Space artist Don Davis, Dark matter and energy, Virtual Easter eggs

[Nostromics Newsletter]

Nostromics Newsletter

Nostromics science gifts product news, educational resources & science tidbits

Nostromics Newsletter, 13 April 2011 - You are welcome to share this mail, see newsletter back issues

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Space artist Don Davis

Don Davis is a major contemporary American space artist. His web site is worth a visit, not just for viewing some of his works featuring accurate portrayals of space-related subjects based on accurate scientific knowledge. Davis worked extensively for NASA with leading planetary scientists, and had the opportunity of studying images coming from scientific missions in the Solar System. His site provides valuable material based on this work, such as information on color in astronomical photos. See also a collection of short essays by Don Davis, some of which about little known space exploration and history topics.

Dark matter and energy

Even images of the deepest and most remote regions of the universe, like the Hubble deep field, show a huge amount of matter, mostly in the form of countless galaxies. Yet visible matter is less than 5% of all matter in the universe. The rest is in the form of dark matter, which doesn't emit or interact with electromagnetic radiation and whose existence can be inferred from its effects on visible matter, and dark energy, which is responsible for the growing expansion rate of the universe. Unseen dark matter and dark energy together account for 95% of the mass and energy of the observable cosmos.

So, dark does matter, as reminded by the DARK MATTERS text in a futuristic, star field textured font on the Nostromics Dark Matters Women's Dark T-Shirt. Other clothing products with the same cool design, like the Dark Matters White T-Shirt and dark hoodie, are available in the Astronomy section of Nostromics Store.

More science gifts and products at Nostromics Store.

Virtual Easter eggs

Visit the Google search engine at www.google.com and search for "the answer to life, the universe, and everything". Google will return 42 as the top result, a joking reference to the similar quote of the popular The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novel by Douglas Adams. If you use the Firefox web browser, enter about:mozilla in the address bar and visit the address, which will return a humorous quote.

These are both virtual Easter eggs, i.e. hidden and undocumented messages or features of a computer program intentionally left by their developers. The name refers to the hidden surprises of Easter eggs. They may be as simples as funny or humorous messages, or as elaborate as complete applications, such as the Google Earth flight simulator. Easter eggs are not limited to computer software and web sites, but are also found in physical products like microchip and printed circuit boards, or in media like DVDs.

-- Paolo Amoroso & Mauro Arpino (Nostromics), science educators - Milan, Italy

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Copyright (C) 2011 by Paolo Amoroso and Mauro Arpino