Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things
Kaigara Danmen Zuan, “Inside wonders” pattern book, 1913. Published in Kyoto by Unsōdō, Japan. Via Cooper Hewitt / www.fulltable.com More to see: metmuseum.org
Yoichirō Hirase, a mollusk scientist, collected over 3500 seashells, 1000 of which were new discoveries. Hirase explains in the introduction on this book that he is not a designer or artist, but that he came up with the idea for this book while researching shells and cutting them at various angles. These “inside wonders” created interesting patterns which he further explored with illustrator Jun Nishikawa.
ArtNouveauDeco@nouveaudeconouveau
Art Nouveau designs from 1899 from “Decorative Motifs from the Natural World” by German artist and painter Arnold Lyongrun (1871–1935).
Jeanne Villepreux-Power went from being a dressmaker’s assistant to inventing the world's first aquarium and becoming one of the most groundbreaking marine biologists of her day -- yet few people know her name today.
Born in France in 1794, she first gained prominence after she made the wedding gown for Princess Caroline. This also led her to meeting English merchant James Power, who she married in 1818 in Sicily. They lived on the island for over twenty years and it was there that Villepreux-Power undertook a rigorous self-taught study of its flora and fauna with a particular interest in the marine ecology.
In 1832, she began to study the paper nautilus or Argonauta argo, pictured here. The prominent opinion at the time was that the nautilus took its shell from another organism. In order to test whether this was true, Villepreux-Power invented the first glass aquarium, which allowed her to study nautilus in a controlled environment. As a result, she discovered that the nautilus created its own shell. As she continued her research, Villepreux-Power also designed two aquarium variants, a glass apparatus within a cage, used for shallow-water studies, and another cage-like aquarium which scientists could raise and lower to different depths as needed.
In 1839, Villepreux-Power published “Physical Observations and Experiments on Several Marine and Terrestrial Animals”, her major work discussing the nautilus and other sea creatures she had studied. Increasingly renowned for her pioneering research, Villepreux-Power became the first female member of the Catania Accademia, as well as a member of over a dozen other scientific academies. In recent years, this trailblazing scientist and inventor was further recognized -- a major crater on Venus discovered by the Magellan probe was named in her honor in 1997.
It wrinkles my brain that Jupiter’s moon Europa has oceans that are sixty miles deep, while Earth’s oceans only reach seven miles deep at most. I’m willing to bet good money that there’s life in Europa’s oceans. Like five bucks. You hear me, NASA? I bet you five bucks that there’s life on Europa… Now that there’s money and reputation on the line, I bet they send a mission there real quick.
I have no idea when this was originally posted, but NASA is working on their Europa mission RIGHT NOW to look for alien life! But get this, they theorize that because of the depth, gravity, and composition of the oceans, any organisms that lived there would be waaay bigger than aquatic life on Earth. So far everything’s going well with regards to their Europa mission so they should have a spacecraft on its way to look for giant sea monsters in space in only a few years. (The planned date is in the early 2020s.)
Looks like my negotiations worked. You’re welcome, humanity.
I’ve never been gripped with such cold terror and pure delight in my LIFE
explaining to an 18th century sailor that we’re looking for sea monsters in space.
the 18th century sailor would understand this perfectly well i feel. like honestly ‘there are oceans on celestial bodies and they have giant monsters in them’ feels like the normal assumption we all had to unlearn as space turned out to be mostly kinda boring.