The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

ex scientia, sono

  • Home
  • Join the Guild
  • The Scientific Troubadour Pledge
  • The SONGS

Articles by grant

China’s Mars probe is sending back pictures.

11 February 2021 grant 0

Popular Science shares a postcard of Mars taken up-close and personal by China’s Tianwen-1 probe as it enters orbit around the Red Planet:

The five-ton craft carries an orbiter,

… Read the rest “China’s Mars probe is sending back pictures.”
Scientific illustration of pulleys in block and tackle arrangements, increasing mechanical efficiency.

Science Art: Tackles, 1905.

7 February 2021 grant 0

Scientific illustration of pulleys in block and tackle arrangements, increasing mechanical efficiency. Click to embiggen

Pulleys and rope, arranged to make lifting heavy weights easier. I’ve been messing around with boats lately, lowering a 30-foot mast with a lot of help. Pulleys … Read the rest “Science Art: Tackles, 1905.”

Voyager 1 has kept in touch for 40 years.

6 February 2021 grant 0

Discover reports on a dedicated little space probe that’s still writing home to NASA (using 11 vital instruments) after four decades of hurtling away from home:

6. Low-Energy Charged

… Read the rest “Voyager 1 has kept in touch for 40 years.”

“Just grow a table.”

5 February 2021 grant 0

MIT News looks at the new science of tissue engineering, taking lab-grown cells and training them to grow objects to order:

It takes a lot to make a wooden table. Grow a tree, cut it down, transport

… Read the rest ““Just grow a table.””

There’s a new whale in the Gulf of Mexico. A whole new species, in fact.

4 February 2021 grant 0

NPR introduces us to a 42-foot-long stranger, the Rice’s whale. The mysterious species is large in size, but small in number, hanging out in off the Redneck Riviera and not bothering… Read the rest “There’s a new whale in the Gulf of Mexico. A whole new species, in fact.”

Scientific illustration of a sound camera, a large, dish-shaped piece of acoustic equipment.

Science Art: Hunting with a Sound Camera, by William Vogt, 1933.

1 February 2021 grant 0

Scientific illustration of a sound camera, a large, dish-shaped piece of acoustic equipment.Click to embiggen

Listen!

This was how people catalogued birdsongs in the 1930s, with a giant acoustic dish. And then they transferred them to phonograph discs, so everyone could listen.… Read the rest “Science Art: Hunting with a Sound Camera, by William Vogt, 1933.”

Maybe mass extinctions *don’t* lead to a great flowering of new life forms.

29 January 2021 grant 0

Scientific American has looked at the fossil record and found it wanting. Instead of there being a regular pattern of mass extinctions (like the death of the dinosaurs) followed by the rise… Read the rest “Maybe mass extinctions *don’t* lead to a great flowering of new life forms.”

Lobster-shell patterns make concrete stronger.

27 January 2021 grant 0

Reuters reveals a new technique to strengthen ordinary concrete by imitating the criss-cross pattern of lobster shells:

Reinforced with steel fibres, the concrete becomes more durable

… Read the rest “Lobster-shell patterns make concrete stronger.”
Scientific illustration of a protein spike on a virus

Science Art: Coronavirus spike protein structure, by David Veesler, University of Washington,2016

25 January 2021 grant 0

Scientific illustration of a protein spike on a virusClick to embiggen

This is not an alien forest. It is also not a picture of the COVID19 virus. It’s an illustration from 2016 of another coronavirus, and specifically of the spike proteins… Read the rest “Science Art: Coronavirus spike protein structure, by David Veesler, University of Washington,2016”

SONG: In the Albatross Museum.

24 January 2021 grant 0

SONG: “In the Albatross Museum”

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE: Based on Science Friday, 8 Jan 2021, “Giant, Toothed Birds Once Ruled The Skies”, as used in the post “The… Read the rest “SONG: In the Albatross Museum.”

Counting elephants from space: satellite conservation.

21 January 2021 grant 0

The BBC reports on a new use for space hardware: training computers to count elephant populations from 370 miles overhead to keep them from hurtling into extinction:

The breakthrough could

… Read the rest “Counting elephants from space: satellite conservation.”

The toothy mega-albatross

18 January 2021 grant 0

Science Friday remembers the mysteriously vanished pelagornithids – birds that, we now know, once ruled the skies with toothy beaks and a wingspan twice the size of the modern albatross… Read the rest “The toothy mega-albatross”

Scientific illustration: A satellite photo of clouds swirling into spirals.

