That fella who wrote The Right Stuff got into the New York Times this week and allowed to do a little ranting about the big picture of humans in space:

Unfortunately, NASA couldn’t present as its spokesman and great philosopher a former high-ranking member of the Nazi Wehrmacht with a heavy German accent.

As a result, the space program has [...]

An Australian amateur astronomer named Bird (or, IRL, Anthony Wesley) just spotted something slamming into Jupiter – a collision that’s been confirmed by the big science guys at JPL and beyond. So, along with Discover Magazine and the rest, I’d like to salute the tiny black spot that wasn’t there before:

Bad Astronomy: People on Twitter (and [...]

Yeah, we’re gonna do it. Stupid moon, all smug and silvery and sneaky, looking down at us all night long. Scientific American’s right. We don’t know *what* could be hiding up there. Let’s just bomb the moon:

The spacecraft will not head straight for the Moon. First it will orbit the Earth a number of times while its precise [...]

Click to embiggen vastly

This is a fossilized insect, one of the Buprestidae (or Splendor Beetles or Jewel Beetles, from the collection of the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt.

Splendor Beetles are, apparently, one of the longest-living insects in the world. They’re also treasured by collectors for their iridescent shells.

The Messel Pit is a World [...]

Don’t let this happen to you.

You may have heard of the giant prehistoric shark called megalodon. And maybe other megafauna, like Megalosaurus or even the mighty mechanical Megasaurus. But LiveScience is bringing a new killer to the ranks of the big and deadly – hungry schools of Megapiranha:

If this is so, Megapiranha may be an intermediate [...]

It’s free! You can get your name on a microchip placed aboard the next Mars Rover, just by filling in this form here!

It may take a couple of tries – the server is apparently really busy.

But you can go to Mars! Or at least leave your name there.

Without resorting to spray paint.

Reuters recently brought up some research into how salamanders do that whole regenerating limbs thing:

In salamanders, the blood vessels contract quickly and limit bleeding when a limb is cut. Skin cells quickly cover the wound and form what is called a blastema.

Researchers thought these cells must be pluripotent stem cells — the body’s master cells, which retain the [...]

New Yorker valiantly tries to explain – scientifically – why it is that Americans (and the rest of the Western World) are getting so darned fat:

The elasticity of the human appetite is the subject of Brian Wansink’s “Mindless Eating” (2006). Wansink is the director of Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab, and he has performed all sorts of [...]