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Five Ways Your Holidays Might Be Similar to the Crew on the Space Station

The holiday season is here! You might think that your celebrations are WAY different than what is done on the International Space Station, but you might be surprised…Here are a few ways your holidays might be similar to the crew on the space station:

1. You’re Instagramming All Your Decorations

Yep! Just like on Earth, the space station crew has the capability to use social media while on orbit. If you don’t follow them, you should check it out and get an out of this world perspective of what life is like on the International Space Station. (Expedition 34 crew members assemble in the Unity node of the space station for a brief celebration of the Christmas holiday on Dec. 24, 2012.)

2. You Have to Make Sure to Call Your Relatives

You don’t want to forget to wish Aunt Sue “Happy Holidays”, she might not send you a gift next year! The crew on the space station have the ability to talk to their loved ones every day. (Cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, and astronauts Michael E. Lopez-Alegria and Sunita L. Williams conduct a teleconference on Dec. 25, 2006.)

3. The Family Photos Never Seem to End

The crew on the station might not be related by blood, or even country of birth, but they share living space, meals and time together just like a family on Earth. And when it comes to the holidays, you bet they’ll be snapping pictures to capture the moments. (The six Expedition 30 crew members assemble in the U.S. Lab aboard the space station for a brief celebration of the Christmas holiday on Dec. 25, 2011.)

4. Meal Prep is a Task Shared by All

When you’re making food for multiple people, everyone needs to pitch in and help…the crew on the space station included! (Astronauts Michael Fincke, Sandra Magnus and cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov, pose for a photo as they prepare to share a Christmas meal on the space station on Dec. 25, 2008.)

5. Eating Cookies is a Must

What would the holidays be like without eating cookies? They even have the chance to eat them in space…pretty cool! (Astronauts Michael Fincke and Sandra Magnus hold Christmas cookies while posing for a photo near the galley on the space station on Dec. 25, 2008.)

For more pictures from the holidays on the International Space Station, check out our Flickr album: HERE. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Between 470 million to 760 million people worldwide could lose their land to rising seas if global warming is allowed to continue unbridled, says a study conducted by scientists at Climate Central, a nonprofit research and news organization. In this photograph by Shahria Sharmin of @ap.images, Saleha, 38, who lost her land to river erosion, stands in a field that she farms with her husband in exchange for a place to stay in the island district of Bhola, where the Meghna River spills into the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh. For more on the UNited Nations Climate Change summit in Paris, France, visit TIME.com. http://ift.tt/1RnIReR

San Bernardino: The latest site for America’s unending gunfight

EXCLUSIVE - Government whistleblower reveals the TRUTH behind the‪ UFO sighting in Los Angeles on Saturday night & it’s COMPLETELY SHOCKING

Enlightening Walks in British Woodlands

By Freddie Ardley Photography

Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

The Painted Surfer by Toby Harriman Via Flickr: North Shore Hawaii.

Tumblr Tuesday: Earth Day

Fursty Photo (furstyphoto) Earth Day is about critical issues facing our planet, but sometimes it’s also about how goddamned beautiful a mountain is. Look. 

Miss Marine Bio (missmarinebio) The ocean is as terrifying as it is amazing, full of sharks and maybe even the ghosts of dead sharks. Lucky for us, Miss Bio is going where few of us are brave enough to go, and she’s taking pictures along the way.

Earth Street (earthstreet) Imagine if someone stopped you on the street, took your picture, and asked you what you thought about the Earth. Caren didn’t have to imagine it. Good job, Caren. 

Exoteric Environmentalism (exotericenvironmentalism) If you’re into cool facts, you’re into this blog. If you’re into dumb lies, we don’t know what to recommend you, but we still respect you.

Marine Conservation (marine-conservation) Now that we all agree ghost sharks exist, please read this blog to educate yourself on man-sized swimming centipedes.  

Landscape via erosion, tectonics, volcanoes, etc. Human via sperm and egg. Photo of landscape via furstyphoto

AM & FM: How Radio Works 

Lately I’ve been thinking about how the things I use every day actually work, and since I listen to a lot of podcasts, you can guess where this post is going: radio. 

In a studio, a microphone converts sound waves from a person’s voice into an electronic audio signal. If this was sent out by itself, it would only travel a few metres in air before it faded out. To get radio waves to travel long kilometres to a receiver, we have to combine it with a “carrier wave”—an electromagnetic wave. 

Electromagnetic waves are made up of oscillating electric and magnetic fields, just like visible light, but radio waves are right down on the lower end of the spectrum, so their wavelengths are very long—around 300 metres. 

