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Visit another world without ever leaving your yard. A NASA website gives you the time of day when light on Earth is the same as you would see on Pluto.You can't fly to Pluto. You will never have the opportunity to set foot on its inhospitable surface. It took NASA's New Horizons spacecraft over nine years just to get close. Don't let this deter you from experiencing a little bit of Pluto back here on Earth. NASA has unveiled a "Pluto Time" website that helps space fans replicate the light conditions on the dwarf planet from any location in the...

Light behaves both as a particle and as a wave. Since the days of Einstein, scientists have been trying to directly observe both of these aspects of light at the same time. Now, scientists at EPFL have succeeded in capturing the first-ever snapshot of this dual behavior. Quantum mechanics tells us that light can behave simultaneously as a particle or a wave. However, there has never been an experiment able to capture both natures of light at the same time; the closest we have come is seeing either wave or particle, but always at different times. Taking a radically different...

Why is Christmas a Nighttime Event? By: Msgr. Charles PopeO Holy night! Yes, a silent night! And it came upon a midnight clear. Christmas, it would seem, is a festival of the middle of the night. Jesus is born when it is dark, dark midnight. We are sure of it. And why not?Even though we are not told the exact hour of His birth, we are sure it must have been at night. Scripture does say that the shepherds who heard the glad tidings were keeping watch over their flock “by night” (cf Luke 2:9). Further, the Magi sought him...

Advent and the Drama of Light and Darkness By: Msgr. Charles PopeHere are the summary notes from a talk I gave tonight at the Parish of St. Columba, here in D.C.Many people think of Advent merely in terms of pre-Christmas time: office parties, shopping, decorating etc. But in the Church, Advent is a penitential time, a time of preparation for both the Christmas Feast and the Second Coming of the Lord. The purple vestments signal penance. The faithful are encouraged to go to Confession, and the liturgical texts and readings emphasize readying for the coming of the Lord.The theme of preparation...

==> Click here <== to watch video. Riding Light from Alphonse Swinehart Plus 6 days ago All Audiences In our terrestrial view of things, the speed of light seems incredibly fast. But as soon as you view it against the vast distances of the universe, it's unfortunately very slow. This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system. I've taken liberties with certain things like the alignment of planets and asteroids, but overall I've kept the size and distances of all the objects as...

Bright lights, not human rights: Why North Koreans envy their neighbors /snip December 16th, 2014 Je Son Lee /snip This week Chris M. in the USA asks: What do people in remote areas like Mt. Paektu think about those in neighboring China and those who live in Pyongyang? Issues such as human rights or political systems are considered unimportant by most North Koreans. As a result, while those of us living along the border did have envy for the Chinese, it was usually for material reasons: jealousy of the bright lights and products we knew to exist there. Because there...

Photons generally do not interact with each other in free space but instead one passes through the other with no effect to either one. Vienna University of Technology researchers have made a significant and groundbreaking discovery in the field of quantum mechanics. A team of researchers has developed some unique hardware, which enable photons to interact. This hardware is composed of micro-thin fiber made of glass, which in turn attached to a device called a resonator. The photon particle light can enter the resonator, moves in a circular fashion and then returns to the glass fiber. This change in pathways...

The way we perceive color is greatly influenced by our cultural understanding. We all grew up learning that Fire is Hot and Ice is Cold. Therefor red and orange are warm colors while blue and cyan are cool colors.This association in our mind is so strong that filmmakers can actually invoke a sense of temperature just by the color palette they use in their films.Take for example Spike Lee’s 1989 film “Do the Right Thing”The film beautifully photographed by Ernest Dickerson, is awash in yellows, oranges and reds invoking the heat of a long, hot day in the Bed Stuy...

Physicist James Franson of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County has captured the attention of the physics community by posting an article to the peer-reviewed New Journal of Physics in which he claims to have found evidence that suggests the speed of light as described by the theory of general relativity, is actually slower than has been thought. The theory of general relativity suggests that light travels at a constant speed of 299,792,458 meters per second in a vacuum. It's the c in Einstein's famous equation after all, and virtually everything measured in the cosmos is based on it—in short,...

Imperial College London physicists have discovered how to create matter from light - a feat thought impossible when the idea was first theorised 80 years ago. In just one day over several cups of coffee in a tiny office in Imperial's Blackett Physics Laboratory, three physicists worked out a relatively simple way to physically prove a theory first devised by scientists Breit and Wheeler in 1934.Breit and Wheeler suggested that it should be possible to turn light into matter by smashing together only two particles of light (photons), to create an electron and a positron – the simplest method of...

