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Father and son looking at Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History - David H. Koch Hall of Fossils. (2/8/2020)
"It was four o'clock according to my guess,
Since eleven feet, a little more or less,
my shadow at the time did fall,
Considering that I myself am six feet tall."
~from Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Impressive Mammoth skeleton. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History - David H. Koch Hall of Fossils. (2/8/2020)
2021
More artwork at: www.permiandesigns.com/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/permiandesigns/
Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/permiandesigns.bsky.social
NOTE: All works featured here are completely original creations. None are made with the assistance of any form of AI technology in any fashion whatsoever.
detail from "'A Pictorial Chart of Daniel's Visions' arranged and published by J. V. Himes, 14 Devonshire St. Boston" Joshua Vaughan Himes (1805-1895) 1886
Larkin and Russo have fun with seeing what the continents used to look like in this interactive display. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History - David H. Koch Hall of Fossils. (2/8/2020)
Tasmania's oldest rocks seem to have been laid down when the now-western part of the island was attached to present-day western North America.
Analysis of monazite and zircon in rocks of the ancient Rocky Cape Group in north-west Tasmania found that they are between 1.45 billion and 1.33 billion years old. These minerals, strongly resemble those found in Montana, Idaho and southern British Columbia.
The outcrop on the right and some of the shingle in the foreground are from that Neoprotozeroic geologic era. The other shingle is Basalt from the Tertiary era. The battered cray-pot in the left fg from the Quaternary ;-)
From the film archive, 1994.
Nikon F3HP, Nikkor 35-70mm f/3.5 AiS, Kodak TMAX 400
Miller Museum of Geology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
pseudopod-in-pseudopod, two-of-a-kind were trundling along together more than half a billion years ago collected from a small quarry north of Kingston Ontario.
trace fossil track display of soft body, sluglike critters called Climatichnites hailing from ~515 million years ago in the Cambrian; they were among the first known animals to come ashore on a global scale
big animals, too! my spread hand would fit in each trackway with room to spare; fossils of the actual creatures have yet to be found
doubling down with more onshore from the same era_
link to a larger trackway at McGill University's Redpath Museum in Montréal, with _two_ kinds of critters from this slice of deep time from another quarry in the same locale.
near Duntulm Castle, Isle of Skye. These were only recently discovered (2015). I had downloaded a scientific article from a journal which gave details on how to find these tracks. When we were there we saw a man and his son and mentioned to them about the tracks and the man said "I know, I discovered them...". Turns out he was one of the authors of the article I had with me. (I think he was pleased I had used the article to find the footprints). He took the time to show me some other less obvious footprints and said that these tracks in the photo were made by a long-necked sauropod (as big as a double decker bus) about 65 million years ago when Skye was located in a tropical lagoon. It was a strange feeling to stand on this exact spot and think that all those years ago this huge animal stood here and walked off towards the horizon.
You can read a lot in the landscape. That's not the first time I've said that in this forum. And you know, for all of our efforts, the terrain still guides our travels, and the underlying geology shapes the terrain.
At the left, with its tower is Black Mountain, whose eponymous Sandstone has its scraps in Parliament House's undercroft. Over its shoulder is Mount Ainslie; the eroded core on an ancient volcano. The hard bits stick out, and stay like that for a long time.
Under that big wet patch is the Molonglo River which once meandered across the legendary Limestone Plains; a sheep farm spoiled by whatever it is that's down there now. Its water are held back by a barrage, down there in the right. It's unnatural. Before that, it guided feet here, onto that plain for the annual meet, greet and moth feast.
Whatever that thing on the plain is, it was planned, sort of. At about 1 o'clock there was a plan to construct a factory. A geophysical survey — wisely done as it would transpire — discovered a honeycomb of caves in that limestone. Banished further into the sheep paddock, that, ahem, planned factory site, remains as a grassy slope.
If we turned around — we won't, it's unattractive — we'd see another unavoidable reality of the terrain. The valleys of the Cotter, Molonglo and Murrumbidgee Rivers unite, as they do, in the low places. They follow joins between rock types; and great faults that pass this way too. Behind them are towering ridges, and between here and there valleys rise up and narrow inexorably onto the aforementioned plain. One thing leads to another.
This place ignores "being in the moment". Residing instead in deep time, its shoulder shrug off today. Sediment cores from Lake George/Weereewa are spiced with charcoal and the palynological evidence that the past climax, but fire sensitive, cover of Casuarina trees was replaced by more resilient Eucalyptus as the land dried and readied to burn.
