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View count:276,001
Likes:7,284
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Duration:04:31
Uploaded:2013-06-22
Last sync:2024-03-17 20:15

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MLA Full: "BigBrain & Supermoon." YouTube, uploaded by SciShow, 22 June 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=66oDFdDt6uE.
MLA Inline: (SciShow, 2013)
APA Full: SciShow. (2013, June 22). BigBrain & Supermoon [Video]. YouTube. https://youtube.com/watch?v=66oDFdDt6uE
APA Inline: (SciShow, 2013)
Chicago Full: SciShow, "BigBrain & Supermoon.", June 22, 2013, YouTube, 04:31,
https://youtube.com/watch?v=66oDFdDt6uE.
From brains to heavenly bodies, this week brings us some super-sized science... BigBrain is the highest resolution map of the human brain that's ever existed; a super high resolution interactive model of King Tut's tomb for anyone to explore from the comfort of home; and tonight, the moon itself will be supersized - go have a look!

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SOURCES
BigBrain
https://bigbrain.loris.ca/main.php
http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/

Tut's Tomb:
http://www.highres.factum-arte.org/Tutankhamun/
http://www.sca-egypt.org/
http://www.fz-juelich.de/inm/inm-1/EN/Home/home_node.html

Supermoon:
http://earthsky.org/tonight/is-biggest-and-closest-full-moon-on-june-23-2013-a-supermoon
(SciShow theme)

From brains to heavenly bodies, this week brought us some super sized science!

For starters, some of the biggest minds in Europe and the US came together this year for a project they call "BigBrain", the highest resolution map of the human brain like, ever.

Revealed this week in the journal Science, the map details the microscopic anatomy of the brain's cells in fifty times greater detail than we've ever seen before. And it's all in three dimensions!

To make this super brain which, looking back, would probably have been a better name for it, neuroscientists sliced the brain of a 65-year-old female donor into seventy-four hundred microscopically-thin sections. Then they stained, scanned, and reconstructed them digitally. This super detailed model will allow scientists to explore what they call the brain's cytoarchitecture, or the way its cells are organized and how that structure corresponds with the brain's wiring.

To that end, they'll be comparing this anatomical map of the brain to the connectivity maps that we've told you about before, like those created by the Human Connectome Project. By combining these two atlases of human awesomeness, scientists will be able to further explore how brain structure relates to things like cognition, language, emotion, and neurological disorders.

And maybe coolest of all, you can use your big brain to explore BigBrain for yourself. The mappers have made it available to the public for free on their super high resolution website. All you need is a log-in; look for the links in the description below.

And while you're online, once, of course, you're done watching this, you can explore another fascinating place in super high resolution: King Tut's tomb. Though he ruled for just ten years in the thirteen hundreds BCE, we know Tutankhamun today because his burial chamber was discovered untouched in 1922, perhaps the most revealing discovery in the archaeology of Egypt. And this week, for the first time, you can see it from your couch, and even more detailed than you could in person.

Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities hired Spanish firm Factum Arte to create a detailed interactive model of Tut's tomb in the interest of preserving it. As we all learned recently from that Chinese kid who thought it was a good idea to scratch his name on the wall of the Luxor Temple, vandalism is a problem in these ancient sites. But even well-meaning tourists can put stress on antiquities just by walking through them.

So the council is hoping the website will catch on as a low-impact way for people to visit Ancient Egypt. Factum Arte used high-res scanners to take more than seventy scans and measurements of the tomb to create a painstakingly-accurate digital model of Tut's burial chamber. So now you can see in great detail the murals of the tomb which depict the boy-king's entry into the afterlife, from the delivery of his mummy to the crypt to the twelve hour journey his soul takes to the netherworld as overseen by a dozen baboons.

Soon you'll also be able to explore Tut's sarcophagus online, as well as the tomb's of Seti I, who ruled Egypt in the thirteenth century BCE, and Nefertari, one of the most famous so-called "royal wives" who went out in style with one of Egypt's most extravagant burials.

And finally, tonight you can see the moon in super sized detail as well. The Internet is calling tonight's moon "supermoon" because it looks a lot bigger than usual, about fourteen percent bigger. Supermoons occur when a full moon coincides with the perigee, that is the point at which the moon's orbit is closest to the Earth. A perigee happens once a month, but not all perigees are equal.

The moon's orbit is elliptical and irregular, so some months the moon is closer than others. This proximity to Earth at perigee runs in cycles as, of course, the phases of the moon do. And for reasons that would require an extra pair of hands and probably an astrolabe to explain, the full moon and the closest perigee coincide by mere minutes every thirteen months and eighteen days.

That coincidence happened this morning in the Western Hemisphere or last night in the Eastern Hemisphere, but you can still see the supermoon tonight or if you're in the Eastern Hemisphere, right now. You can watch it rise over your eastern horizon just as the sun sets. No telescope required, obviously, but if you want to look for the Apollo Lunar Module or Alan Shepard's golf balls, now's your chance.

Thank you for watching this episode of SciShow News! If you have any questions or comments or ideas for stories you'd like us to cover, you can contact us on Facebook or Twitter or of course down in the comments below, and if you want to continue getting smarter with us here at SciShow, you can go to youtube.com/scishow and subscribe.