black holes and gray matter. in one thousand tangos.

             
discoverynews: Cosmic Buckyball Particle ‘Factory’ Discovered For the first time, “buckyballs” have been discovered in the cosmos in a solid form. Until now, the only evidence in space for the bizarre little hollow balls of carbon atoms have been in interstellar gases, but with the help of NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered buckyballs accumulating and stacking atop one another to form solid particles. keep reading Holy Buckminster!

discoverynews:

Cosmic Buckyball Particle ‘Factory’ Discovered

For the first time, “buckyballs” have been discovered in the cosmos in a solid form.

Until now, the only evidence in space for the bizarre little hollow balls of carbon atoms have been in interstellar gases, but with the help of NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered buckyballs accumulating and stacking atop one another to form solid particles.

keep reading

Holy Buckminster!

In a Desert in China, a Trove of 4,000-Year-Old Mummies

science:

NY Times:

In the middle of a terrifying desert north of Tibet, Chinese archaeologists have excavated an extraordinary cemetery. Its inhabitants died almost 4,000 years ago, yet their bodies have been well preserved by the dry air.

The cemetery lies in what is now China’s northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang, yet the people have European features, with brown hair and long noses. Their remains, though lying in one of the world’s largest deserts, are buried in upside-down boats. And where tombstones might stand, declaring pious hope for some god’s mercy in the afterlife, their cemetery sports instead a vigorous forest of phallic symbols, signaling an intense interest in the pleasures or utility of procreation.

Natural mummies! Mixed ancestry! Phallic symbolism! Tocharian! Awesome.

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