Just a blink of an eye ago, in 1939, a lightning strike lit up the mountains; quite literally. The track that took me to Mount Aggie was then known as the Border Break. Of course, it was folly. The fire stepped over it like it was a chalk line on the pavement. Those tapering valleys funneled that conflagration in this direction. Not crowded then by people, and those people not cowed by the task to quell a blaze, it was stopped before it set alight to the nascent city.
Roll forward to 1952. It happened again, only this time they mobilised the public servants from their offices and beat the thing to death… As we have become more aware and enlightened, in 2003 they let the red steer have its head, burnt the forest, burnt the 'burbs and burnt this hill. Something happened to slow the fire: the hard structures of fences, roads and houses.
We aren't looking to the west, where the weather is created by the spin of our little rock and the rise of the land, because the forest is being replaced by the very things that society doesn't want to burn, but ironically, the very things that slow the rapid progress of fire.
You already know what comes next! The terrain, for all that building, remains unchanged. Fire will come again, the wind will come from the west and those suburbs, not there before, will be on the fire front so much earlier. I'm almost laughing out loud! The very thing that destroyed the forest and led to a new arboretum here at our feet, will bump into a more resistant foe. These trees will be safer from the human folly that will put the people closer to the threat; opposite to the policy that let it born in 2003! One thing leads to another!!
2023
More artwork at: www.permiandesigns.com/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/permiandesigns/
Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/permiandesigns.bsky.social
NOTE: All works featured here are completely original creations. None are made with the assistance of any form of AI technology in any fashion whatsoever.
Today we have been setting some natural history context for the story of "The First Tasmanians". This is a permanent exhibition at the QVMAG in Launceston. An exhibition curated by the museum and art gallery in conjunction with the Aboriginal community.
www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/Exhibitions/Permanent/The-First-Tasm...
Over the next two days we'll look at some of the specific cultural aspects.
The little machine pictured above allows the viewer to watch a simulation of how the landscape of Tasmania has changed over the last 50,000 years - not long before the first people arrived. This is deep time, prehistory, before we even begin to have oral history.
[Enlarge the photograph and you should be able to read the display.]
Released: 04.01.22
/// New Album, "Item 10: The Necropolis of Animals" OUT NOW: avirtualmemory.bandcamp.com/album/item-10-the-necropolis-... ///
Bandcamp:
avirtualmemory.bandcamp.com/album/shadows-on-the-cave-wal...
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More artwork at: www.permiandesigns.com/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/permiandesigns/
Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/permiandesigns.bsky.social
NOTE: All works featured here are completely original creations. None are made with the assistance of any form of AI technology in any fashion whatsoever.
2022
More artwork at: www.permiandesigns.com/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/permiandesigns/
Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/permiandesigns.bsky.social
NOTE: All works featured here are completely original creations. None are made with the assistance of any form of AI technology in any fashion whatsoever.
The muted red tones of the globular cluster Liller 1 are partially obscured in this image by a dense scattering of piercingly blue stars. In fact, it is thanks to Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) that we are able to see Liller 1 so clearly in this image, because the WFC3 is sensitive to wavelengths of light that the human eye cannot detect. Liller 1 is only 30 000 light-years from Earth — relatively neighbourly in astronomical terms — but it lies within the Milky Way’s ‘bulge’, the dense and dusty region at our galaxy’s centre. Because of that, Liller 1 is heavily obscured from view by interstellar dust, which scatters visible light (particularly blue light) very effectively. Fortunately, some infrared and red visible light are able to pass through these dusty regions. WFC3 is sensitive to both visible and near-infrared (infrared that is close to the visible) wavelengths, allowing us to see through the obscuring clouds of dust, and providing this spectacular view of Liller 1.
Liller 1 is a particularly interesting globular cluster, because unlike most of its kind, it contains a mix of very young and very old stars. Globular clusters typically house only old stars, some nearly as old as the Universe itself. Liller1 instead contains at least two distinct stellar populations with remarkably different ages: the oldest one is 12 billion years old and the youngest component is just 1-2 billion years old. This led astronomers to conclude that this stellar system was able to form stars over an extraordinary long period of time.
The formation of stars and the chaotic environments they inhabit is one of the most well-studied, but also mystery-shrouded, areas of cosmic investigation. The intricacies of these processes are now being unveiled like never before by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
Two new images from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) showcase star-forming region NGC 604, located in the Triangulum galaxy (M33), 2.73 million light-years away from Earth. In these images, cavernous bubbles and stretched-out filaments of gas etch a more detailed and complete tapestry of star birth than seen in the past.
