Science Art: Woltmann’s Tachometer, 1882
Oh, hydrology. This is a device to measure the speed of water flow, as described in A practical treatise on hydraulic and water-supply engineering: relating […]
Science
Nearby galaxies are shredding each other.
BBC Science Focus looks up at the heavens and sees two nearby galaxies — the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) — […]
Too much space junk.
The European Space Agency has an unfortunate report about future satellites. They’re much closer to running out of room because, as Science Alert puts it, […]
Science Art: Mathematical Knot Table 01, by Rodrigo Argenton
These are knots. Not knots used to tie down boats or headstrong horses, but knots used to explore geometries of space. The display was made […]
A mysterious trilobite cousin deciphered.
For a long while, paleontologists have been trying to figure out what was up with Helmetia expansa, a prehistoric creature from before the dinosaurs that […]
Intelligence evolved at least twice on Earth.
In science-nerd circles, people lately have been really into talking about how many times crabs evolve — that is, how many unrelated invertebrate families wind […]
Science Art: Portuguese Man-Of-War, Tongued Sarsia, by Philip Henry Gosse
This image comes from Philip Henry Gosse’s A Year at the Shore, specifically, the month of October. (The year isn’t specified, but the book was […]
Science Art: Periophthalmus koelreuteri, 1942.
This is a mudskipper who is being drawn here solely for the qualities of its bulbous, beautiful eyes. The illustration is from page 453 of […]
The smell of Venus de Milo
NPR reports on new findings for classical works of art. It’s pretty well known now that the stark white of ancient Greek marble statues was […]
Krill sniff penguin poop
And, says National Geographic, it makes them take evasive maneuvers, ready to dodge their Antarctic predators: In Antarctica’s Palmer Station lab, scientists put wild-caught krill […]
AI can’t beat Pokémon
Something for your inner 12-year-old to feel superior about, as published in Ars Technica. Anthropic’s Claude AI, pretty helpful at summarizing documents and parsing transcripts, […]
Science Art: Lincoln’s Measurements, compared with “Old Americans,” 1953 (detail).
This is part of a graphic from a 1953 issue of Natural History, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History’s magazine. The article it’s illustrating is […]
Far side of the moon’s fiery past.
Space reveals that the far side of the moon was once a vast, glowing ocean of magma, according to samples retrieved by a Chinese lunar […]
Alcohol and cancer
Nature chats with a few researchers about something that’s been known for more than 30 years but is still not really widely accepted – that […]
Science Art: Mars, Olympus Mons near the terminator, Andrea Luck, 2025
This is the largest volcano in our solar system, as far as anybody knows — the mighty Olympus Mons, as snapped by the ESA Mars […]