What Happens When A Cannonball Is Dropped In Mercury. Breathingearth - CO2, birth & death rates by country, simulated real-time. How to turn "water" into marbles Personal and Historical Perspectives of Hans Bethe. Photo: The Bounty of Species in a Single Scoop of Seafloor Mud | Wired Science. A mere handful of seafloor mud may contain as many species as are found in a square meter of tropical rainforest. The fantastic assemblage seen above was gathered from a single scoop of mud, about 2 inches deep and 5 inches across. “It’s easy, when you get away from the coast, to think of the oceans as a homogeneous blue. It’s a lot more complex than that,” said biologist Craig McClain of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center.
McClain and colleagues collected the mud while surveying distributions of seafloor organisms, the lives of which are shaped by “marine snow” — a slow, steady, shower of organic particles that drift down from high in the water column. Like terrestrial snow, the deep-sea-life-sustaining version doesn’t collect uniformly but gathers in drifts and eddies. They found large-scale, trans-Atlantic patterns, somewhat reminiscent of the vast and elegant patterns seen in blooming plankton, but not measured before on seafloors. Image: Craig McClain/Deep Sea News. Senses Challenge. Space is Huge. Teenager Wins Science Fair, Solves Massive Environmental Problem. This Awesome Urn Will Turn You into a Tree After You Die. You don't find many designers working in the funeral business thinking about more creative ways for you to leave this world (and maybe they should be).
However, the product designer Gerard Moline has combined the romantic notion of life after death with an eco solution to the dirty business of the actual, you know, transition. His Bios Urn is a biodegradable urn made from coconut shell, compacted peat and cellulose and inside it contains the seed of a tree. Once your remains have been placed into the urn, it can be planted and then the seed germinates and begins to grow. You even have the choice to pick the type of plant you would like to become, depending on what kind of planting space you prefer. I, personally, would much rather leave behind a tree than a tombstone.