awhiffofcavendish:

saltrat88:

mikestillneedsadrink:

saltrat88:

tilthat:

TIL that door knobs made out of brass automatically disinfect themselves in about 8 hours through the oligodynamic effect

via reddit.com

Fascinating. Good post.

Silver does this also, which was probably handy for silverware before antibacterial dish soap was invented.

That’s mentioned in the article as well. They also stated that a copper or silver container can disinfect a pot of water in a few hours. im gonna add a copper vessel to my emergency provisions now. @yourunclejingo you may find this stuff interesting too.

Its almost like our ancestors did shit that made sense even if they didn’t always fully understand why.

dazed-unfazed:

kweyolempress:

tentakrule:

winneganfake:

fullcontactmuse:

jenniferrpovey:

holmgangs:

sunlitrevolution:

Bladeless wind turbines generate electricity by shaking, not spinning

Scientists hope to hugely reduce the cost of wind energy by removing the blades from wind farms, instead taking advantage of a special phenomenon to cause the turbines to violently shake.

Vortex, a startup from Spain, has developed the tall sticks known as Bladeless — white poles jutting out of the ground, that are built so that they can oscillate. They do so as a result of the way that the wind is whipped up around them, using a phenomenon that architects avoid happening to buildings and encouraging it so that the sticks shake.

They do so using vortices, which is where the company gets its name from. The bladeless turbines use special magnets to ensure that the turbines are optimised to shake the most they can, whatever speed the wind is travelling at.

As the sticks vibrate, that movement is converted into electricity by an alternator.

Wiggling Poles of the Wasteland Harvest Electricity For Power Hungry Humans

These also look like they would cause fewer problems for birds and bats.

This is really cool.

They leave off the important note that when the wind rises, each pole makes a sound like a hundred vuvuzelas roaring at once. In the post-apocalyptic world of the future, villagers will speak in hushed tones about the Roaring Plains, and caution adventurous travelers to stay well away. 

I appreciate how they essentially invented very useful yet alien-looking screaming pillars. Science continues to make some suspiciously sci-fi shit.

At least you won’t have to go outside to know how windy it is… You’ll hear it.

They provide us energy

They provide us warmth

They love us

These martyr gods, their twitching agony is our salvation

GLORY TO THE WAILING OBELISKS

cupcakeshakesnake:

geekgirlsmash:

spacegambit:

krystallkitty:

micdotcom:

Watch: This revolutionary technology is changing the world for kids born without limbs 

That’s awesome and I’m sure its way cheaper than a prosthetic, but seriously it cannot be cheap to 3d print something that big…

this one 17 year old guy 3d printed an entire arm and shoulder for himself and it cost him $250

this seven year old girl got half an arm (just like lusie in the gifs) 3d printed and it only cost $50

can we just compare that with the average price of buying a prosthetic

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3d printing is gonna help so many people holy crap 

No no no, guys, this gif set leaves out the literal best stuff from the video.

So a few years back, this guy who accidentally cut off his fingers, teamed up with a special effects artist/puppeteer and created a 3D printable prosthetic hand, that used the movement of the wearer to be able to grab things. The guys who did this said they were just going to post the schematics online, which in turn lead to creating a network of people with 3D printers, who were willing to print prosthetics for people. The network of volunteers, turned into an organization that gives prosthetic arms/hands to kids who need them. They have science types improving the designs and creating new ones, they got a grant from Google, classrooms and scout troops are getting involved and making prosthetic hands for people.

Everything about this is amazing.

It’s stuff like this that makes technology awesome :’)

World’s first animal was a pancake-shaped prehistoric ocean dweller

emerald-of-the-eight:

Researchers first discovered the pancake-shaped creatures — a group known as Dickinsonia in the late 1940s. The species were among the most common residents of the world’s oceans 558 million years ago, during the Ediacaran period. Whereas most living things during that time ranged in size from microscopic to a few millimetres long, some Dickinsonia grew up to 1.4 metres in length.

The creatures’ large size has puzzled scientists because Dickinsonia lived tens of millions of years before the Cambrian explosion, the period 541 million years ago when living things became bigger and most major animal groups emerged. Scientists have since debated whether Dickinsonia were primitive animals, giant single-celled organisms called protists, bacterial colonies or something else entirely.

The latest study attempts to end that debate by analysing chemical biomarkers preserved in a unique set of Dickinsonia fossils from Russia, rather than by examining the ancient species’ body characteristics.

World’s first animal was a pancake-shaped prehistoric ocean dweller

fatphrodite:

digg:

This could be the international flag of planet Earth

Designed by Oskar Pernefeldt, this proposal for a flag that represents our entire planet could have a future on Mars.

Centered in the flag, seven rings form a flower – a symbol of the life on Earth. The rings are linked to each other, which represents how everything on our planet, directly or indirectly, are linked. The blue field represents water which is essential for life – also as the oceans cover most of our planet’s surface. The flower’s outer rings form a circle which could be seen as a symbol of Earth as a planet and the blue surface could represent the universe.

thought it reminded me of somethin then i remembered

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