Science Art: Cloud Vortices off Isla Socorro (Detail) by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

18 January 2021 grant 0

Scientific illustration: A satellite photo of clouds swirling into spirals.Click to embiggen

On May 25, 2010 at 17 :35 UTC, this was the weather off the North Pacific island called Isla Socorro: Partly cloudy with scattered spirals.

The interesting thing about truly… Read the rest “Science Art: Cloud Vortices off Isla Socorro (Detail) by NASA Goddard Photo and Video”

Our oldest art is a picture of a pig.

14 January 2021 grant 0

The Guardian (among other sources) reports on cave paintings on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi that push back the earliest known art made by Homo sapiens to a date about 15,000 years before… Read the rest “Our oldest art is a picture of a pig.”

A pacemaker for your brain.

13 January 2021 grant 0

Discover surveys the state of the research into deep-brain stimulation (DBS), using electrical implants to treat conditions from Parkinson’s to chronic pain, OCD, depression… Read the rest “A pacemaker for your brain.”

Posts pagination

« 1 … 62 63 64 … 213 »

Follow on Bandcamp

Something to Believe In

GRANT: something to believe in

You could write a review of this album here on iTunes.

That would be generous.

Fellow Travelers

  • 314.Action
  • Bioephemera
  • Breakfast in the Ruins
  • Carabus
  • Discover
  • Fluxblog
  • Giant-Killer
  • grant (archive)
  • grant (bandcamp)
  • Hello, Poindexter!
  • ideonexus
  • junior kitchen
  • Keep Your Pebbles
  • LiveScience
  • Mindless Ones
  • Nature
  • New Scientist
  • NIMBioS: Science Songwriters-in-Residence
  • Peculiar Velocity
  • PhysOrg
  • Science Daily
  • Science Magazine
  • Science News
  • Science Writers Daily
  • Scientific American
  • Singing Science Records
  • Songfight!
  • Space.com
  • Stereo Sanctity
  • The Great Beyond
  • The Other Adam Ford
  • The Periodic Table of Poetry
  • Voyages Extraordinaires

Tags

acoustics aeronautics agronomy anatomy anthropology archaeology astronomy biochemistry biology botany chemistry climatology computer science ecology economics electrical engineering electronics engineering entomology epidemiology evolution genetics geology linguistics marine biology mathematics medicine meteorology microbiology microscopy nanotechnology neurology oceanography optics paleontology pharmacology physics psychology quantum physics research robotics sociology space exploration theremin zoology
RSS Help Wanted: ScienceCareers
  • Medical College of Wisconsin: Cancer Biology Research Program Co-Leader
  • University of Massachusetts Lowell: Clinical Faculty (Open Rank) & Medical Laboratory Science (MLS) Program Director
  • Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai: Chair, Nash Family Department of Neuroscience
  • The New York Academy of Sciences: Associate Director, Fellowships & Professional Learning
  • Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience: Instructor (Research)
  • UChicago: Research Assistant Professor
Honorary Troubadours
  • Jonathan Coulton, Contributing Troubadour for Popular Science.
  • Laura Veirs, who knows her way around a polysyllable.
  • Thomas Dolby, godfather of scientific pop.
  • Squeaky, fact-based rock about fusion containment & rocket science.
  • Cosmos II, a.k.a. Boston University astronomer Alan Marscher.
  • Dr. Fiorella Terenzi, astrophysicist who makes music from cosmic radio sources.
  • Dr. Jim Webb, astronomy professor and acoustic guitarist.
  • Artichoke, the band behind 26 Scientists, Vols. I and II.
  • They Might Be Giants, unrelenting proponents of scientific popular song.
  • Symphonies of Science, the people who make Carl Sagan and others sing.
  • Giant Squid, doom metal about the sublime horrors of marine biology.
  • Gethan Dick,6 scientists, 6 musicians, 1 great album
Related Projects
  • Squid Pro Crow
  • Grant Bandcamp
  • Grant Soundcloud
  • Penitential Originals Playlist
https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/01-gravity-song.mp3

 
"Is it a fact—or have I dreamt it—that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?"
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, 1851

grant balfour made this website.

Member institution: Duct Tape Aesthetic Laboratories
Tools
  • Subscribe via Email
     
  • View as PDF (via FiveFingers)
     
  • Is Facebook Electric?
     
  •   Yes, yes, we RSS!

     
Fields of Inquiry
  • Cold Storage
  • Featured
  • Guild Affairs
  • Music
    • Songs
      • Penitential Covers
  • Science
    • Science Art

Copyright © 2026 | WordPress Theme by MH Themes

Social Media Auto Publish Powered By : XYZScripts.com