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Today’s asteroid exploding over Russia

crazy.

(via cornersoftheworld)

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ictidomys:

Indigenous Cultures of the North Pacific circa 1880. By State of the Salmon.

(via fuckyeahcartography)

fuckyeahsovietrussia:

Soviet space themed Christmas/New years cards.

(via gaggedandcollegebound)

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breakingnews:

Satellite captures Russian lava eruption from space

NBC News: Infrared images from NASA’s Earth Observing 1 satellite have captured dramatic scenes of lava spewing from a volcano in Russia’s remote Kamchatka Peninsula.

Photo: This view of Tolbachik Volcano on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula was captured in infrared and visible light on Dec. 1. (NASA / EO-1 / USGS)

Art Show in Space Could Last Billions of Years

A piece of artwork headed into space this week may be on display for the next few billion years.

A collection of images called “The Last Pictures” is hitching a ride on a communications satellite today (Nov. 20) that may well orbit the Earth until our planet’s predicted fiery death 5 billion years or so from now, according to the the project’s creator.

“‘The Last Pictures’ tells a kind of story to the distant future about where these spacecraft came from and what happened to the people that made them,” artist Trevor Paglen, who spent almost five years assembling the collection.

The satellite will launch atop a Russian Proton rocket at 1:31 p.m. EST (1831 GMT) from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where the local time will be early Wednesday.

Full Article

Paglen’s “The Last Pictures” project

(via scienceyoucanlove)

critink:

The Tattoos of Ancient Siberian Princesses

Tattoos as complex and abstract as any modern design have been found on the body of Siberian princess buried in the permafrost for more than 2500 years.

Natalia Polosmak, the scientist who found the remains of Princess Ukok high in mountains close to Russia’s border with Mongolia and China, said she was struck by how little has changed in the past two millennia.

Tattoos of mythological creatures and complex patterns are believed to have been status symbols for the ancient nomadic Pazyryk peple first described by the Greek historian Herodotus in the 5th century BC.

A striking tattoo of a deer with a griffons beak and Capricorn antlers was found on the left shoulder of the ancient ‘princess’, who died about age 25.

The antlers are decorated with the heads of griffons. And the same griffon’s head is shown on the back of the animal. She also has a dear’s head on her wrist, with big antlers.

“Our young woman - the ‘princess’ - has only her two arms tattooed,” Dr Polosmak told the Siberian Times. “So they signified both age and status.”

Buried with the ‘princess’ were six saddled-and-bridled horses, bronze and gold ornaments - and a small canister of cannabis.

She is not known to be a ‘princess’, as her name implies. Experts are divided over whether she was a poet, healer or holy woman.

Two warriors recovered from the same burial site in the permafrost of the Ukok Plateau were similar fantastical creatures. One had an image reaching across his right shoulder from his chest to his back.

The reconstructed tattoos were released to mark the moving of the remains of the princess to a permanent display in the National Museum in Gorno-Altaisk where she will be put on display.

Two warriors recovered from the same burial site in the permafrost of the Ukok Plateau were similar fantastical creatures. One had an image reaching across his right shoulder from his chest to his back.

The reconstructed tattoos were released to mark the moving of the remains of the princess to a permanent display in the National Museum in Gorno-Altaisk.

“Tattoos were used as a mean of personal identification - like a passport now, if you like,” said Dr Polosmak.

“I think we have not moved far from Pazyryks in how the tattoos are made.

“We can say that most likely there was - and is - one place on the body for everyone to start putting the tattoos on, and it was a left shoulder. I can assume so because all the mummies we found with just one tattoo had it on their left shoulders.

“And nowadays this is the same place where people try to put the tattoos on, thousands of years on.

“I think its linked to the body composition - as the left shoulder is the place where it is noticeable most, where it looks the most beautiful.”

Another similarity is how the number of tattoos is linked to age.

Dr Polosmak related the analogy of Greek tourist operators assessing the age of British tourists by the number of tattoos on their body.

But there the similarities end.

The tattoos used by the Pazyryk nomads were intended to help members of the tribe identify each other in the afterlife.

IMAGES:

• TOP: The elaborate tattoo of a deer with a griffons beak and Capricorn antlers found on the body of a Polosmak ‘princess’.
• MIDDLE: (1) Designs and locations on the princess’s body (2) Thumb and wrist tattoo locations on the “princess” (3) Body of a Pazyryk warrior buried nearby
• BOTTOM: (1) Design and location on the warrior’s body (2) Design and location on the second warrior’s body

[source] Thanks to @iwillnothangmyselftoday for the tip on this awesome art-historical discovery.

(via anthrocuriosities)

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ecocides:

Agricultural land in western Russia’s Black Earth Region, it is about 400 km directly south of Moscow. Many grains are grown here, such as winter wheat and rye. This is composite of three images; each image is assigned a colour (red, green or blue) and combined to produce this representation. The colours reveal changes in the surface between the satellite’s passes | image: ALOS/ESA

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fotojournalismus:

A pigeon leaves trails on snow covered ground outside Russia’s Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk on Oct. 11, 2012.

[Credit : Ilya Naymushin/Reuters]

glad it’s not snowing here yet!

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Frozen Lake Baikal, Russia.

(via climateadaptation)

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discoverynews:

i wonder what it would take for this to happen again… would China have to launch people to the moon or mars to get American’s excited about space again?

The Psychology of Sputnik

Fifty-five years ago today, the Soviet Union launched history’s first artificial satellite.

Sputnik was an innocuous satellite; Soviet scientists behind the launch were just happy to successfully put the probe into orbit. But in the United States the reaction was different.

The engineering feat very quickly gave way to hysteria and paranoia. President Eisenhower initially downplayed the role of the satellite as a threat to find that he’d grossly underestimated its psychological impact.

read the full story…