(Image Credit: NASA)

Sound information is combined with the wave by altering or modulating the wave’s properties, like changing its amplitude, frequency, or phase. There are two ways to combine the audio signal with the carrier wave: amplitude modulation (AM) or frequency modulation (FM). 

AM radio changes the overall amplitude or strength of the wave, varying its height in order to incorporate the sound information. FM radio works a little differently, because it changes the frequency of the wave rather than the amplitude. The frequency is the number of wavelengths that pass by a given point per second—physically, a high frequency wave would look squashed up, and a low frequency wave would look stretched out. 

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Both kinds of waves are susceptible to variations in amplitude as they zoom off through the air, but since FM radio relies on changes in frequency rather than amplitude, these variations don’t matter—they can just be ignored, and so the sound quality is usually super clear. But AM radio relies on the amplitude to convey information, so when the amplitude is varied a bit, this results in interference or static, which will be a familiar idea if you’ve ever listened to AM radio on a rural country road. The upside of AM radio is that it travels much further than FM radio, which is probably why you’re listening to it on that rural country road in the first place. 

So once these radio waves—whether AM or FM—hit a radio receiver, their oscillating fields induce a current in the conductor. The sound information encoded into the waves can be extracted, and converted back to sound waves to grace your ears with your favourite music or talk show. 

(Bonus: if you want to use science to learn more cool science, my fave podcasts are Radiolab, the Infinite Monkey Cage, and Big Picture Science.)

A lot about games isn’t how perfect your code is, it’s about how it feels and how much fun it is.

PopCap Games co-founder John Vechey (via codeorg)

California is going through it. They experienced the warmest winter in 2014, mountain snowpacks have vanished, and are in midst of a megadrought.

Read more about the effects global warming is having on the state.

California is going through it. They experienced the warmest winter in 2014, mountain snowpacks have vanished, and are in midst of a megadrought.

Read more about the effects global warming is having on the state.

Recreating famous logos by hand

Video

My biggest fears

Programmers in movies vs in real life

Adventures in the United Kingdom

Study Abroad If you were asked to spend a year living in a different location, where would you choose and why?

One of my  favourite countries in the world are the United Kingdom and France. If I could study and live anywhere in the world, it would be the UK. 

For some reason, the more I read about the it,  the more I want to be there. I was always fascinated about travelling to other places from my country and the UK was on top of my list. 

I really like how they have preserved much of their history and buildings which in my eyes are really beautiful. I always liked places or cities which are modern but with a classic look like London. 

And the UK has some of the best Universities in the world such as Oxford and so on. I hope I’ll have the capacity to study there one day. 

"Google Glass" takes on a whole new meaning with the rendering for Google’s futuristic new headquarters.

Nishanth 11th grade San Ramon, CA

This 16-year-old launched an app in the App Store, but it’s not like he’s been at it for years. Nishanth started learning just a few months ago, using Code.org courses and other free ways to learn online.

“I’ve always been interested in technology. The...

Sony’s SmartWatch 3 is a study in how to make an unremarkable gadget. It’s a small puck of a screen that you can slot into a rubberized band (there’s a metal version too), and it seems meant to be as inoffensive as possible — much like the original LG G Watch. The end result is more sportwatch than smartwatch.

Adobe Photoshop is 25 years old today.

Lunar New Year celebrated around the world

Millions around the world headed home to celebrate the year of the goat (or sheep or ram depending on how you translate it) with their families, as lunar New Year starts Feb. 19, 2015.

Trains in China were jammed as people returned to their family homes. Apartments were cleaned to sweep away ill fortune. Traditional red envelopes, called hongbao or ang pow are offered for good luck and prosperity in the New Year.

Factories in parts of Asia shut down but the holiday is celebrated globally. In Sydney, Australia processions, lion dances, and dragon races welcomed the New Year. New York welcomed the holiday with a fireworks display on Tuesday over the Hudson River. (Yahoo News)

(Photos by Chaiwat Subprasom/REUTERS, Edgar Su/REUTERS, Kim Kyung-Hoon/REUTERS, Edgar Su/REUTERS, Erik De Castro/Reuters)

See more images from Lunar New Year and our other slideshows on Yahoo News!

"World of Tomorrow," the new animated short by Don Hertzfeldt, promises to be one of the best sci-fi movies in years — if the first trailer is any indication.

You've Pasted An Image URL Into A Post. What Happens Next Will Shock You.

Copy the URL of an image you own. Paste that URL anywhere in the text of a post. Watch how that URL doesn’t even show up. Watch how — ♫ whap ♫ — your image shows up instead. 

An invisibly delightful convenience. Enjoy.