At the end of every quarter the Sifter will highlight the top 25 ‘Pictures of the Day‘, culminating in an epic Top 100 at the end of the year (check out the ‘Top 100 POTDs for 2012‘). It’s hard to believe we’re already half way through 2013. Below you will find the second installment…
PLANET MERCURY Photograph by NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington This colorful view of Mercury was produced by using images from the color base map imaging campaign during MESSENGER’s primary mission. These colors are not what Mercury would look like to the human eye, but rather the colors enhance…
Design by Jake Evill Jake Evill wants to use 3D printing to revolutionize the way we treat fractured bones. Instead of the typical bulky, itchy and smelly plaster or fiberglass casts we use today; Evill is proposing a custom, 3D-printed, lightweight, ventilated, thin, recyclable and washable design. Jake is a recent graduate from the…
Photograph by JAMEY PRICE Website | 500px | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram In this perfectly timed photograph by Jamey Price entitled Poetry in Motion, we see the Marussia F1 Team doing a practice pit stop with Max Chilton during F1 pre-season testing at Barcelona. There are tons of fascinating details about pit stops…
On June 23, 2013 at 11:32 UTC the full moon was not only the closest and largest full moon of the year, it will also be the moon’s closest encounter with Earth for all of 2013. It will not be this close again until August 10, 2014. Astronomers call this sort of close full…
AUSTRALIAN SUNSET FROM SPACE Photograph by NASA The sun is about to set in this scene showing parts of southwestern Australia, which was photographed by one of the Expedition 35 crew members aboard the International Space Station on April 1, 2013. Several of the orbital outpost’s solar array panels are seen in…
Inspired by the geography game GeoGuessr, Alan Taylor, who runs theatlantic.com’s wildly popular In Focus, spent some time recently in Google Maps, finding the edges of their Street View coverage. In the article, Taylor remarks: “I’ve always been drawn to the end of the road, to the edges of where one might be allowed…
Photograph by Danny Choo @ culturejapan.jp The Problem Bicycles are a popular form of transportation in Japan. However, when parked they can take up a lot of public space that could otherwise be used by pedestrian foot traffic, small storefronts, etc. The Solution Rather than take up valuable real estate above ground, store them…
On the edge of the Arctic Circle, where the River Lule meets the Gulf of Bothnia, lies Facebook’s newest data center in LuleĆ„, Sweden. Launched earlier this week, the center is now handling live traffic from around the world. Facebook claims LuleĆ„ is likely to be one of the most efficient and sustainable data…
The Cupola is an ESA-built observatory module of the International Space Station (ISS). Its seven windows are used to conduct experiments, dockings and observations of Earth. It was launched aboard Space Shuttle mission STS-130 on 8 February 2010 and attached to the Tranquility (Node 3) module. The Cupola’s 80 cm (31 in) window is…