“Breathe, supernova! Now PUSH!” (Watching a black hole being born.)
CNet reports on NASA researchers who may have snapped the first pictures of a new black hole being born: Caught on film by NASA’s Chandra […]
Science
This is how you scare the fearless. Neurologically.
Nature examines the biology of fear – and how researchers have succeeded in creating fear in the fearless: Many studies on animals over the years […]
“Bituqen” is Proto-Polynesian for “star.” A computer figured that out.
Nature reports on the algorithm researchers have devised to find (or recreate) the ancestors of modern languages: Statistician Alexandre Bouchard-Côté of the University of British […]
Not just an asteroid. What *else* killed the dinosaurs?
Slate examines the mysteries of the mass extinction that killed all the dinosaurs… except the birds: “Dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid 65 million years […]
Science Art: Exploring the Universe, from Looking Into Science supplements, 1965
This came from a series of supplements in California textbooks in the 1960s – the peak of the Space Race. This is an image of […]
Commander Hadfield gets together with Barenaked Lady.
No, he’s not doing *that* on the ISS. The commander is, like The Postal Service, making music via a long-distance collaboration… only his is with […]
Real fake medicine isn’t really fake. It’s real. But how real?
Harvard researcher Ted Kaptchuk is mastering the medical secrets of sleight-of-mind by figuring out how to use placebos as real medicine: Last year, he and […]
Black hole, light show.
Time is dibsing front-row seats to the (potentially) big show when a black hole slurps down a gas cloud this fall: Back in 2011, astronomers […]
Journals without publishers.
Sounds unnatural or absurd, doesn’t it? But that’s what the internet is making possible, according to Nature (whose publishers should be a little worried). Researchers […]
Science Art: Appareil Electromedical de G. Trouvet, from La Nature, 1878
This device is “a regulateur des intermittences”, according to La Nature. I’m not sure what “intermittences” are exactly, but Gustave Trouvet was going to fix […]
Watching the thoughts of fishes.
That’s what Science Daily says scientists have been doing when they hook up a probe precise enough to detect a single idea begin to form […]
Not solar panels – solar *cones*. That spin to keep cool.
Grist gives hope for affordable renewable energy from the engineers who’ve discovered that cones can make solar power cheaper than coal: The company is called […]
Don’t sleep. Forget. You are growing old.
Nature explores why our aging brains succumb to insomnia and forgetfulness at the same time: Ageing is associated with the gradual loss of brain cells, […]
Lasers on jets. That’s where we are now.
The Slashgear blog reveals DARPA’s new plan to convert decent, respectable fighter jets into pew-pew videogame laser gunships: One of the laser projects is called […]
Now is the parking lot of our discontent made glorious excavation site by our trowels….
LiveScience wonders what we should do with the bones of this lost, wretched King Richard III: The University of Leicester, which is overseeing the excavation […]