From today's featured articleWitches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat) is an oil mural by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. Satan is depicted as a goat in moonlit silhouette who hulks over a coven of terrified witches; a young woman in black sits at far right, withdrawn from the others, perhaps in defiance. The mural is one of the fourteen Black Paintings Goya created on the plaster walls of his home, the Quinta del Sordo, around 1822. He was in his mid-70s, living alone and suffering mental and physical distress. As in some of his earlier works, Witches' Sabbath seems to explore themes of aging, death, violence and intimidation. It is generally seen by art historians as a satire on the credulity of the age and as a condemnation of superstitions, such as the witch trials of the Spanish Inquisition. Some fifty years after Goya's death, the murals were removed from the home by transferring them to canvas supports. Today the paintings are in the collection of the Museo del Prado in Madrid. (Full article...)
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When a liquid drop impacts the surface of a liquid reservoir it can float, bounce, coalesce with the reservoir, or splash. A floating drop remains on the surface for several seconds. Drop bouncing can occur on perturbed liquid surfaces. If the drop is able to rupture the thin film of gas which separates it from the liquid reservoir, it can coalesce. Additionally, higher Weber number drop impacts produce splashing. In the splashing regime, the impacting drop creates a crater in the fluid surface, followed by a crown around the crater. Finally, a central jet, called the "Rayleigh jet" or "Worthington jet", protrudes from the center of the crater. If the impact energy is high enough, the jet rises to the point where it pinches off, sending one or more droplets upward out of the surface. Photograph: José Manuel Suárez
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