Theidlerhour - Bricolage Brain

my math homework: using Lagrange multipliers, safety goggles, rubber gloves, a pair of tongs, and a maniacal laugh, determine that...

Mars will lose its largest moon, but gain a ring

Mars’ largest moon, Phobos, is slowly falling toward the planet, but rather than smash into the surface, it likely will be shredded and the pieces strewn about the planet in a ring like the rings encircling Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune.

UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Benjamin Black and graduate student Tushar Mittal estimate the cohesiveness of Phobos and conclude that it is insufficient to resist the tidal forces that will pull it apart when it gets closer to Mars.

Mars tugs differently on different parts of Phobos. As Phobos gets closer to the planet, the tugs are enough to actually pull the moon apart, the scientists say. This is because Phobos is highly fractured, with lots of pores and rubble. “Dismembering it is analogous to pulling apart a granola bar”, Black said, “scattering crumbs and chunks everywhere.”

Read more about the fate of Phobos

The pride

When your little sister can reiterate the jist of Millikan, Rutherford, and Daltons models of the atom.

“And then there was this oil, and these charged plates, and he shot xrays at it, and the drops floated…. ”

“And then there was this gold foil, real gold, and they shot it, and some of the particles shot back, and everyone was like, whoa….DENSELY PACKED NUCLEUS”

A recent cartoon for New Scientist.

it’s easy to sit from your balcony of privilege & look down upon the masses, ignorant of why they’re angry.

it’s easy to sit under a shelter because you’re protected by privilege & wonder why the masses complain that they’re fed up with the rain.

it’s easy to sit in your warm house with state of the art equipment & wonder why people constantly complain that they’re left out in the cold

it’s easy to celebrate because your crops have yielded a high amount & question why other people complain, unaware that they weren’t given enough seeds. unaware that it barely ever rains here… the sun doesn’t even shine here…

it’s easy to be blinded by privilege. to remain neutral in situations of oppression simply because you are unaffected. but to remain neutral, is to strengthen the power of the oppressor.

— @beeyroyce

Perfect Blue | Satoshi Kon | 1997