Photographs Sent Into Interstellar Space

The Voyager spacecraft (launched in 1977) left our solar system 5 years ago and became the first man-made object to enter interstellar space. A committee led by Carl Sagan (American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, etc) agreed upon 116 photos that should be on board. Sagan had this to say about the images:

[...] a collection of 116 pictures (one of which is for calibration) detailing but not limited to human life on earth and the planet itself. Many pictures are annotated with one or many indications of scales of time, size or mass. Some images also contain indications of chemical composition. All measures used on the pictures are first defined in the first few images using physical references.

Here's a gallery of all of the images from Imgur:

View post on imgur.com

Learn more about each image on Wikipedia.

Scientific Proof That I am Meant to be an Artist

Sarah and I went to the Science Museum of Minnesota this past weekend to see Body Worlds. Is it science or is it art? We had a good discussion on that. Anyway, we spent some time at the machine that has 2 pendulums attached to a pen. You can adjust the weights on the pendulums to cause the pen to react in different ways. Sarah (the doctor) was able to make this in her first attempt:

I (the artist) was able to make this in my first attempt:

There you have it: scientific proof that Sarah is not an artist, and that I am an artist. Sarah can easily prove to you that she is a pharmacist, while I prove to you that I am not a pharmacist by giggling when anyone says “Levitra.”