Science

Dr. Money (yes, that's his name), from Miami University, recorded some ultra high-speed video of fungi releasing their spores at ridiculous speeds.  The spores were found to accelerate at up to 180,000 gs.  You can read all the details in the paper.

Some of his students made a "Fungus Opera" using some of the footage Dr. Money recorded.

NASA commisioned a guy to make a rap video about astrobiology.  That has to be one of the strangest things I have ever heard of.  Check it out.

Also, if you haven't already, watch the LHC Rap.

Matt sent me a link to some good photos of the LHC.  They are all interesting in both an artistic and scientific point of view.  Check them out if you haven't already.

Check out The PCR Song that Katy posted.  One of only a handful of music videos for science geeks.

So you might think the world's largest radio telescope is the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.  For the most part, that is correct; Arecibo is the world's largest single radio telescope.

But with today's technology, it is possible to use many telescopes together to simulate one giant telescope.  This specific technique is called Very Long Baseline Interferometry, or VLBI.  The world's largest emulated radio telescope uses VLBI with data from the Arecibo Observatory along with several other radio telescopes spread across the world.

With VLBI, astronomers can record images immensly more detailed than anything possible with a single radio telescope.  The EXPReS project is the first major, worldwide VLBI test.  On May 22nd, the team conducted their first run, successfully gathering and processing images from radio telescopes across four continents to emulate a telescope with a diameter of nearly 11,000 km.  Yes, that is definitely the world's largest telescope.  VLBI is opening many new possibilities, allowing us to understand more about how the universe works.  If you're a geek like me, that's cool.

Read more about VLBI here, here, here, here, and here.