INSIGHTSOUT
PLANET NINE
Growing evidence is pointing to a new planet lurking in the far
reaches of our solar system about 10 times the mass of Earth, which
may have an orbit 20 times further from the sun than Neptune. The
distance of Planet Nine from our sun would be quite extraordinary.
It would take this far-out world 15 000 years to loop around the sun,
in a strange elliptical orbit. Scientists have yet to catch a glimpse
of this planet, but believe the chances are extremely high that it
exists given contextual clues gleaned from the orbits of other known
bodies. If it does exist, it will be just the third planet discovered in our
solar system in modern times, following Uranus (1781) and Neptune
(1846). The first bit of evidence pointing to Planet Nine comes from
the curious orbits of six Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) that have been
discovered in our outer solar system. Even though these KBOs are all
moving at different speeds, they're on elliptical paths that all point in
the same direction. To put this coincidence in perspective, the odds
of it happening by chance are roughly 0.007%.
THE SOLAR SYSTEM TO
SCALE IN A DESERT
A group of friends discovered there were no
proportional models of the solar system with
complete planetary orbits – most portray the
planets and moons as too close together. So
they decided to build one. On a dry lakebed
in Nevada, the group constructed a model by
drawing circles in the desert around a 1.5m
sun and a marble-sized Earth small enough
to get lost in filmmaker Wylie Overstreet's
pocket. The result is a stunning work of land
art that allows viewers to see the full circle of
the Earth with their own eyes.
For the full story click here.
For the full story click here.
MIND CONTROL
Lisa Park is an American-born, Korean-raised artist
living in New York who uses bio-feedback devices as
a tool to investigate her inner states and emotional
states. These performances explore the possibilities
of self-monitoring her physical and psychological
states to create an audio-visualisation of herself. By
combining EEG scanning with speakers and pools
of water to visualise her thoughts and emotions,
she exposes her brain patterns to the world. In the
video, left, she has outfitted 48 vibration pools, each
with a speaker that vibrates according to Park's brain
wave-interpreting algorithm, which tranforms intense
signals from Park's Emotiv EEG headset into intense
vibrations in the pools of water atop speakers.
ODYSSEY 10
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DIGIMAG