masses of material. Thus, it just might explain where all of the galaxy's missing matter was hiding: it was too hot to be seen.
More answers may come from the proposed next-generation space mission known as X-ray Surveyor. It would be able to map out the bubble by observing fainter sources, and see finer detail to tease out more information about the elusive missing mass. The European Space Agency's Athena X-ray Observatory, planned for launch in 2028, offers similar promise.
These results have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal and are available online.
The Daily Galaxy via CfA
Image credits: NASA, ESO and ALMA Observatory
While blue in color, like Earth, “hot Jupiter” HD 189733 is much stranger than Earth. On this turbulent alien world, the daytime temperature is nearly 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and it possibly rains glass—sideways—in howling, 4,500 mph winds.
The cobalt blue color comes not from the reflection of a tropical ocean, as on Earth, but rather a hazy, blow-torched atmosphere containing high clouds laced with silicate particles. Silicates condensing in the heat could form very small drops of glass that scatter blue light more than red light. The Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories have made intensive studies of HD 189733b since 2013, and found its atmosphere to be changeable and exotic.
The Daily Galaxy via NASA
Astronomers say that in our galaxy alone, a billion or more such Jupiter-like worlds could be orbiting stars other than our sun. And we can use them to gain a better understanding of our solar system and our galactic environment, including the prospects for finding life. The Milky Way is home to a bewildering variety of Jupiter-like worlds: hot ones, cold ones, giant versions of our own giant, pint-sized pretenders only half as big around.
One exo-Jupiter, while blue in color, like Earth, HD 189733 is much stranger than our own planet. On this turbulent alien world, the daytime temperature is nearly 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and it possibly rains glass—sideways—in howling, 4,500 mph winds. The cobalt blue color comes not from the reflection of a tropical ocean, as on Earth, but rather a hazy, blow-torched atmosphere containing high clouds laced with silicate particles. Silicates condensing in the heat could form very small drops of glass that scatter blue light more than red light.
We can also turn our instruments and probes to our own backyard, and view Jupiter as if it were an exoplanet to learn more about those far-off worlds. The best-ever chance to do this is now, with Juno, a NASA probe the size of a basketball court, which arrived at Jupiter in July to begin a series of long, looping orbits around our solar system's largest planet. Juno is expected to capture the most detailed images of the gas giant ever seen. And with a suite of science instruments, Juno will plumb the secrets beneath Jupiter's roiling atmosphere.
It will be a very long time, if ever, before scientists who study exoplanets -- planets orbiting other stars -- get the chance to watch an interstellar probe coast into orbit around an exo-Jupiter, dozens or hundreds of light-years away. But if they ever do, it's a safe bet the scene will summon echoes of Juno.
"The only way we're going to ever be able to understand what we see in those extrasolar planets is by actually understanding our system, our Jupiter itself," said David Ciardi, an astronomer with NASA's Exoplanet Science Institute (NExSci) at Caltech.
Juno's detailed examination of Jupiter could provide insights into the history, and future, of our solar system. The tally of confirmed exoplanets so far includes hundreds in Jupiter's size-range, and many more that are larger or smaller.
The so-called hot Jupiters acquired their name for a reason: They are in tight orbits around their stars that make them sizzling-hot, completing a full revolution -- the planet's entire year -- in what would be a few days on Earth. And they're charbroiled along the way.
But why does our solar system lack a "hot Jupiter?" Or is this, perhaps, the fate awaiting our own Jupiter billions of years from now -- could it gradually spiral toward the sun, or might the swollen future sun expand to engulf it?
Not likely, Ciardi says; such planetary migrations probably occur early in the life of a solar system. "In order for migration to occur, there needs to be dusty material within the system," he said. "Enough to produce drag. That phase of migration is long since over for our solar system."
Jupiter itself might already have migrated from farther out in the solar system, although no one really knows, he said.
If Juno's measurements can help settle the question, they could take us a long way toward understanding Jupiter's influence on the formation of Earth -- and, by extension, the formation of other "Earths" that might be scattered among the stars.
"Juno is measuring water vapor in the Jovian atmosphere," said Elisa Quintana, a research scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. "This allows the mission to measure the abundance of oxygen on Jupiter. Oxygen is thought to be correlated with the initial position from which Jupiter originated."
If Jupiter's formation started with large chunks of ice in its present position, then it would have taken a lot of water ice to carry in the heavier elements which we find in Jupiter. But a Jupiter that formed farther out in the solar system, then migrated inward, could have formed from much colder ice, which would carry in the observed heavier elements with a smaller amount of water. If Jupiter formed more directly from the solar nebula, without ice chunks as a starter, then it should contain less water still. Measuring the water is a key step in understanding how and where Jupiter formed.
That's how Juno's microwave radiometer, which will measure water vapor, could reveal Jupiter's ancient history. "If Juno detects a high abundance of oxygen, it could suggest that the planet formed farther out," Quintana said.
A probe dropped into Jupiter by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in 1995 found high winds and turbulence, but the expected water seemed to be absent. Scientists think Galileo's one-shot probe just happened to drop into a dry area of the atmosphere, but Juno will survey the entire planet from orbit.
Where Jupiter formed, and when, also could answer questions about the solar system's "giant impact phase," a time of crashes and collisions among early planet-forming bodies that eventually led to the solar system we have today.
