Spacewater.US

I think the plastic collar on my Pelikan 140 nib may be cracked. I found out on FPN that apparently they’re notoriously easy to crack. Opinions welcome.

Um, and I have to again praise my trust Panasonic Lumix LX-3 camera for being so freaking awesome.

Click here to see the whole set on flickr, where you can zoom into thhttp://Spacewater.us/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=752e full size huge originals too.

Don’t let the hippies hear that wood may make a better artificial bone than titanium. We’ll never live it down.

Italian scientists have developed a new “wood-derived bone substitute” that promises to be better than ceramic or metal implants. They start with a block of wood like red oak, burn it until the block is essentially charcoal and then coat the substance with calcium.

The “bone” takes about a week to produce at a cost of around $850. And while it’s not quite as cool as titanium, the spongier structure handles natural impact better, and other bones prefer the calcium carbon mix to space shuttle alloys.

So much for my awesome robot legs. [Discovery]

From Astronomy Picture of the Day .

Diamonds in a Cloudy Sky
Credit & Copyright: Óscar Martín Mesonero (OSAE), SAROS Group
Explanation: Cloudy skies over Wuhan, China hid the delicate solar corona during July’s total eclipse of the Sun. Still, the Moon’s silhouette was highlighted by these glistening diamonds as the total eclipse phase ended. Caused by bright sunlight streaming through dips and valleys in the irregular terrain along the Moon’s edge, the effect is known as Baily’s Beads, named after Francis Baily who called attention to the phenomenon in 1836. The dramatic appearance of the beads at the beginning or end of a total solar eclipse is also known as the Diamond Ring effect. In this remarkable image, a small, pinkish solar prominence can also be seen along the edge, below the diamonds.

Pictured: Spaceship-shaped cloud hovering over Earth is captured by astronauts | Daily Mail Online.

A giant, anvil-shaped cloud bubbles up towards the Earth’s stratosphere, looming over West Africa.

The amazing formation would be invisible to anyone on the ground and would even be obscure from a regular passenger jet since they can reach up to 75,000ft.

But astronauts captured the astonishing picture from hundreds of miles up as they orbited the globe on the International Space Station.

Anvil clouds are formed mostly from ice and normally form in the upper parts of thunderstorms. They get their shape from the fact that rising warm air in thunderstorms expands and spreads out as the air bumps up against the bottom of the stratosphere.

Streaks of snow are often seen falling out of the edges of anvils. This light snow usually evaporates as it falls through the relatively dry air surrounding the upper part of the thunderstorm.