*Ants* have the speed… when it comes to boxing.
I’m reading a EurekAlert report on entomologists sitting ringside watching the fastest boxers in the world – trap-jaw ants: In a new study, entomologists at […]
Science
Obama tries to boost science funding on his way out.
Nature reports on the outgoing president’s attempt to boost research & development funding by a mandatory four percent: With less than a year before he […]
Chinese tokamak makes fusion happen – for more than a minute.
Wired reports on the successful ignition of a fire three times hotter than the sun: The march to sustainable nuclear fusion appears to have made […]
Great trumpeting wildebeests!
Science Daily introduces us to a new… or, well, very, very old beast – a prehistoric gnu that trumpeted like a duck-billed dinosaur: By poring […]
Luxembourg prepping for asteroid miners.
BBC has more on the Grand Duchy’s grand plans for exploiting the mineral wealth of outer space: Former European Space Agency boss Jean-Jacques Dordain… told […]
Living at high-altitude reduces lung-cancer risk.
New York Times reports on strange correlations – especially a study that found high-altitude hometowns reduce your risk of lung cancer: A paper published last […]
Science Art: The “Johnson” Bucket Excavator, from American journal of railway appliances, 1886.
Click to embiggen A triumph of engineering. It moves earth! Using “the bucket principle”! As found in The Linda Hall Library.
Science Art: Anyone Can Quantum, by IQIM Caltech
This is far funnier and more exciting than it has any right to be. Stephen Hawking playing chess over a computer with Paul Rudd. For […]
Google can beat a human at go.
The Japanese strategy game, Nature reports, is the latest battlefield on which artificial intelligence has defeated human experts: The best human players of chess, draughts […]
Awfullest science headline of the month: “The aliens are silent because they’re dead.”
Science Daily clinches it – not because of inaccuracy, but because of the sheer despair in considering that we’re not hearing anyone in our galaxy […]
Jeff Bezos launches and lands the same rocket twice in a row.
Popular Mechanics celebrates a milestone for corporate spaceflight: The rocket once again passed through the Karman Line, a distance 100 kilometers (or 62 miles) above […]
Science Art: PIA18353: Janus and Tethys by Cassini (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)
Click to embiggen A big moon and a little moon, orbiting Saturn. Moons like Tethys (660 miles or 1,062 kilometers across) are large enough that […]
Nervous people walk to the left.
Science Daily reveals the unbalancing news that if you’re worried, you’re more likely to veer leftward while walking: New research led by Dr Mario Weick […]
Not exactly Nibiru, but… Planet Nine?
Nature surveys the growing body of evidence of *something* very big orbiting at the fringes of the solar system: “If I read this paper out […]
Wireless brain implants that melt away.
The Guardian gives my inner paranoid schizophrenic ever more powerful wings to soar with news of a brain-monitoring implant that tracks your nerve impulses for […]