Because some of us need constant reminders that the earth is actually a beautiful place and not just a breeding ground for miserable, greedy assholes, here’s a short video taken from the International Space Station passing over a very stormy Africa, with the Milky Way serving as a backdrop. Just focus on taking deep breaths and watch it a few times, you’ll feel better I promise. Just relaaaaaax . Let yourself go and experience a higher plane of consciousness. Now quit your job and join my cult. No? It was worth a try! Hit the jump for the damn, maybe earth ain’t so bad after all.

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Move Over, Chicken Soup!: Eye Candy For The Soul — International Space Station Passes Over Stormy Africa

German Photographer Marcus Reugels takes pictures of water droplets refracting an image of a planet behind them, making them each appear to contain a lil world (prior: MC Escher droplet ). Aaaaaaah, we’re all gonna drown! Just kidding, but this does remind me of that cat in Men In Black that carries a whole galaxy around on its collar. Marcus sells prints of his work on his website and also takes requests in case you’ve got something special in mind. “I’m gonna get one of my penis!” Ha, I said special. BURN! Your girlfriend agrees though is the thing. Hit the jump for several more earths, a moon, Jupiter, Spider Man and Batman and a picture of his setup.

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Eye Candy: The World In A Drop Of Water (Plus Bonus Spider Man & Batman!)

I’ll believe it when it cuts through a glass giant. Astronomers are claiming they’ve found a planet made entirely of diamond . Interesting, but if you really wanted to capture the public’s attention you should have said it was made out of chili cheese fries and has a milkshake orbiting it. The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond. “The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon — i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun,” said Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. Lying 4,000 light years away, or around an eighth of the way toward the center of the Milky Way from the Earth, the planet is probably the remnant of a once-massive star that has lost its outer layers to the so-called pulsar star it orbits. I hereby publicly claim Diamondtopia as my own. Now, has anybody here played enough Minecraft/Starcraft to feel comfortable setting up a mining operation on the planet? Awesome. Also, we’re gonna need some serious firepower in case there’s any of those f***ing Na’vi. Astronomers discover planet made of diamond [reuters] Thanks to CB and Evil Ares, who would’ve settled for smoky quartz planets. And to Mr. Fancy, who wouldn’t accept anything less than ruby or emerald.

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I Claim It, It’s Mine: Planet Made Of Diamond

Remember when Pluto was a planet? Me neither, I drink too much. And, I don’t know if we can really trust anything NASA tells us anymore, but these are allegedly the most detailed images of Pluto ever taken. As you can see, we still have a long ways to go. NASA today released the most detailed set of images ever taken of the distant dwarf planet Pluto. The images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope show an icy and dark molasses-colored, mottled world that is undergoing seasonal changes in its surface color and brightness. Pluto has become significantly redder, while its illuminated northern hemisphere is getting brighter. These changes are most likely consequences of surface ices sublimating on the sunlit pole and then refreezing on the other pole as the dwarf planet heads into the next phase of its 248-year-long seasonal cycle. The dramatic change in color apparently took place in a two-year period, from 2000 to 2002. Jesus, a two-year period? Somebody rocket that dwarf planet some sanitary napkins! New Hubble Maps of Pluto Show Surface Changes [nasa] via Most Detailed View of Pluto to Date [gizmodo]

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You Silly ‘Lil Dwarf: Detailed Images Of Pluto

Robin Sloan : I think the conversation about “The Earth Is Hiring” sensitized me to this point: Watching the trailer for Home , I couldn’t help but think, “Oh, I get it. The beautiful shots are the ones without humans.”

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The prettiest anthill