October 29, 2013

Video: A Stunning Mars Flyover

The video below, released to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Mars Express, is a stunning flyover of the planet, showcasing grabens, dendritic valleys, lava flows and the highest known mountain in the Solar System.

bigthinkeditor

The European Space Agency’s Mars Express has been around the Red Planet quite a few times – some 12,000 times, in fact. In the process, the space probe’s High Resolution Stereo Camera, has captured enough images to create “an almost global digital topographic model of the surface,” according to the space agency.

Watch here:

Read more here.

a computer generated image of a human brain.

Thinking

The great free will debate featuring Michio Kaku and Steven Pinker

Who — or what — really controls your mind?

Building destroyed by the Halifax Explosion. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The Past

The largest accidental explosion of all time

More than a century ago, Halifax suffered an accidental blast one-fifth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

a collage of photos of a man with a hat and a book.

High Culture

6 great books with wildly unreliable narrators

Dive into the twisted truths and concealed realities told by literature’s most unreliable narrators.

a group of five matches on a pink background.

The Well

Signs you’re burned out — and how to bounce back

If you don’t feel better after the weekend, the “burnout paradox” could explain why.

▸

7 min

—

with

Laurie Santos

Starts With A Bang

The trick to instantly identifying JWST images

If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it’s a JWST image or any other observatory.

Up Next

Don’t watch the new X-Men (or any) trailer

So the new X-Men film trailer is out. It’s being Tweeted, Facebooked; it’s probably rising through the ranks of YouTube, Vimeo and so on. It’s easy content for sites, a blessing of […]