Scientists are throwing cold water on yet another purported "alien" sighting by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity. Though UFO enthusiasts may beg to differ, mission team members say bright flashes of light visible in Mars photos taken by the Curiosity rover on April 2 and April 3 almost certainly have a perfectly ordinary explanation. "One possibility is that the light is the glint from a rock surface reflecting the sun. When these images were taken each day, the sun was in the same direction as the bright spot, west-northwest from the rover, and relatively low in the sky," Justin Maki, the...

We are to move from the darkness to the light, move from fear into love, and live in the abundance and victory of Christ. So many hold on to their hurt and they walking through life with a chip on their shoulder. Yes, hurting people say and do hurtful things. 
Let's help them discover the wonder of falling in love with Jesus; being forgiven, living free, and learning to focus on the abundance of love and grace - instead of living like God's love is a rare commodity. There is no limit to His love, His loves overflows. God's love...

In the gospel today the Lord describes metaphorically (i.e. figuratively) what a Christian is and what He expects of us. Note five things about what He says.I. The Definitiveness of his Proclamation – The Text says You are the Salt of the earth….You are the light of the World…..But if salt goes flat it is good for nothing…..No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket. The Lord is definitive in two ways. First he says, “You.” He is not talking to people long ago, or someone next to you. He is not merely talking to your pastor,...

It’s not the brightest of ideas. But the federal government went ahead and banned light bulbs. As of Jan. 1, 75- and 100-watt incandescent light bulbs were banned. Once the ones on the shelves run out, that’s it. Canadians will be left to light their homes with two main remaining options: compact fluorescents – the twirly-looking ones – and LEDs. Next year 40- and 60-watt incandescent bulbs will also get the same treatment. All in the name of energy conservation and feel-good enviro policies! Even though the compact fluorescents come with their own problems due to the mercury in them....

O Holy night! Yes, a silent night! and, it came upon a midnight clear. Christmas, it would seem, is a festival of the mid night. Jesus is born when it is dark, dark midnight. We are sure of it. And why not?Even though we are not told the exact hour of his birth we are sure it must have been night. Scripture does say that the Shepherds who heard the glad tidings were keeping watch over their flock “by night” (cf Luke 2:9). Further the Magi sought him by the light of a star, and stars are seen at night,...

Explanation: The bulging center of our Milky Way Galaxy rests on a pillar of light in this luminous skyscape. Recorded on September 22nd in dark South African skies, rivers of dust seem to flow downward from the galactic center towards Antares, yellowish alpha star of the constellation Scorpius, near the top of the scene. The brightest celestial beacon present is not a star at all though, but planet Venus, still dominant in the western sky after sunset. Of course, the pillar of light stretching upward from the horizon is Zodiacal light. Sunlight scattered by dust along the plane of the...

Saw these on Vsauce2 just now and thought they were pretty cool. Apparently these skateboard wheels have LEDs in them that light up when the wheels spin. The LEDs have a 100,000 hour life expectancy and there are no batteries. The spinning of the wheels generates the current necessary. I have no idea how durable they are, though. The website says a set of 4 wheels is $40. A whole board is $100. I'm not gonna link directly. I will put a picture or two for people who don't YouTube.

there's no reason to believe the Honolulu's rail project will do anything to improve traffic congestion. In fact, it's likely to divert resources from more-affordable solutions. "The one thing about these projects [is that] they are very inviting politically," says former Hawaii Gov. Ben Cayetano. Along with Cliff Slater of Honolulutraffic.com and University of Hawaii's Roth, Cayetano has filed a federal lawsuit against the rail project that's held up construction. They claim the city misled the public about the total cost of the project and didn't deliver fully on a required review of alternative solutions to a rail line. Panos...

Conservatives may be less likely to buy energy efficient light bulbs if they're packaged as environmentally friendly, new research suggests. In one study, participants were given $2 to spend on a light bulb with a choice between a 50-cent incandescent bulb and a $1.50 compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulb. They were told the CFL bulb would last 9,000 more hours and reduce energy costs by 75 percent compared with the old-fashioned bulb. Both liberal and conservative participants were more likely to choose the CFL bulb, the researchers found. But if the CFL bulb was marked with a sticker that said...

Like the sun, insulin levels rise and fall in a daily rhythm. Disrupting that cycle may contribute to obesity and diabetes, a new study suggests. Many body systems follow a daily clock known as a circadian rhythm. Body temperature, blood pressure and the release of many hormones are on circadian timers. But until now, no one had shown that insulin — a hormone that helps control how the body uses sugars for energy — also has a daily cycle. Working with mice, researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville have found that rodents are more sensitive to insulin’s effects at certain...