Light-loving algae survive, trapped under dark Arctic ice.
Science News plunges into the dark, icy depths to discover how it is that phytoplankton, which convert sunlight to energy, survive and even thrive under […]
Articles by grant
Science Art: Escut del Marquès d’Oró (Escutcheon of the Marquis d’Oró)
Click to embiggen The Marquis d’Oró (without that accent mark, he’d be the Marquis of Gold) has a coat of arms with a diagram of […]
Artificial intelligence is being programmed to spot disinformation – by the military.
Defense One reports on a new U.S. Air Force and Special Operations Command (SOCOM) program, using artificial intelligence to counter “information space” pollution – or, […]
They’ve mapped the part of a bird’s brain that gives them consciousness like ours.
Science magazine shares an anatomical survey of birds’ brains that reveals details of the brain section that appears to function like our cerebral cortex – […]
Now America is being invaded by jumping worms.
Science News checks out yet another disaster, though one on a smaller scale and a bit closer to the ground than most, as armies of […]
Can you hold your breath for more than 3 1/2 hours? This guy can.
Science News reports on a new record – three hours and 42 minutes underwater without coming up for air – set by a Cuvier’s beaked […]
Science Art: Single-Acting Force Pump with Ball Valves, 1903.
Among all the diagrams of force-vectors, there’s this wonderful illustration of a well-made machine in A Text-Book of Applied Mechanics and Mechanical Engineering, on archive.org. […]
SONG: Collisions
SONG: “Collisions” ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on BBC, 2 Sep 2020, “Black holes: Cosmic signal rattles Earth after 7 billion years”, as used in the […]
We’ve found the world’s oldest sperm. And it’s big.
Science News reports on an ostracod fossil that’s 100 million years old – and contains a a recognizable sample of its giant sperm: A single […]
Science Art: Roseate Spoonbill, study for Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom, by Abbot Handerson Thayer
Click to embiggen As its Smithsonian Museum page explains, this painting is from a book that hoped to prove a slightly odd hypothesis: that even […]
The rhythm of an out-of-body experience.
Nature looks at dissociative states, and the specific rhythm in a single layer of neurons that can make everything around you seem unreal: The neurological […]
DNA study confirms: “Viking” was a job, not an ethnicity.
Science reveals the results of a massive genetic study of Viking remains across Europe, which found that people from all genetic backgrounds took up the […]
Phosphine gas means there might be life on Venus.
Science News explains the strange chemistry that’s behind the new discovery, and why it means that Venus can get added to the same list as […]
Science Art: Last Test Article for NASA’s SLS Rocket Departs Michoud Assembly Facility, 2019 – by NASA/Jude Guidry.
Click to embiggen A big part of a big rocket, loading onto a big barge in a big facility in Louisiana. As the NASA Michoud […]
The science of the will to fight.
The Economist has an interesting piece on military psychology – specifically, the research going into predicting when an opponent who is outgunned and outmanned will […]