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News: Another Lost Jim Henson Robot Film Found!

Last week I came across a long-lost film by Jim Henson from 1963. Here's a companion piece featuring Jerry Juhl, Henson's longtime collaborator. Juhl stars as "Charlie Magnetico" and Charlie's mother, "Mom Magnetico," as well as various other human roles. The AT&T archive released this film to the public today. Here's part of what AT&T's archivists say about the film: Juhl’s collaborations with Henson, especially in the late 1960s, with their commercial work for IBM and American Oil,... READ ON

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Lectures for a New Year: Mary Roach is an Awesome Space Nerd

Mary Roach is thoroughly awesome: she's funny, whip-smart, and well-read. In other words, she's one of us. Roach is the author of Stiff, Spook, Bonk, and most recently Packing for Mars; in this lecture, Roach tells stories about space (mainly from NASA), including exactly the kinds of questions we all have about space: what's it like to be there? Does it smell weird? How does food work? What if you get mad at your fellow astronauts? And of course, what's up with the toilets?? Topics: funny (and... READ ON

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Lectures for a New Year: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Pluto

Neil deGrasse Tyson is ridiculously distinguished: the man holds at least fourteen honorary doctorates, not to mention his real doctorate in astrophysics. He was also declared "Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive" by Time Magazine in 2000. But he's most (in)famous for leading the charge to demote Pluto from its planet status to a "dwarf planet." (We made a shirt about that.) As Wikipedia explains: As director of the Hayden Planetarium, Tyson bucked traditional thinking to keep Pluto from being referred... READ ON

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Remembering Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan passed away 15 years ago today. Sagan was a gifted astronomer, astrophysicist, writer, and evangelist of science; he was best known for his TV series Cosmos, and his novel Contact, which was later made into a movie. Both dealt with the big questions of science (including are we alone?), and humanity's place in the cosmos -- about finding meaning through the scientific method, and experiencing wonder in the process. Sagan was a tremendously humane man, whose warmth and generosity of spirit... READ ON
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Amazing Images of The Orion Nebula

The universe is loaded with unbelievably gorgeous sights beyond even the most creative artist's talents. For a few examples of just how stunning the stars can be, take a look at this stunning collection of images from the Orion Nebula. If lovely scenery isn't enough to get you interested, the article is also filled with fun little facts. For example, around 700 stars are at different stages of development inside the nebula right... READ ON

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Stephen Colbert and Neil deGrasse Tyson

In this eighty-four-minute video, Stephen Colbert (not doing his Colbert Report character) chats with Neil deGrasse Tyson. It's an intelligent, fun, and wide-ranging discussion, touching on science, history, and personal experiences of science. The most adorable parts: Colbert consults his phone for notes; and Tyson admits that the night sky reminds him of what he saw at the Hayden Planetarium as an eleven-year-old kid. There's a good forty minutes of Q&A, and both men are delightfully snappy... READ ON

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"Cosmos" as Choose-Your-Own-Adventure

Accountant and Cosmos aficionado Callum Sutherland has remixed the landmark Carl Sagan documentary Cosmos into a "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure" style video series called Imagination. You have to have Flash installed, and YouTube Annotations enabled for it to work (these are both set up properly by default for most people); once once you've got those going, it's great fun -- you basically watch a re-cut version of Cosmos in bite-sized chunks, with decision points along the way (at the end of each video).... READ ON

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Beautiful Slow-Motion Footage from Apollo 13 Launch

If you enjoyed yesterday's video of the Earth taken from the ISS, you might enjoy this slow-motion video of a Saturn V rocket blasting off to take Apollo 13 to the moon in 1970 (spoiler alert: they didn't quite make it). What makes this video special is that it's extremely colorful -- starting with deep blues, the roil of orange-and-black fire from the rocket leads to a symphony of saturated colors, culminating in some of the richest purple-and-salmon you're likely to see all day (unless you're... READ ON

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Stunning Time Lapse of Earth Seen from Space Station

Do you have five minutes to see what Earth really looks like? You need to watch the time lapse video below. It shows spectacular low-Earth-orbit views of our planet -- the northern (and southern) lights are patches of swirling electric-green fog, our cities look like patches of fire, and thunderstorms flicker and twinkle like tiny static shocks. What's most amazing, frankly, is that this is real -- it looks like a rendering or special effects, but apparently is not. The source images were captured by... READ ON

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NOVA: The Fabric of the Cosmos

NOVA's "The Fabric of the Cosmos" premieres tonight, November 2, at 9pm ET/PT on most PBS stations. Recommended for: families who aren't quite sure what relativity is, but want to find out. Starting tonight, enjoy the four-hour series The Fabric of the Cosmos, based on physicist Brian Greene's breakthrough book. I've previewed the first episode of the show, and found it a worthy companion to the book, especially for those who aren't particularly up on physics in general: do you know what Einstein's... READ ON

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