Opens profile photo
Follow
ScienceAlert
@ScienceAlert
🔭⚗🌏🐛🚀🌌🌿✨ Official Twitter for sciencealert.com
Australiasciencealert.comJoined July 2009

ScienceAlert’s posts

How stunningly ethereal is this!? 😍 Io and Europa float through space along their orbits, past Jupiter's giant red spot, in a video created by using still images taken by Cassini. 📷: NASA/JPL/Kevin M. Gill
Embedded video
0:29
27
1,757
This stunning data visualisation shows a year's worth of earthquakes by depth, between July 2017 to July 2018. 😮 Our planet sure has been busy! ​ ​📷 : Raluca/ArcGIS API/USGS
Embedded video
0:58
18
1,729
This footage captures the still mysterious process of crystallisation at the atomic scale for the first time. As water evaporated from salt, it leaves salt molecules behind to do their solid forming thing. buff.ly/3qWgryk📷 : The University of Tokyo
Embedded video
GIF
7
690
Replying to
Hi , thank you for letting us know! This is awful and it shouldn't be on you to bring it up. This isn't actually our story, it's a syndication we've run from one of our partners. We're adding an editor's note now to amend this oversight and we will pass the feedback on.
3
630
Jupiter looks so pretty in ultraviolet. 😍 Ultraviolet images helps scientists track distribution of particles in the planet's atmosphere. Higher layers appear redder due to greater absorption of ultraviolet light, bluer indicates lower more reflective layers. 📷 NASA/ESA et al.
Image
7
613
💧Look what happens when harmonics are played through an acoustically levitated drop of water! Sound waves are used to levitate the drop, and different resonance frequencies cause it to oscillate in a variety of shapes. It's called a star drop! ​ ​📷: Ran et al, arXiv, 2013
Embedded video
1:08
9
613
We love this photo of inventor Nikola Tesla in his laboratory with his "magnifying transmitter" ♥️ The machine was not operating when Tesla was posing for the photo - the electrical discharge was added later using an early photo editing technique called double exposure 
Image
5
579
So pretty! 😍 This spectacular light microscopy image is of an algae skeleton that's 32-40 million years old. While they're so tiny, they were once so numerous they formed large layers of rocks in the sediment with their glass 'bones'. 📸 : Anatoly Mikhaltsov
Image
5
557
Robots are getting incredibly advanced in the ways they move. This one somehow manages to be sort of cute while a bit unnerving. Imagine what they'll be able to do in another decade! 🤖 ​ ​📷 : Boston Dynamics
Embedded video
0:23
34
566
According to the Julian calendar (which was in use at the time) Isaac Newton was born on Christmas day back in 1642. He went on to formulate the laws of gravitation and motion - and discover a little thing called calculus 🍎📷 : Godfrey Kneller/American Geophysical Union
Image
13
523
Look at this weird pile of goo! It's called sailor's eyeball algae (Valonia ventricosa) and it's one of the largest unicellular organisms in the world - meaning that this whole ball is just one huge cell! ​ ​📷: d99/iNaturalist/CC BY-NC
Image
9
473
😱 WOW. That's the surface of an asteroid! Hayabusa2's Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout took photos during descent, revealing an oddly dust-free surface that seems similar to carbonaceous meteorites - suggesting the asteroid formed during a cataclysmic event! ​ ​📷: MASCOT/DLR/JAXA
Image
8
455
😍🐢🤍 ​This is a teeny tiny, albino, Galápagos giant tortoise - one of two that recently hatched at Tropiquarium, a zoo in Switzerland. ​ This is extremely rare - there's no wild documented cases, and this is the first time it's been seen in captivity. ​ ​📷: Tropiquarium
Image
Image
8
420
😍 It looks like a scene straight out of a gorgeous and epic fantasy movie - but this is a real image of the Milky Way over the Dolomite mountain range at Tre Cime in Italy. This image was highly recommended for the Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year and c…
Image
3
398
The Cat's Eye Nebula shows us the beautiful death throes of a dying star. As the star runs out of fuel, it throws off layers of mass, creating a cloud illuminated by the star within. 📷: NASA/ESA/HEIC/The Hubble Heritage Team 📷: Nordic Optical Telescope and Romano Corradi
Image
Image
6
376
On 10 July 1856, the world received a tremendous gift - incredible genius inventor Nikola Tesla 🎁 Among other things, he invented the first alternating current motor, fluorescent neon lights, the Tesla coil (one of which features in this photo), and wireless communication! …
Image
9
361
This is called a cross sea, and you do not want to get caught in it! They occur when two weather systems create waves in non-parallel directions, and the resulting conditions are extremely hazardous. This one was captured on Île de Ré, France. 📷: Michel Griffon/Wikimedia
Image
11
342
🤩 We just can't get over the beauty of this image! It's a composite of two tracked six-second exposures, showing Earthshine reflecting off the Moon - and, to the right, Jupiter and its Galilean moons, Callisto, Io, Europa and Ganymede. ​ ​📷: selenophile_photo/reddit
Image
4
349
It may look like a nebula trapped inside a gemstone but this cosmic cloud is actually a botryoidal jasper formation. Little particles of dust or sand were present when the jasper was forming inside the Oregon contra luz opal, causing it to bubble as it set. ​ ​📷 : Bonhams
