Science Art: Corpus of Prehistoric Pottery: Polished Red – p. 1-22
Click to embiggen Silhouettes of polished redware from the Ancient Egyptian (or, really, older than Ancient Egyptian) Naqada culture. That’s about 5,500 years old, a […]
Articles by grant
Plasma jet engines: Taking us to space without burning fuel
New Scientist is launching our hopes higher than ever with a report on a whole new electric engine that can carry a plane to space: […]
SONG: Facts Will Save Us All
SONG: “Facts Will Save Us All” [Download] . ARTIST: grant. SOURCE:Steve Ballmer Serves Up a Fascinating Data Trove,” New York Times, 17 Apr 2017, as […]
Mouse sperm survive in space.
Science News reports that DNA is tough stuff, and reproductive cells that were freeze-dried and subjected to months of solar radiation came back home just […]
OK – Svalbard is just fine.
Popular Science is trying to calm folks down following hyped-up reports that the seed vault (previously sung about here) containing precious samples of all our […]
Science Art: Lychee, from Flora Sinensis, 1656.
This is Litchi chinensis, 荔枝, the lychee, sometimes called a “lychee nut” although it’s not nut-like at all. It’s more like a muscadine (tough skin, […]
SONG: Another Girl, Another Planet (penitential cover)
SONG: “Another Girl, Another Planet” [Download] (penitential cover) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: This has no scientific source; it’s a penitential cover for being late for the […]
We’ll build skyscrapers out of wood. And do the planet some good….
Nature reveals the new growth of ambitious plans to cool the planet with wooden skyscrapers: Constructed almost entirely from timber in 2014, the 8-storey, 30-metre […]
Melting permafrost is releasing ancient diseases.
Sounds almost medieval, doesn’t it? But no, it’s not the vapors. BBC shows how dormant viruses and bacteria are waking up after centuries or even […]
Science Art: Blackbird SR-71 engine nozzle, 2011
Click to embiggen “Internal view of a Pratt & Whitney J58 afterburner and exhaust nozzle.” Found on Wikimedia Commons.
Puppetmaster parasite steers fish – from inside their eyeballs.
New Scientist has the creepy story of a parasitic worm that controls fish behavior by controlling how they see the world: When the parasite is […]
Humans didn’t live with dinosaurs… but maybe with ape-men.
Nature shines new light on a very old hominid – “Neo,” the ape-like Homo naledi who may have coexisted with early modern humans: H. naledi […]
Science Art: The Myology of the Raven, 1890
Click to embiggen This is the head and neck of a raven, Corvus corax sinuatus, as dissected and drawn by Robert W. Shufeldt. I look […]
Mars might be a *really* alien planet.
Science News shows how Mars might not have formed with the rest of solid worlds of the inner solar system: Simulating the assembly of the […]
The closest we come to getting Neanderthal injuries? Water-tubing.
Science News looks at broken bones – specifically, how modern bone breaks seem so different from the injuries we see in Neanderthal skeletons. Why should […]