Google Maps The Grand Canyon And Other Amazing Photos From This Week

Including a pepper-spraying iPhone, an illustrated guide to eating a Triceratops, and more

By Colin Lecher | Published Oct 27, 2012 1:30 AM

Science

Google is bringing its street-view empire to the Grand Canyon. The cameras aren't the coolest, but seeing a panoramic of the Grand Canyon from anywhere? Awesome. Google via BuzzFeed FWD

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Google At The Grand Canyon

Google is bringing its street-view empire to the Grand Canyon. The cameras aren’t the coolest, but seeing a panoramic of the Grand Canyon from anywhere? Awesome.

NASA Space Habitat

This is a space habitat model NASA’s building in Texas. It’s not going anywhere–the mockup is cobbled together from scraps, mostly–but it does gives us an intriguing idea of what our craft will look like when we send humans to Mars. Read more about it here.

Pepper Spray iPhone

This is a combination iPhone/pepper sprayer. Convenient, or have we finally jumped the shark on iPhone accessories? You be the judge.

Psychedelic Mushroom Illustration

A new book gives a scientific set of answers to mysteries, along with beautiful illustrations. The text accompanying this illustration, by artist Jack Hudson, explains why ants are so much like people. We’ve rounded up 11 questions from the book here.

Pac-Man Cloud

They say when we look at clouds we just rationalize them into things, even though they’re random. But, come on, that’s Pac-Man. It just is.

Sandy Over Cuba

Hurricane Sandy passed over Cuba and Jamaica this week, and the Suomi NPP satellite caught this photo.

Saturn Storm

Speaking of storms, check out this whopper on Saturn. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft (which is responsible for lots of beautiful Saturn photos) tracked the aftermath of a rare storm on the planet. The colorized red, orange, and green in this image show the last remnants of the storm that arrived between 2010 and 2011.

Dung Beetle Mittens

A little gross, maybe, but this dung beetle’s silicone mittens, added by researchers to test a theory about their feet, make it infinitely more likable. Very stylish. Discovery has a good explainer on the beetles and some new research behind them here.

View From A Firetruck

Gabriel Angemi, a firefighter and photographer in Camden, New Jersey, snaps Instagram photos like these–at stoplights and other opportunities–while he’s riding by in his crew’s truck. He posts them here, and American Photo has brought together some of the best here.