Nat Geo – Top 25 Photographs from the Wilderness

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“Curious cub” by guide Kyle de Nobrega at Lion Sands Private Game Reserve. “Nothing quite like the curiosity of a cat.”

Kyle de Nobrega
 

Explore the wilderness with us… Within the next 10-15 years we will see the last-remaining wilderness area on earth dominated by the demands of growing human populations and undermined by accelerated climate change. When the earth’s last wild places are gone, all we will have are fenced off protected areas dependent on constant intervention to persist and marginalized by the demands of sustained development in emerging markets. Guides, rangers, researchers, ecotourists, photographers, artists and conservationists around the world apply themselves everyday to sharing, studying, photographing, writing about, protecting, conserving and celebrating the “wild” with their guests, co-workers, colleagues, and local communities. These amazing photographs are a window into their world, a world where the lions, elephants, orangutans and leopards still reign supreme and we can dream of that perfect morning in the wilderness…View the Pics!

How Much Would It Cost To Live On Mars? [Infographic]

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PopSci – Somebody–no one remembers exactly who–once said that there are three things that matter in real estate: location, location, location. And so it seems: a cramped, roach-ridden studio apartment in Manhattan’s West Village will run you $36,000 a year; a cramped little lander with inflatable rooms on Mars will cost something in the neighborhood of $200 million.

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Largest Quasar Ever Discovered Burns 100 Times Brighter Than Entire Milky Way

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PopSci – Astronomers have found a galaxy whose super-luminous nucleus–called a quasar–is burning 100 times as much energy as the entire Milky Way galaxy.

Though theory has long predicted that quasars this powerful should exist, the newly-discovered object, known as SDSS J1106+1939, is by far the most energetic ever observed. The quasar is powered by a supermassive black hole that lies at its center.

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Polar Bear Cam 2012 – Live Video in Churchill, Manitoba

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Tundra Buggy

Rigged with a live camera, the Tundra Buggy roves the tundra in Churchill, Manitoba, tracking polar bears and other native species during daylight hours. Best viewed from 7 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. central time, this footage is brought to you courtesy of Explore.org, Polar Bears International, and Frontiers North Adventures. It is part of explore.org’s Pearls of the Planet series of live cams created to help people fall in love with the world again.

Polar Bear Cam

Experience Relativity Firsthand In MIT Video Game That Slows The Speed Of Light

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When light slows to the speed of a stroll, things get very, very strange.

PopSci – Many have wondered (and theorized) what it would be like to travel at the speed of light, but over at MIT’s Game Lab developers are envisioning what it would be like if light moved at the speed of you. Through a new game, aptly titled A Slower Speed of Light, game designers there have created a first-person prototype game in which the speed of light slowly decelerates as the user progresses through the game, bringing the effects of special relativity down to walking speed.

A Slower Speed of Light is built on top of Game Lab’s own custom-built, open-source relativistic game engine imbued with all of the strange effects of relativity. But rather than taking the user up to the speed of light, where these effects would be far easier observed, the game brings the speed of light down to the user.

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Cincinnati Zoo Cheetah Sets New World Speed Record in 100 Meter Run

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National Geographic –

Sarah, an 11-year-old cheetah at the Cincinnati Zoo, set a new world speed record this summer during a shoot for National Geographic magazine. She first earned the title of world’s fastest land mammal in 2009 when she covered 100 meters in 6.13 seconds, breaking the previous mark of 6.19 seconds set by a male South African cheetah named Nyana in 2001. On June 20, 2012, Sarah shattered all 100-meter times when she posted 5.95 seconds. By comparison, Sarah’s 100-meter run was nearly four seconds faster than the world’s fastest man, Usain Bolt of Jamaica, whose fastest time for the same distance is 9.58 seconds. Sarah’s top speed was clocked at 61 mph.

Her run was photographed for a November 2012 National Geographic magazine article that will include never-before-seen high speed photographs and video of cheetah movement.

Cameras captured the record-breaking run on Sarah’s first attempt on a specially designed course certified by the Road Running Technical Council of USA Track & Field.

Sarah and the Cincinnati Zoo’s other four cheetahs in the Cat Ambassador Program regularly run at the Zoo’s Regional Cheetah Breeding Facility. The documentation of the run was supported in part by National Geographic’s Big Cats Initiative — http://www.causeanuproar.org — a long-term effort to halt the decline of big cats in the wild.

Cheetahs are endangered and their population worldwide has shrunk from about 100,000 in 1900 to an estimated 9,000 – 12,000 cheetahs today. The Cincinnati Zoo has been dubbed “The Cheetah Capital of the World” because of its conservation efforts through education, public interpretation, and the captive cheetah breeding program. The Zoo’s Regional Cheetah Breeding Center is one of only four similar facilities in the United States managed by the Species Survival Plan. In total, there have been 64 cheetah cubs born in Cincinnati.

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