Science Porn

[Exian]

And we didn't have this ability when Bush was going after Saddam?

[Mystical]

I don't think anyone knows what it is for sure they're photographing with this technique, but it's on my photographer's "Bucket List of things to do". 



Kirlian photography is a collection of photographic techniques used to capture the phenomenon of electrical coronal discharges. It is named after Semyon Kirlian, who in 1939 accidentally discovered that if an object on a photographic plate is connected to a high-voltage source, an image is produced on the photographic plate.[1] The technique has been variously known as "electrography",[2] "electrophotography",[3] "corona discharge photography" (CDP),[4]"bioelectrography",[2] "gas discharge visualization (GDV)",[5] "electrophotonic imaging (EPI)",[6]and, in Russian literature, "Kirlianography".




4

[SteelCurtain]

Hi-Res photos from Pluto are starting to make their way back.

Explanation: New high resolution images of Pluto are starting to arrive from the outer Solar System. The robotic New Horizons spacecraft, which zoomed by Pluto in July, has finished sending back some needed engineering data and is now transmitting selections from its tremendous storehouse of images of Pluto and its moons. The featured image, a digital composite, details a surprising terrain filled with craters, plains, landscape of unknown character, and landforms that resemble something on Earth but are quite unexpected on Pluto. The light area sprawling across the upper right has been dubbed Sputnik Planum and is being studied for its unusual smoothness, while the dark cratered area just under the spacecraft is known as Cthulhu Regio. So far, New Horizons has only shared a few percent of the images and data it took during its Pluto flyby, but will continue to send back new views of the dwarf planet even as it glides outward toward even more distant explorations.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Oh, baby. That's the good stuff.

[vorlon13]

http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/...k=KgDuBFqu

[Mystical]

Um.. Don't tell Chtulhu they named half a dwarf planet after him; his head is big enough.

[vorlon13]

He has to go there to get the certificate.

[Cyberman]

New Horizons has returned the most stunning hi-res image yet of Pluto:



That is a very heavily reduced version. Links to a 2000x2000 pixel version, and a whopping 8,000x8,000 pixel one, are available courtesy of Phil Plait.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy...image.html

[SteelCurtain]

That picture is sexual in nature.

[Alex K]

The cool thing about this is that nuclear reactions produce particles called anti-neutrinos (the anti-particles of neutrinos). These neutrinos can travel almost unhindered through the entire earth, and therefore only two (!) stationary detectors placed in Japan and Italy can measure a map of all emissions worldwide. This allows them to create a map of all large scale nuclear activities worldwide, in particular nuclear power plants, but also some natural radioactivity.





To illustrate the political impact: on this map, one can see that the Bushehr nuclear facility in Iran is running. You can also tell that France has a lot of nuclear power. You can tell that there is only one nuclear power plant in all of Africa, namely Koeberg in SA.

I am ashamed to admit that I have been misled by shoddy science journalism. The map that was shown here is a simulation, not a measurement that can currently be done. I should have known that it was too good to be true!