I loved this video where comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko and its dust trailes are tracked for a century.



In 1959 67P changed orbit after a very close ecnounter with Jupiter. Numerical simulations show a close aproach distance between 0.040 and 0.020 AU (depending if you are considering or not deviations due to the push performed by cometary jets). Considering that Callisto orbits Jupiter at 0.012AU this had to be an epic vista.

The video shows a model of dust ejection by the comet where each perihelion pass is colored with different colors. As time goes on, the dust of the comet get's caotically distributed around the orbit and the inner planets start to generate a complex cloud.

As you can see, Mars is going to have new amazing meteor showers produced by Rosetta's comet the next decades.

After the encounter 67P acquiered its current orbit (September this year it's going to change again a little by anothe Jupiter encounter)

I leave you with this awesome timelapse taken by Rosetta. Each frame is a long-exposure image taken of the neck of the comet (when it was in shadows). You can see the neck because daylight bounces in different parts of the comet making a pale reflection on this region. In the background you can see the stars (even a globular cluster shows up). And in the front you are watching dust grains as they pass in front of the camera.

Popular science of 1957 (the first 17 minutes can be skipped).

An amazing capture.  I have seen a hand-full of impressive ground to cloud discharges (most immediately after the east coast 2012 Derecho), but this blew my mind.

I love the YouTube channel The Thought Emporium (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV5vCi3jPJdURZwAOO_FNfQ). It is HIGHLY educational and I have attempted to duplicate some of their projects with varying levels of success, this one being the first:



This next one is a wee bit beyond my skillset, but BEYOND cool:



I mean, how neat is it to actually see the Earth from low orbit in real time by means independent of any middleman space agency?

A nice demonstration and explanation of the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction.  This reaction creates repeating, propagating waves of color, and also shows chaotic behavior.  As the title says, this is easily one of the weirdest reactions I have ever seen.

Very cool! As someone who has an intense interest in chemistry myself, videos like this are endlessly fascinating. 

[youtube]zgQfMgG3C00[/youtube]

Abstract:
Planetary systems form in the disks of gas and dust that orbit young stars. In the past few years, very high angular resolution observations of disks in nearby star-forming regions have started to uncover some key signatures of the planet formation epoch. This talk will focus on what we are learning about the distribution of disk material on spatial scales of only a few astronomical units, largely based on state-of-the-art measurements with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), and the corresponding implications for the assembly and early evolution of planetary systems.

More theoretical physics mind-benders . Don't be fooled by the title of this lecture, it's not a psuedoscienctific rant. I found the end conclusion to be much more eloquent.




Also, if possible, look into the Smolin–Susskind debate, and the Susskind-Hawking battle (the latter recorded in a book by Susskind entitled "The Back Hole War". Man that sounds cool!). It makes for good reading and a healthy scientific diet.