Quote of the Day
After the agricultural revolution, human societies grew ever larger and more complex, while the imagined constructs sustaining the social order also became more elaborate. Myths and fictions accustomed people nearly from the moment of birth to think in certain ways, to behave in accordance with certain standards, to want certain things, and to observe certain rules. They thereby created artificial instincts that enabled millions of strangers to cooperate effectively. This network of artificial instincts is called culture.
— Yuval Noah Harari, 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind'. This is the best definition of culture that I have seen.
I liked this picture of the recent impact of a small asteroid on Mars. This impact crater is about 100 feet across and was not seen in NASA photographs prior to 2010 and was first seen in a photograph in 2012. The blue color is an artifact of the image enhancement process, which removed the red dust.
Here is a link to the original article.
There also was an asteroid impact reported on Jupiter that was seen by Austrian amateur astronomer Gerrit Kernbauer on 17-March-2016. Here is the Youtube video, which is a bit rough but still worth a view. Here is a link to an article on this event.
Here's an interesting link to an impact simulator done at Perdue:
http://www.purdue.edu/impactearth/
Wow … this is really cool. Nice contribution.
mathscinotes
The documentation for that asteroid impact simulator with lots of math/physics is found at: http://www.purdue.edu/impactearth/Content/pdf/Documentation.pdf
That is quite a paper! Good read on how to model impacts.
mathscinotes
Great post.