Sheltered among NGC 604’s dusty envelopes of gas are more than 200 of the hottest, most massive kinds of stars, all in the early stages of their lives. These types of stars are B-types and O-types, the latter of which can be more than 100 times the mass of our own Sun. It’s quite rare to find this concentration of them in the nearby universe. In fact, there’s no similar region within our own Milky Way galaxy.
This concentration of massive stars, combined with its relatively close distance, means NGC 604 gives astronomers an opportunity to study these objects at a fascinating time early in their life.
science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/peering-into-the-tendrils-...
This image of massive galaxy cluster MACS J0416.1-2403 was part of the Hubble Space Telescope's Frontier Fields project, which combined the power of natural "gravitational lenses" in space with Hubble's ability to create long-exposure deep field images. Gravitational lenses occur when the immense gravity of massive galaxy clusters magnifies and distorts the light from objects behind them. This makes it possible to see objects far beyond the reach of normal telescopes. In this case, joint observations of this cluster by Hubble and the Spitzer Space Telescope revealed an extremely distant galaxy that would have existed about 400 million years after the Big Bang. Astronomers nicknamed the galaxy Tayna, which means "first-born" in Aymara, a language spoken in the Andes and Altiplano regions of South America. Tayna represents a smaller, fainter class of newly forming galaxies that had previously evaded detection, and which were thought to be more representative of the early universe, offering new insight on the formation and evolution of the first galaxies. MACS J0416.1-2403, is located in the constellation Eridanus.
This photograph of Ednburgh Castle was taken during the Deep Time light show to start to mark the begining of the 2016 Edinburgh Festival. It was handheld at a shutter speed of 2.5 seconds.
This photograph of Ednburgh Castle was taken during the Deep Time light show to start to mark the begining of the 2016 Edinburgh Festival. Hand held at 1.3 seconds.
Released: 04.01.22
/// New Album, "Item 10: The Necropolis of Animals" OUT NOW: avirtualmemory.bandcamp.com/album/item-10-the-necropolis-... ///
Bandcamp:
avirtualmemory.bandcamp.com/album/shadows-on-the-cave-wal...
Soundcloud:
soundcloud.com/avirtualmemoryofficial/sets/shadows-on-the...
More artwork at: www.permiandesigns.com/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/permiandesigns/
Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/permiandesigns.bsky.social
NOTE: All works featured here are completely original creations. None are made with the assistance of any form of AI technology in any fashion whatsoever.
NGC 346, shown here in this image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a dynamic star cluster that lies within a nebula 200,000 light years away. Webb reveals the presence of many more building blocks than previously expected, not only for stars, but also planets, in the form of clouds packed with dust and hydrogen.
The plumes and arcs of gas in this image contains two types of hydrogen. The pink gas represents energized hydrogen, which is typically as hot as around 10,000 °C (approximately 18,000 °F) or more, while the more orange gas represents dense, molecular hydrogen, which is much colder at around -200 °C (approximately -300 °F) or less, and associated dust.
The colder gas provides an excellent environment for stars to form, and, as they do, they change the environment around them. The effect of this is seen in the various ridges throughout, which are created as the light of these young stars breaks down the dense clouds. The many pillars of glowing gas show the effects of this stellar erosion throughout the region.
webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2023/101/01GNYHXG...
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe so far. Webb’s First Deep Field is galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, and it is teeming with thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared.
Webb’s image is approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length, a tiny sliver of the vast universe. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying more distant galaxies, including some seen when the universe was less than a billion years old. This deep field, taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a composite made from images at different wavelengths, totaling 12.5 hours – achieving depths at infrared wavelengths beyond the Hubble Space Telescope’s deepest fields, which took weeks. And this is only the beginning. Researchers will continue to use Webb to take longer exposures, revealing more of our vast universe.
This image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago, with many more galaxies in front of and behind the cluster. Much more about this cluster will be revealed as researchers begin digging into Webb’s data. This field was also imaged by Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which observes mid-infrared light.
Webb’s NIRCam has brought distant galaxies into sharp focus – they have tiny, faint structures that have never been seen before, including star clusters and diffuse features.