Our solar system was extremely accident-prone in its early history -- perhaps not quite like billiard balls caroming around, but with plenty of pileups and fender-benders.
"It definitely was a violent time," Quintana said. "There were collisions going on for tens of millions of years. For example, the idea of how the moon formed is that a proto-Earth and another body collided; the disk of debris from this collision formed the moon. And some people think Mercury, because it has such a huge iron core, was hit by something big that stripped off its mantle; it was left with a large core in proportion to its size."
Part of Quintana's research involves computer modeling of the formation of planets and solar systems. Teasing out Jupiter's structure and composition could greatly enhance such models, she said. Quintana already has modeled our solar system's formation, with Jupiter and without, yielding some surprising findings.
"For a long time, people thought Jupiter was essential to habitability because it might have shielded Earth from the constant influx of impacts [during the solar system's early days] which could have been damaging to habitability," she said. "What we've found in our simulations is that it's almost the opposite. When you add Jupiter, the accretion times are faster and the impacts onto Earth are far more energetic. Planets formed within about 100 million years; the solar system was done growing by that point," Quintana said.
"If you take Jupiter out, you still form Earth, but on timescales of billions of years rather than hundreds of millions. Earth still receives giant impacts, but they're less frequent and have lower impact energies," she said.
Another critical Juno measurement that could shed new light on the dark history of planetary formation is the mission's gravity science experiment. Changes in the frequency of radio transmissions from Juno to NASA's Deep Space Network will help map the giant planet's gravitational field.
Knowing the nature of Jupiter's core could reveal how quickly the planet formed, with implications for how Jupiter might have affected Earth's formation.
And the spacecraft's magnetometers could yield more insight into the deep internal structure of Jupiter by measuring its magnetic field.
"We don't understand a lot about Jupiter's magnetic field," Ciardi said. "We think it's produced by metallic hydrogen in the deep interior. Jupiter has an incredibly strong magnetic field, much stronger than Earth's."
Mapping Jupiter's magnetic field also might help pin down the plausibility of proposed scenarios for alien life beyond our solar system. Earth's magnetic field is thought to be important to life because it acts like a protective shield, channeling potentially harmful charged particles and cosmic rays away from the surface.
"If a Jupiter-like planet orbits its star at a distance where liquid water could exist, the Jupiter-like planet itself might not have life, but it might have moons which could potentially harbor life," he said.
An exo-Jupiter's intense magnetic field could protect such life forms, he said. That conjures visions of Pandora, the moon in the movie "Avatar" inhabited by 10-foot-tall humanoids who ride massive, flying predators through an exotic alien ecosystem.
Juno's findings will be important not only to understanding how exo-Jupiters might influence the formation of exo-Earths, or other kinds of habitable planets. They'll also be essential to the next generation of space telescopes that will hunt for alien worlds. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will conduct a survey of nearby bright stars for exoplanets beginning in June 2018, or earlier. The James Webb Space Telescope, expected to launch in 2018, and WFIRST (Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope), with launch anticipated in the mid-2020s, will attempt to take direct images of giant planets orbiting other stars.
"We're going to be able to image planets and get spectra," or light profiles from exoplanets that will reveal atmospheric gases, Ciardi said. Juno's revelations about Jupiter will help scientists to make sense of these data from distant worlds.
"Studying our solar system is about studying exoplanets," he said. "And studying exoplanets is about studying our solar system. They go together."
The Daily Galaxy via JPL and https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/alien-worlds/strange-new-worlds
In this episode of Cosmic Queries, Neil will discuss topics ranging from alien plant life, to colonizing Mars, to whether velocity could be considered a dimension. You'll find out if the constellations would look different when seen from Saturn, whether there's a north pole to our universe, and why astronomers got the Milky Way's north pole wrong in the first place.
Discover why a stable black hole can't exist inside a star, and how the expansion of our Sun will affect the Earth. You'll learn how scientists knew to leave gaps in the periodic table of the elements, and why the moon is spiraling away from the Earth at 5 inches a year. Neil speculates on what the bright spot on the dwarf planet Ceres might be, whether we'll explore Jupiter's moon Europa in our lifetimes, and if we'll find life in its subsurface ocean. You'll also hear how NASA inventions led to grooved highway pavement and safer, cheaper LASIK surgery. On the lighter side, Neil and Chuck talk about the Ship of the Imagination from COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey to YouTube's famous “Double Rainbow Guy.
Elton John shares his photography collection, Tracey Emin gets into bed with William Blake and David Shrigley gives everyone a big thumb's-up
Neon might once have been considered a quintessentially American medium but the British artists who have worked with it are numerous. Martin Creed, Tracey Emin, Cerith Wyn Evans and Eddie Peake are just some of the homebred talents to feature alongside international names in this major survey of neon art in, where else, Blackpool. Home to the world-famous Illuminations, first switched on in September 1879, the city has played a central role in the UK history of neon, as the Grundy seeks to prove with an exhibition that includes rare 1930s designs for the biggest free light show on earth.
• 1 September to 7 January 2017, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool.
Polish poster by Bronislaw Zelek for FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (John Schlesinger, UK, 1967) and the Spanish poster for YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER (Woody Allen, USA, 2010).
US teaser one sheet for LA LA LAND (Damien Chazelle, USA, 2016)
Designer: LA (appropriately enough)
Poster source: IMPAwards