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Picture of the Day

Tuned Mass Damper of Taipei 101 Tower

Taipei 101, once the world’s tallest building upon its completion in 2004, is not only an architectural wonder but also a marvel of engineering, particularly because of its tuned mass damper (TMD). This TMD is a critical component of the skyscraper’s structural integrity, designed to stabilize the building against the forces of nature, such as typhoons and earthquakes, which are common in Taiwan.

The principle behind mass dampers is relatively straightforward yet ingenious. When an earthquake strikes, it generates waves of energy that cause the building to sway.

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Picture of the Day

Siberian Worm

Scientists bring 46,000-year-old worm found in Siberian permafrost back to life

A remarkable discovery was made in the Siberian permafrost – a female microscopic roundworm that had been trapped in the frozen ground for over 46,000 years was brought back to life by scientists. After reviving the worm, it began reproducing asexually through a process called parthenogenesis, requiring no mate.

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Picture of the Day

pale blue dot

That dot is Earth. A mote of dust, suspended between the rings of Saturn, photographed by the Cassini spacecraft at a distance of 1.4 billion kilometers.

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

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Picture of the Day

Man gets genetically-modified pig heart in world-first transplant

David Bennett, 57, is doing well three days after the experimental seven-hour procedure in Baltimore, doctors say.

The transplant was considered the last hope of saving Mr Bennett’s life, though it is not yet clear what his long-term chances of survival are.

"It was either die or do this transplant," Mr Bennett explained a day before the surgery. "I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last choice," he said.

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Picture of the Day

Scientists found a billion-year-old fossil believed to be an ancestor of earth’s very first plants

A group of paleontologists say the tiny freckles they found on a rock could hold the key to understanding the origins of plant life on earth.

The freckles, Virginia Tech researchers say, are actually billion-year-old seaweed microfossils. They substantially push back the current record of the multicelluar green plant by nearly 200 million years, according to the study published on Monday. Previously, the oldest known fossilized green alga was 800 million years old.

The fossils are so tiny — about 2 millimeters in length or the size of a flea — that they are barely visible without a microscope. But despite their miniscule size, researchers said the microplants may have contributed to the evolution of the land plants that appeared nearly 550 million years later.

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Picture of the Day

noaa 19 satellite

In 2003, a technician forgot to log that he had removed 24 bolts during the maintenance of the NOAA-19 satellite, causing the satellite to fall over and costing $135,000,000 in damages

On 6 September 2003 at 15:28 UTC, the satellite was badly damaged while being worked on at the Lockheed Martin Space Systems factory in Sunnyvale, California. The spacecraft fell to the floor as it reached 13° of tilt while being rotated. The satellite fell as a team was turning it from a vertical to a horizontal position.

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Picture of the Day

black hole picture

The second ever picture of a black hole was just released

Two years after producing the first-ever image of a black hole, an international team of researchers has released an updated view of the magnetic fields surrounding it — a development they say brings them one step closer to understanding the M87 galaxy’s ability to “launch energetic jets from its core.”

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Picture of the Day

nasa perseverance

NASA’s Perseverance rover descends to touch down on Mars in a still image from a video camera aboard the descent stage taken February 18, 2021.

Perseverance will investigate the surface geological processes and history of the Red Planet. This will include an assessment of its past habitability, the possibility of past life on Mars, and the potential for preservation of biosignatures within accessible geological materials. It will cache sample containers along its route for retrieval by a potential future Mars sample-return mission. Perseverance is accompanied by the Ingenuity helicopter drone, which will attempt the first powered flight on any planet beyond Earth as a technological demonstration.

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Picture of the Day

mouse utopia

There was a man-made mouse utopia called Universe 25. It started with 4 males and 4 females. The colony peaked at 2200 and from there declined to extinction. Once a tipping point was reached, the mice lost instinctual behaviors. Scientists extrapolate this model to humans on earth. 

Lone females retreated to isolated nesting boxes on penthouse levels. Other males, a group Calhoun termed “the beautiful ones,” never sought sex and never fought—they just ate, slept, and groomed, wrapped in narcissistic introspection. Elsewhere, cannibalism, pansexualism, and violence became endemic. Mouse society had collapsed.

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Picture of the Day

ryugu asteroid

This photograph was taken on the surface of asteroid Ryugu by the Hayabusa 2 mission. The rocky boulders resemble a rare type of meteorite — carbonaceous chondrites — that we find here on Earth after they fall from the sky.

The Hayabusa 2 mission’s return to Earth earlier this month completed a six-year round-trip mission to asteroid Ryugu. The craft launched in December 2014 aboard a Japanese H-2A rocket, and arrived near Ryugu in 2018 to begin several months of surveys before attempting the first landing.

The spacecraft dropped a fleet of landers and rovers to the explore the asteroid’s surface in late 2018, including a hopping robot developed by engineers in Germany and France.

Scientists are eager to analyse the specimens, which they expect may contain organic molecules. Researchers believe asteroids like Ryugu, or a larger body like the one from which Ryugu split off, could have seeded Earth with the ingredients necessary for life.

Hayabusa 2 departed Ryugu in November 2019 to begin the year-long trip back to Earth.