Even though I have some trouble doing anything with it (other than filming my friends’ kittens), I find the concept of Vine quite interesting: six-second videos made with an app that works like old Super8 cameras (only recording while you press the trigger), encouraging both synthesis and all kinds of in-camera experimentation. And even though Instagram though has similar capabilities, Vine’s lower six-second limit just seems more interesting, focused on action rather than on beautifully-filtered meditations.

To the point, here’s a compilation of six-second science experiments and explanations. Awesome. (via It’s Okay to Be Smart)

Science news this week are all about the almost certain discovery of the Higgs Boson. From what I gather that’s big news, even if my understanding of particle physics is also in an infinitesimal scale, so I go with the explanation that the finding of the Higgs particle closes and vindicates the Standard Model of particle physics in pretty much the same way the discoveries of elements such as Gallium, Ytterbium or the noble gases in the late 19th century vindicated the atomic model and Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table.

However, I find myself in utter lack of awe at such discoveries. I think it’s sad all cutting-edge science nowadays seems to deal with the negative Powers of Ten, the infinitesimal, starting at nano and working its way down. It feels as if Mankind is retreating, into Earth, into tinier and tinier spaces. That’s not to say the study of the infinitesimal isn’t interesting and without awesomeness — just look up stuff on quantum levitation or Bose-Einstein condensates — but we also need to look at the stars — at the positive powers — for inspiration.

Hence The Voyagers by Penny Lane. Go watch it in silence. Let’s not retreat into tiny holes in the ground.

Questions No One Knows the Answers to, by Chris Anderson and Andrew Park at TED Education, which seems like an interesting video education resource in the Khan Academy mold, even if the TED brand is getting a bit old (here’s one proof).

By the way, Chris Anderson (who I just found out is not the Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson) has a wonderful narrator voice. Not as good as Werner Herzog’s, but pretty close.