Makes sense
LABS: Found Image
(Source: nickholmes)
“Hebesphenomegacorona3,” page 24 of Polygons And Polyhedra set 3 of 10.
“A” From the book “Alphabet Book #1.” Album covers sewn together. 6.25” x 4.75
(Source: jhermann, via warm-ways)
“Pentagonal Icositetrahedron,” page 20 of “Polygons and Polyhedra,” Set 4. 6” x 4”, Mixed media quilt.
Barns Are Painted Red Because of the Physics of Dying Stars
Have you ever noticed that almost every barn you have ever seen is red? There’s a reason for that, and it has to do with the chemistry of dying stars. Seriously.
Yonatan Zunger is a Google employee who decided to explain this phenomenon on Google+ recently. The simple answer to why barns are painted red is because red paint is cheap. The cheapest paint there is, in fact. But the reason it’s so cheap? Well, that’s the interesting part.
Red ochre—Fe2O3—is a simple compound of iron and oxygen that absorbs yellow, green and blue light and appears red. It’s what makes red paint red. It’s really cheap because it’s really plentiful. And it’s really plentiful because of nuclear fusion in dying stars. Zunger explains:
The only thing holding the star up was the energy of the fusion reactions, so as power levels go down, the star starts to shrink. And as it shrinks, the pressure goes up, and the temperature goes up, until suddenly it hits a temperature where a new reaction can get started. These new reactions give it a big burst of energy, but start to form heavier elements still, and so the cycle gradually repeats, with the star reacting further and further up the periodic table, producing more and more heavy elements as it goes. Until it hits 56. At that point, the reactions simply stop producing energy at all; the star shuts down and collapses without stopping.
As soon as the star hits the 56 nucleon (total number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus) cutoff, it falls apart. It doesn’t make anything heavier than 56. What does this have to do with red paint? Because the star stops at 56, it winds up making a ton of things with 56 neucleons. It makes more 56 nucleon containing things than anything else (aside from the super light stuff in the star that is too light to fuse).
The element that has 56 protons and neutrons in its nucleus in its stable state? Iron. The stuff that makes red paint.
And that, Zunger explains, is how the death of a star determines what color barns are painted.
(via thephrygiancap)
I grew up Asian in Los Angeles and I never heard about this till today. Such is the tenuous history of this city, paved over and forgotten. —axm
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The truth about the Chinese Massacre remained buried for 140 years, until writer John Johnson Jr. took up the hunt. Johnson spent more than a year examining every piece of evidence, including documents long thought to have been lost to history. Aided by newly discovered records at the Huntington Library, Johnson found that the men convicted of the killings were in fact guilty. Little surprise there. But Johnson found something astonishing — and sinister. The bloodlust unleashed that October night was allowed to unfold (if not also set in motion) by some of the city’s leading citizens, men so powerful they could arrange to have the convictions fall apart and the reasons for the massacre covered up. (via How Los Angeles Covered Up the Massacre of 17 Chinese - Page 1 - News - Los Angeles - LA Weekly)
“Square,” page 5 of “Polygons and Polyhedra,” Set 4. 6.25” x 4.75”, Mixed media quilt.
SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATION: Nucleosome
The Mediterranean Institute for Life Sciences
Split, CroatiaHigh resolution ray-traced model of a nucleosome, isolated on black.
A nucleosome is the basic unit of DNA packaging in eukaryotes, consisting of a segment of DNA wound in sequence around four histone protein cores. This structure is often compared to thread wrapped around a spool.
Nucleosomes form the fundamental repeating units of eukaryotic chromatin, which is used to pack the large eukaryotic genomes into the nucleus while still ensuring appropriate access to it. In mammalian cells approximately 2 m of linear DNA have to be packed into a nucleus of roughly 10 µm diameter.
Nucleosomes are folded through a series of successively higher order structures to eventually form a chromosome; this both compacts DNA and creates an added layer of regulatory control, which ensures correct gene expression.