jtotheizzoe: infinity-imagined: The actual distance between the Earth and the Moon. Perspective. The moon is much further away than most people think. That makes the fact that people have flown there even cooler.

jtotheizzoe: This is the adorable way that a physicist proposed to his girlfriend, who is also a physicist :) “Taking these results into account, the author proposes to Christie the indefinite continuation of the study. The subject’s response to this proposal should be indicated below” I trust this was peer reviewed, and passed with flying colors …

spaceplasma: Today…

jtotheizzoe: A Simulated Heart This elegant, powerful, nearly tireless organ fascinates us so deeply that we have attributed to it (scientifically and not-so-scientifically) everything from love to life itself. Its woven fibers of muscle and intricate electrochemistry are still incompletely understood. This simulation from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center uses the power of 10,000 computer processors to simulate the dynamics of our most critical organ. It highlights the uniquely mechanical and deeply complicated biology behind the muscle behind every man, the human heart.

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Through the eyepiece of an optical telescope, you see something right in front of you, and your brain says, there it is: a jellybean, four feet away. Of course, Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and far-flung as it gets, but that doesn’t compute. It might be the farthest thing you’ll ever see, but it looks so close, and in the absence of contextual clues, the ordinary functioning of perspective fires and misses.

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The concept of an embryo is a staggering one, and forming an embryo is the hardest thing you will ever do. To become an Embryo, you had to build yourself from a single cell. You had to respire before you had lungs, digest before you had a gut, build bones when you were pulpy, and form orderly arrays of neurons before you knew how to think. One of the critical differences between you and a machine is that a machine is never required to function until after it is built. Every animal has to function even as it builds itself.

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itsfullofstars: xkcd

The Adorable Biology of Snoring Hummingbirds

I think we’ve all felt like this on a Monday, right? This little hummingbird has just reserved a spot in my list of Top 10 Cutest Things I’ve Ever Seen, thanks to its snoozy little snore. Of course, hummingbirds don’t really snore, do they? Maybe … sort of … but not for the same reasons we do. When humans (or my dogs) snore, it’s usually an obstruction l vibrating the back of the throat when we try to breathe in.

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jtotheizzoe: How many people have ever been born? You’ve wondered this. No matter how down you feel sometimes, take solace in the fact that you are one of the lucky 6.5% (or really a bit more, since this only goes through 2011) of people who are still alive.

jtotheizzoe: buzzfeedceleb: gifsfln: **Seth Meyers **on the Steroid Era of storms. From last night’s Late Night filmed during Sandy, with no audience members. At least someone in New York is hitting home runs in October. Bravo, Seth Meyers!