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You can put yourself into the experience of witnessing the final mission of the space shuttle program with the shuttle Atlantis in a multimedia post at the Neatorama Spotlight Blog. Read about what it was like to be there at liftoff. Listen to the roar of the shuttle and the crowd that saw it launch. See a collection of beautiful photographs covering the preparations, the launch, and the final landing. It’s all there in Neatorama’s tribute to the ending of the space shuttle program. Link
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Bompas and Parr: Return of the Jelly Knights from Gestalten on Vimeo.
Anyone can slap some Jell-0 in a decorative mold and serve it up for dessert. But Sam Bompas and Harry Parr (AKA Jellymongers) have taken gelatin design to a whole new level. Using the jiggly, edible medium, Bompas and Parr sculpt intricate models of really complicated architecture like St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Gherkin in London. This video doesn’t reveal their secrets entirely, but it does give a better look at their process and some of their other fascinating work.
Sailing 3,000 miles across the Atlantic is quite an accomplishment, but what these guys did was a bit more daring. First, they built their own tiny raft out of pipes tied together, and second, the four sailors proved that age is not a limiting factor:
Talk about your ancient mariners! British adventurer Anthony Smith, 85, and a senior citizen crew have sailed their tiny raft, An-Tiki, some 3,000 miles from Portugal’s Canary Islands to St. Martin in the Caribbean. They arrived this morning.
Smith and his three-man crew wanted to show what the elderly can do when they set their minds and hearts to it. [...]
According to the adventure newsletter Expedition News, Smith’s latest escapde began more than three years ago when he placed the following advertisement in a London newspaper, The Daily Telegraph: "Fancy rafting across the Atlantic? Famous traveler requires 3 crew. Must be OAP [Old Age Pensioner]. Serious adventurers only." He got hundreds of eager replies from men fed up with gardening and playing bridge with their wives.
Link | An-Tiki official website
Purple-winged enteropneust. Photo: David Shale
Scientists first thought that the deep valley of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a massive undersea mountain in the Atlantic Ocean, was too harsh a climate for life. But when they explored the region down to the depths of 12,000 feet, they discovered a myriad of intriguing species, including this strange purple worm:
Blind, purple, and peculiar, this primitive, deep-sea life-form may be akin to the common ancestor of humans and all other backboned animals, according to scientists.
One of three new species of enteropneust acorn worm discovered during the mid-Atlantic survey, the creature has no eyes, no obvious sense organs, and no brain. "This is about as primitive as you can go," team member Monty Priede said.
But, he added, "they’ve got a head end and a tail end—the basic body plan of vertebrates." Such living fossils "represent the first mobile animals."
National Geographic has the gallery of new species: Link
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Jennifer Figge from Aspen, Colorado, accomplished a feat never done before by a female: swim across the Atlantic Ocean. A decade earlier French swimmer Benoit Lecomte made the first known solo-Atlantic swim from Massachusetts to France in 73 days.
Reaching a beach in Trinidad, she became the first woman on record to swim across the Atlantic Ocean — a dream she’d had since the early 1960s, when a stormy trans-Atlantic flight got her thinking she could don a life vest and swim the rest of the way if needed.
The 56-year-old left the Cape Verde Islands off Africa’s western coast on Jan. 12, battling waves of up to 30 feet (9 meters) and strong winds.
David Higdon, a friend of Figge who kept in touch with her via satellite phone, said she had originally planned to swim the Bahamas, but inclement weather forced her to veer 1,000 miles (1,610 kms) off course to Trinidad, where she arrived on Feb. 5.
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