Hustling Hack

Physicist Brian Greene has a brilliant way of showing us how gravity actually works using nothing but a simple water bottle. When the bottle is held still water sprays out of the holes because gravity is pulling it down and creating pressure. But the moment he drops the bottle the water stops leaking entirely. This happens because both the bottle and the water are falling at the exact same rate making the water feel weightless relative to its container. This simple experiment perfectly illustrates Einsteins happiest thought that gravity and acceleration are essentially the same thing. It is a mind blowing reminder that even though we feel stuck to the ground weight is just a matter of perspective.

In 1957, the Soviets sent Laika into space. They never planned to bring her back.

She was a stray dog found on the streets of Moscow, picked because scientists believed strays were tougher and more used to harsh conditions than pets.

She was trained for weeks. Kept in smaller and smaller boxes to prepare her for the capsule. By all accounts, she handled it well.

On November 3rd, 1957, she was loaded into Sputnik 2 and launched into orbit. The Soviet Union told the world she survived for several days. That she was comfortable. That the mission was a success.

That was a lie..

The truth was hidden for over 45 years. Laika died within hours of launch. The thermal control system failed. The temperature inside the capsule rose to unbearable levels. She died from overheating and panic, completely alone, 2,000 kilometers above the Earth, with no way home.

There was never a plan to bring her back. The technology did not exist yet. Everyone involved knew it was a one way trip before she ever left the ground.

Sputnik 2 kept orbiting Earth for 5 more months with her remains inside, before burning up in the atmosphere in April 1958.

She was somewhere between 3 and 5 years old.

The scientist who trained her spent the rest of his life carrying the guilt. He said publicly that the mission did not justify what they put her through.
Laika never had a choice. But she changed space exploration forever.

Rest easy, girl.

Did you know the real story?

The white-spotted pufferfish (Torquigener albomaculosus) is only about 15 centimeters long, but the male spends roughly a week of nonstop fin flapping to sculpt a geometric sand circle nearly seven feet across on the seafloor off Amami-Oshima, Japan. He carves radial valleys and ridges with stunning symmetry, then picks up shells and coral fragments in his mouth and places them around the rim as decoration. Divers first found these patterns in 1995 and had no idea what made them. The fish wasn’t filmed building one until 2011, and biologists named it as a new species in 2014.
The structure is a courtship display. A female swims by, inspects the work, and decides whether to lay her eggs in the fine sand at the center. The ridges aren’t just for show, either: they slow the ocean currents passing over the nest, so the eggs sit in a calmer pocket once fertilized. The male is one of the smaller animals on the reef, and this is how he makes himself impossible to ignore.