A Bird Ballet : A Murmuration of Thousands
A bird ballet | Short Film from Neels CASTILLON on Vimeo.
"Filmmaker Neels Castillon was on a commercial shoot a few days ago, waiting to catch a helicopter flying into a sunset, when suddenly tens of thousands of starlings unexpectedly swarmed the sky in an enormous dance known as a murmuration. With his director of photography, Mathias Touzeris, the two filmed for several minutes capturing some pretty magnificent footage. You might recall a similar murmuration video from last year shot extremely up close and personal using a camera phone that went viral. How do thousands of birds simultaneously make such dramatic changes in their flight patterns? After tons of research, scientists still aren’t sure."
We Got Us a Convoy.......
Wiki: The Pine Processionary (Thaumetopoea pityocampa) is a moth of the family Thaumetopoeidae. It is sometimes placed in the genus Traumatocampa. It is an abundant species of pine woods in central and southern Europe, and an important economic pest. The species is notable for the behaviour of its caterpillar larvae, which overwinter in tent-like nests high in pine trees, and which process through the woods in nose-to-tail columns .
via youtube.com
Drops on Drops on Drops
via youtube.com
When falling onto another liquid layer, water droplets typically bounce then coalesce. If the surface is vibrating, however, the droplets will continue bouncing.
Huge Spirals Found on Mars
"Hundreds of large spirals have been discovered on Mars, and scientists think the coiled features are evidence of a type of lava flow never before seen on the red planet.
If so, the spirals would suggest that volcanoes—not ice floes, as other experts believe—shaped an unusual area near the red planet's equator.
Athabasca Valles is a region of flow channels and valleys covered with terrain plates, structures that show clear evidence of something fracturing and drifting across the planet's surface million years of years ago."
The Still Secret Life of Plants...
The Secret Life of Plants by Joannah Underhill
"Plants may be able to respond to sounds and even make clicking noises to communicate with each other, according to new research.
If initial results can be confirmed and replicated, the latest findings could change our understanding of how plants sense their environment and communicate with each other. It would also overturn years of scepticism that plants can 'talk' in this way and give lie to the idea that animals are the only organisms capable of such feats."
Von Kármán Vortices in the Greenland Sea
"In the image above, an isolated Norwegian territory in the North Atlantic Ocean, called Jan Mayen Island, is responsible for the spiraling cloud pattern. The unique flow occurs when winds rushing from the north encounter Beerenberg Volcano, a snow-covered peak on the eastern end of the island that rises 2.2 kilometers (1.4 miles) above the sea surface. As winds pass around the volcano, the disturbance in the flow propagates downstream in the form of a double row of vortices that alternate their direction of rotation."
Did Fata Morgana Help Sink the Titanic ?
"Did this mirage help sink the Titanic? The optical phenomenon called Fata Morgana can make strange shapes or a false wall of water appear above a watery horizon. When conditions are right, light reflecting off of cold water will be bent by an unusual layer of warm air above to arrive at the observer from several different angles.
One hundred years ago... such a Fata Morgana mirage might have obscured real icebergs from the clear view of crew onboard the Titanic. Additional evidence for this distortion hypothesis arises from the nearby vessel SS Californian which reported sightings consistent with Fata Morgana mirages. The above Fata Morgana mirage was taken off the US Pacific coast in 2008."
via apod.nasa.gov
The Day Niagara Falls Dried Up
"ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY four ago today, Niagara Falls stopped flowing. For the first and only time in recorded history, the second largest falls in the world (after Victoria Falls in Southern Africa) stopped bucketing its average 567,811 Litres per second, for a period of 30 to 40 hours."
Motion Induced Blindness
What to see :
Below you see a rotating array of blue crosses and 3 yellow dots. Now fixate on the centre (watch the flashing green spot). Note that the yellow spots disappear once in a while: singly, in pairs or all three simultaneously. In reality, the 3 yellow spots are continuously present, honest!
What to do :
You can use the slower/faster buttons to change speed. Disappearance persists down to surprisingly low speeds. [If there are no buttons on the right, please update your Flash player.]
You can use the larger/smaller buttons to change size. Disappearance persists up to surprisingly large sizes.
You can use the “back-col” button to change the background colour. The yellow dots disappear into whatever colour the background has.
The ‘defaults’ button at the top restores the standard settings.
via msf-usa.org
Sent by John...Thanks !