Light from these galaxies took billions of years to reach us. We are looking back in time to within a billion years after the big bang when viewing the youngest galaxies in this field. The light was stretched by the expansion of the universe to infrared wavelengths that Webb was designed to observe. Researchers will soon begin to learn more about the galaxies’ masses, ages, histories, and compositions.
Other features include the prominent arcs in this field. The powerful gravitational field of a galaxy cluster can bend the light rays from more distant galaxies behind it, just as a magnifying glass bends and warps images. Stars are also captured with prominent diffraction spikes, as they appear brighter at shorter wavelengths.
Webb’s MIRI image offers a kaleidoscope of colors and highlights where the dust is – a major ingredient for star formation, and ultimately life itself. Blue galaxies contain stars, but very little dust. The red objects in this field are enshrouded in thick layers of dust. Green galaxies are populated with hydrocarbons and other chemical compounds. Researchers will be able to use data like these to understand how galaxies form, grow, and merge with each other, and in some cases why they stop forming stars altogether.
In addition to taking images, two of Webb’s instruments also obtained spectra – data that reveal objects’ physical and chemical properties that will help researchers identify many more details about distant galaxies in this field. Webb’s Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) microshutter array observed 48 individual galaxies at the same time – a new technology used for the first time in space – returning a full suite of details about each. The data revealed light from one galaxy that traveled for 13.1 billion years before Webb’s mirrors captured it. NIRSpec data also demonstrate how detailed galaxy spectra will be with Webb observations.
Finally, Webb’s Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) used Wide-Field Slitless Spectroscopy to capture spectra of all the objects in the entire field of view at once. Among the results, it proves that one of the galaxies has a mirror image.
SMACS 0723 can be viewed near the constellation Volans in the southern sky.
www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasas-webb-delivers-deepest-in...
An amazing opening event for this years Edinburgh Festival. Which combined Art, Science and Technology in this city of the Enlightenment.
See www.eif.co.uk/2016/deeptime#.V6fLRqKuHWk for more and video of the show.
Welcome World
This photograph of Ednburgh Castle was taken during the Deep Time light show to start to mark the begining of the 2016 Edinburgh Festival. It was hand held at a shutter speed of 4sec, which even image stabilisation isn't going to keep steady! So I just let the movement of the lights speak for itself...
2023
More artwork at: www.permiandesigns.com/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/permiandesigns/
Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/permiandesigns.bsky.social
NOTE: All works featured here are completely original creations. None are made with the assistance of any form of AI technology in any fashion whatsoever.
2024
THIS EXHIBITION RUNS UNTIL DECEMBER 4th /// MORE INFO HERE: mdfedart.com/portfolio/49west/
More artwork at: www.permiandesigns.com/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/permiandesigns/
Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/permiandesigns.bsky.social
NOTE: All works featured here are completely original creations. None are made with the assistance of any form of AI technology in any fashion whatsoever.
2012
More artwork at: www.permiandesigns.com/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/permiandesigns/
Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/permiandesigns.bsky.social
NOTE: All works featured here are completely original creations. None are made with the assistance of any form of AI technology in any fashion whatsoever.
Deep time. Oldest rock. Fist-sized sample from the Acasta River, an obscure little drainage up near Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada. Self-collected from what is the oldest known
rock formation on the planet, clocking in at 4.03 billion years old.
Postscript: Further age-dating measurements have pushed the Acasta River locale back to 4.2 billion years. Since I collected this sample from the 4.03 Ga site, I`ll leave it as is.
The Deep Time Exhibit, on the first floor David H. Koch Hall of Fossils, allows visitors to travel through ancient ecosystems spread out across a 31,000-square-foot space to witness the evolution of life and get up close to some 700 fossil specimens.
The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), administered by the Smithsonian Institute, was established in 1910 as the United States National Museum. The building, designed in the neoclassical architectural style by Hornblower & Marshall, was the first constructed on the north side of the National Mall, along Constitution Avenue, as part of the 1901 McMillan Commission plan. The museum's collections total over 500 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, and human cultural artifacts. With 7.1 million visitors in 2016, it is the most visited of all of the Smithsonian museums and is also home to about 185 professional natural history scientists — the largest group of scientists dedicated to the study of natural and cultural history in the world.
The Smithsonian Institution, an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its shops and its magazines, was established in 1846. Although concentrated in Washington DC, its collection of over 136 million items is spread through 19 museums, a zoo, and nine research centers from New York to Panama.
Kings Head, Waitpinga, southern Fleurieu Peninsula, South Australia
Some background to the experimenting re visual thinking.