Why the south of Westeros is the north of Ireland
As Game of Thrones ends, a revealing resolution to its perplexing geography.
16 May, 2019
Image: YouTube / Doosh
- The fantasy world of Game of Thrones was inspired by real places and events.
- But the map of Westeros is a good example of the perplexing relation between fantasy and reality.
- Like Britain, it has a Wall in the North, but the map only really clicks into place if you add Ireland.
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Five Hawks Down: watch the tragic migration of six Californian raptors
Tracking project establishes northern Argentina is wintering ground of Swainson's hawks
16 March, 2019
Image: @TrackingTalons / Ruland Kolen
- Watch these six dots move across the map and be moved yourself: this is a story about coming of age, discovery, hardship, death and survival.
- Each dot is a tag attached to the talon of a Swainson's Hawk. We follow them on their very first migration, from northern California all the way down to Argentina.
- After one year, only one is still alive.
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22 months of Syria's civil war condensed into a 1-minute video
No, the Syrian civil war is not over. But it might be soon. Time for a recap.
21 November, 2018
- The War in Syria has dropped off the radar, but it's not over (yet).
- This 1-minute video shows how the fronts have moved – and stabilized – over the past 22 months.
- The clip runs, specifically, from 1 January 2017 to 4 November 2018 at the rate of 10 days per second.
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Confirmed: The Milky Way's monstrous black hole
A young star and a belt of gasses give the game away.
01 November, 2018
(Triff/ESO/Big Think)
- Scientists have provided the first confirmation that what's at the center of the Milky Way is a supermassive black hole.
- The discovery caught the interaction of gasses and a small star spinning around the mysterious object.
- This is thought to be compelling proof of the black hole's central role in a galaxy.
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This meteorite was here before Earth existed. Here's why it matters.
This meteorite is the oldest known volcanic rock in the solar system, dated at 4,565,000,000 years old.
16 October, 2018
- It's very rare that we discover something on our planet that was around before we were even a small speck. But every once in a while, we do—and this meteorite is a living testament.
- Scientists estimate the new discovery to be approximately 4.6 billion years old, almost as old as the solar system itself.
- New discoveries like this one bring us a small step closer in piecing together what an earlier version of Earth might have looked like.
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