This visualization shows ocean surface currents around the world during the period from June 2005 through Decmeber 2007.
To download this video or to watch it in full
via flickr.com
Eclectic Perambulations in the Noosphere
To download this video or to watch it in full
via flickr.com
Piano notes made visible on the CymaScope
"Shannon Novak, a New Zealand-born fine artist, commissioned us to image 12 piano notes as inspiration for a series of 12 musical canvases. We decided to image the notes in video mode because when we observed the 'A1' note we discovered, surprisingly, that the energy envelope changes over time as the string's harmonics mix in the piano's wooden bridge. Instead of the envelope being fairly stable, as we had imagined, the harmonics actually cause the CymaGlyphs to be wonderfully dynamic. Our ears can easily detect the changes in the harmonics and the CymaScope now reveals them--probably a first in acoustic physics."
"Music, in the absolute sense, is the invisible geometry of the cosmos, a delicate tracery of frequencies that harmonise with each other and from which all matter manifests.
The conductor of this sublime symphony is the Creative Force of the cosmosn- some people prefer to say : God.
What is not commonly known is that music has the almost magical power to create form from formlessness."
Credit: Seth B. Darling, Argonne National Laboratory, Steven J. Sibener, University of Chicago
Don't take the title literally. The ripples Seth Darling of Argonne National Laboratory and Steven Sibener of the University of Chicago, both in Illinois, captured with an atomic force microscope may look like the surface of an ocean, but they are a mere nanometer deep, and there's not a drop of water in sight.
The rich shades of turquoise and indigo are artificial, but the choppy waves are real. They are formed by millions of molecules arranging themselves on a gold surface. These "self-assembled monolayers" come with a head that clings to the surface and a tail that sticks out into the environment. Darling compares it to dumping a bowl of wet spaghetti on the floor and "all of a sudden it stands up as if it were uncooked spaghetti on end. That's kind of a weird thing to happen."
