Hard Science Rocks

Recent Work

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  On the Defensive by ECGardner

  This is the Florida cottonmouth, a snake that I love and respect dearly. Cottonmouths have such bad reputations, and it makes me so sad because they are such fantastic creatures. There is a commonly held belief that they “chase people away from their nests” and “aggressively stand their ground.” These ideas are simply a total misinterpretation of their behavior. Snakes are not humans; you cannot interpret their actions in human terms, you must interpret their actions in snake terms. First of all, cottonmouths don’t ever nest. In fact the only snake in the world that nests is the king cobra. Second, when a cottonmouth or any snake moves toward you on the ground, it is not an aggressive move; rather, they are fleeing. See, snakes have poor eyesight and they get confused easily when scared. They look at you and see something big and mistake you for a tree or some other form of shelter under which they can hide. Thirdly, what we see as a cottonmouth “standing its ground” is really just the snake remaining motionless in the hopes that you won’t see it. If it flees, you are more likely to see it and eat it (at least that is what it thinks). This cottonmouth is giving me its characteristic open-mouthed defensive display. In the hundred or more cottonmouths with which I’ve interacted, this is the one and only time I have ever witnessed its defense display. And it only threatened me because I was being annoying, laying on the ground in front of it on my stomach with my camera in one hand and a stick in the other trying to move the brush away from it get a clear shot. As soon as I put the stick down, the defense display stopped and the snake turned and left. This shot was taken across the road from my house north of Gainesville, Florida. 100% of the profits from the sale of this image will be donated to Steve Irwin’s Wildlife Warriors Worldwide.

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  Body Worlds, Manchester…I went to Manchester yesterday, with some of my fellow students, to see the Body Worlds exhibition. I had a fantastic day, because I met …

  I went to Manchester yesterday, with some of my fellow students, to see the Body Worlds exhibition. I had a fantastic day, because I met up with one of my old friends and spent the day with her. / The Body Worlds exhibition is showing at the Museum of Science and Industry, and I urge all who read this to go. It is a fantastic combination of art and science, and I wish they allowed photography within the exhibition. For a sample of what they have on display, I recommend sticking it in to Google Images or something. / For those that don’t know anything about it, the collection is the work of Gunther von Hagens, an anatomist who has developed a technique called plastication. This is essentially sucking all the juices out of flesh, and replacing them with plastic. People can donate their bodies to be put on display in the future. / Among the exhibits were: / - a gorrila, which still had most of its facial skin on, but was fascinating purely due to its size / - a table of three poker players, each displaying a different part of the anatomy (eg one was mostly skeleton, another had his abdomen cut open), which was amazing, the facial expressions were fantastic and one of them was cheating! / - a woman stepping out of her skin, which was beautiful in the strangest way / - a collection of foetuses at different developmenal stages, which would be quite enough to put anybody off abortion. / - a single badmintion player that had been seperated into three bodies all joined at the foot, one showing skeleton and tendons, one showing organs, and one showing muscles. Along with the big exhibits there were tables with smaller exhibits, such as single organs. These included a smokers and non-smokers lungs, and some damaged organs such as an enlarged heart and a brain that had suffered a fatal stroke. Body worlds is also showing in Milwaukee, Baltimore, and LA. There are four different collections – the one I saw was Body Worlds 4.

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  Seadragon Silhouette by MattTworkowski

  Image of a Weedy Seadragon(Phyllopteryx taeniolatus),taken at Flinders Pier,Vic

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  8 Myalina by SauriaMami

  one of the fossils that can be found locally…....i have an area that i can litterally just step all over these hand sized ancients…......they are from the ‘Pennsylvanian’ era of fossil layer…..related to todays clams and mullusks….these were extremely prolific in their days. this fossil? is over 300 million years old…......the no.# is a sign post out on a country road near where my father lives…lol this particular piece and the ones i find are all located in Kansas…central US

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  Uprising by Erin Jay

  Created in response to a challenge. Normally when one is creating a layered fractal, you change the OCA (outside coloring algorithm) to create variations in texture and color. For this piece, all of the OCAs are the same (Triangle Inequality Average) and I changed the formula on each layer to create the texture. Created in UltraFractal 3.

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  Tambja Time by MattTworkowski

  Image of a Tambja verconis(Nudibranch) taken down at Portsea Pier,Vic.These little guys are actually quite difficult to photogragh,their body is that reflective that a good exposure can be difficult.

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  Diamond in the Sand by Jocelyn Hyers

  Can anyone guess what this image is? UPDATE Image has been identified as grains of sand under a microscope. This was shot in the lab .. it is sand from the dunes on Nanny Goat Beach at Sapelo Island, GA – USA … I shot the image through the lens piece of a microscope …

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  Pennsylvanian Fossils In Kansas by SauriaMami

  a handful of fossils found where I live….... / 1.Pharkidontus / 2.Bellerophon / 3.Meekospira / 4.Amphiscapha / 5.Enteletes / 6.Orthomyalina / 7.crinoids / others that i still dont know the name to? / anyway…average age of these? 300-600 million years….... / these all were sea life from the area of where I live…..(note i’m posting in the ‘sea life’ gallery…

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  Beaver Tail by SauriaMami

  Although I don’t know the era this one is from….at least 200+years ago….....this form of ‘arrowhead’ is called a Beaver Tail…....I’m sure it doesn’t take extreme intelligence to see why. Often the ends of the hafts…or tail here…....get broken off and then the piece is either tossed or re-knapped (chipped). The rock is called Flint…a very strong and often beautiful type of stone that America is very rich in. Often tribes would travel for hundreds of miles to get to a quarry where they’d chip out sizable chunks to carry back to their main camp grounds….to then be knapped into spear points(what this piece is), arrow heads(what everone calls ANY point like this), axe heads, knives, scrapers, drills and other useful tools. / This is a favorite of mine because of the gray/pink combination. Very lovely to see. Found in a plowed farm field in Kansas. 4cm long and less then 1 cm thick