Image
Image
4
318
An hourglass of light around a still-forming star 450 light years from Earth!😲 The protostar itself is hidden within the neck of this hourglass, and the fiery formation can only be seen in infrared light, a perfect target for NASA's JWST Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) 📷
Image
2
135
Look at this little guy go! It's a microscopic tardigrade wriggling around a bubble, and what it's actually doing is anyone's guess. Is it stuck? Is it having a good scratch? Whatever it's doing, it sure is adorable! ​ ​📷: Rebecca Stern/Harvard Microbial Sciences Initiative
Embedded video
0:10
11
313
Check out this incredible photo of the Sakurajima volcano in southern Japan erupting in 2013! No one really knows why volcanic lightning happens, but one hypothesis is that it is facilitated by charge-inducing collisions in volcanic dust. 😱🌋 📷: Martin Rietze/APOD
Image
4
277
When you snap a photo at just the right moment! This great white shark was photographed by a marine biologist off the coast of Gansbaai, South Africa, just as it was about to break the surface tension of the water. What a magnificent beast! 🦈 ​ ​📷: Matt_Dave/reddit
Image
6
289
Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics helped take humans to space, turned 100 today! Happy Birthday to an incredible woman! 🎉 📷: NASA
Image
3
283
😭 What a beautiful tribute to Margaret Hamilton, who led the development of the onboard flight software for NASA's Apollo program. Google programmed the 107,000 mirrors of the Ivanpah Solar Facility to reflect moonlight for a portrait bigger than Central Park. ​ ​📹: Google
Embedded video
0:30
3
274
Electric vehicles have been around since the 1880s and were even preferred early on, as they were, quiet, didn't emit smelly fumes and easier to start than gas cars. 🚗 This early EV is plugged to its fueling station in 1903. 📷 : The New York Public Library Digital Collections
Image
4
252
This is the dance of Earth and Venus around the Sun. They have a resonance of 8:13, which means for every 8 times Earth goes around the Sun, Venus goes around 13 times. When you trace out their orbits, you get a beautiful pentagrammic pattern 😍 📷: IEatTortillas/Imgur
Embedded video
GIF
4
262
Look at this little guy go! It's a protist called Meteora sporadica that lives in the sediments at the bottom of the Mediterranean, propelling itself with arms that perform almost constant rowing motions. It's unlike any other organism. ​ ​📹: /
Embedded video
0:10
7
266
This is what a full Moon looks like from the ISS! Taken by astronaut Jeff Williams in 2016, it also shows the thinning of our atmospheric layers as the blue turns to black. Incredible! ​ ​📷: Jeff Williams/NASA
Image
5
255
Red sprites are formed by the discharges of positive lightning between an underlying thundercloud and the ground. This image, taken over Ok…
Image
2
235
This tiny, tiny creature, imaged with scanning electron microscopy, is a diatom - a single-celled microorganism in a silica shell 🔬 They're incredibly abundant in the soil and oceans - there are so many that they produce around 20 percent of Earth's oxygen! 😱 📷: CSIRO
Image
5
226
♥️ Happy Valentine's Day, all the way from Mars! This series of images shows heart-shaped mesas and depressions on the Martian surface, taken with the Mars Global Surveyor orbiting the Red Planet. ​ ​We'll be together soon, Mars! ♥️ ​ ​📷: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems
Image
3
229
Marie Curie, the incredible physicist and chemist, was born on November 7, 1867 - 150 years ago today. She is the only person to win two No…
Image
5
214
This is the rare sight of a ctenophore, or comb jelly, with its tentacles fully extended, at a depth of 1,460 metres. ​The shimmering rainbow is produced by light scattering of its cilia, which it uses to propel itself through the water. ​ ​📷: NOAA Ocean Exploration & Research
Image
3
224
Christmas is a special day for more than one reason. Brilliant mathematician Isaac Newton was born on 25 December 1642! He went on to formulate the laws of gravitation and motion - and invent a little thing called calculus 🍎 Happy holidays, everyone! 📸: Godfrey Kneller/Ame…
Image
12
194
This 200 million year old shell, found in Somerset, England, fossilized into iridescent aragonite. Like oil on water, layers of the aragonite structure reflects light, causing the light to interact with itself and produce the gorgeous rainbow sheen. 📷 goldenhourminerals
Image
1
220
Curiosity's aluminum wheels have seen better days, as this photo taken on the 3079th Mars day of the mission shows. That's over 8 years here on Earth of walking up and down mountains in the same pair of shoes. 😮 ​ ​📷: Mars Mission Images/NASA
Image
9
210
This is what magnetic fields look like in real-time, through a device called a ferrolens. A ferrolens consists of a hollow lens with a thin film of ferrofluid inside, and an LED strip for light and colour. Hands up if you want one! 🖐️ 📷: Markoulakis et al., Results in Physics
Image
Image
Image
3
210
Bursting through a bubble cloud these birds reveal secrets of flight. 🦅 😯 Scientists expected their wings create two lift-generating vortices, but the helium-filled bubbles also showed another pair of air swirls created by their tails. ​ ​🎥 : Usherwood, et al, JEB, 2020
Embedded video
0:21
1
205