The xx

In a modern-day chain letter, The xx sent their latest album to one fan, allowing them (and us) to see word of mouth in action.

Farrell: “In this day and age, a lot of how bands interact with fans online is to reward them with something new and innovative. To get people excited. The xx were a word-of-mouth band, so we thought this was a way to go back to that sense of self-discovery and fans sharing of music. The visualizer paints that picture in stark detail.”

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guardian science

Every month The Guardian asks its readers to send in art based on a different theme. This month’s theme was science.

 

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Phytoplankton

Sometimes, Phil Plait says,

the best view of the Earth around us is from above. And sometimes that view is amazing, but a reminder that our ecosystem is a dynamic balance… and it’s best that we understand all the forces that can upset that equilibrium.

Like, you know, Phytoplankton seen from space:


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There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be. – Douglas Adams

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The street art collective Mentalgassi turned this trailer into a camera as part of Amnesty International’s Making the Invisible Visible campaign. This is how they made massive photo murals of people’s faces and plastered them around Spain.

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There are approximately 125 billion galaxies in the universe. The Drake Equation calculates the probability that there is intelligent life beyond Earth at around 100% and some physicists believe we’ll make contact with aliens during this century. But what then? How Dolphins could help us communicate with aliens.

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They argue that consciousness of a decision may be a mere biochemical afterthought, with no influence whatsoever on a person’s actions. According to this logic, they say, free will is an illusion. “We feel we choose, but we don’t,” says Patrick Haggard

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“People have been discovering components of DNA in meteorites since the 1960′s, but researchers were unsure whether they were really created in space or if instead they came from contamination by terrestrial life,” said Dr. Michael Callahan of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. “For the first time, we have three lines of evidence that together give us confidence these DNA building blocks actually were created in space.”

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It’s raining on Saturn! Well, kind of. Actually, not really.

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Never Mind The Artwork Here’s The LEGO. Classic album covers remade from LEGO by British artist Aaron Savage.

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Wash your hands and fibonaccis. 

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Someone snapped a photo of the Space Shuttle Endeavor from the window of a commercial flight. 

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Films by sunglasses.

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