The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

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Science

Palm-sized glass can store 2 million books’ worth of data

19 March 2026 grant 0

PhysOrg looks through a Microsoft Research Labs breakthrough called Silica that can use pulses of laser light to inscribe ordinary glass blocks so that they’ll work as a data-storage… Read the rest “Palm-sized glass can store 2 million books’ worth of data”

Life that can survive a full-on asteroid impact.

17 March 2026 grant 0

Mashable discusses the discovery at Johns Hopkins of microbes that are hardy enough to have traveled across the vacuum of space and then survived the planet-breaking force of an asteroid… Read the rest “Life that can survive a full-on asteroid impact.”

Scientific illustration of a stand-pipe, looking like a church steeple against a cloudy sky, a tower rising up to help regulate water flow in a black and white engraving.

Science Art: Stand-Pipe, Boston, 1882

16 March 2026 grant 0

A hydrological edifice. As explained in A practical treatise on hydraulic and water-supply engineering: relating to the hydrology, hydrodynamics, and practical construction of water… Read the rest “Science Art: Stand-Pipe, Boston, 1882”

Our brains run on 20 watts of power.

16 March 2026 grant 0

Are we bright, or really kinda dim? IFL Science reports that the human brain uses about as much electricity as the average computer monitor:

Considered as an organ, the brain is admittedly

… Read the rest “Our brains run on 20 watts of power.”

Fire-nadoes to clean the ocean

13 March 2026 grant 0

BBC’s Science Focus imagines a brighter future … brighter from the blazing fire-tornadoes used to clean plastics and oil from our over-polluted oceans:

Taking inspiration

… Read the rest “Fire-nadoes to clean the ocean”
Scientific illustration of a heart with several kinds of aneurysms in the vessels surrounding the muscle.

Science Art: Aneurismal dilatation (arteriovenous aneurism)…, 1915.

9 March 2026 grant 0

The full caption of this figure reads “Aneurismal dilatation (arteriovenous aneurism) of branches of coronary arteries in a case of anomalous origin of the left coronary from the… Read the rest “Science Art: Aneurismal dilatation (arteriovenous aneurism)…, 1915.”

A new explanation for the missing billion years in Earth’s geologic record.

6 March 2026 grant 0

IFL Science has a new explanation of “The Great Unconformity,” a worldwide phenomenon in which about a billion years of rock deposits are just missing, everywhere around … Read the rest “A new explanation for the missing billion years in Earth’s geologic record.”

School bus-sized spinosaur discovered

6 March 2026 grant 0

Last month, BBC’s Science Focus reported on an “astonishingly” large dinosaur discovered in the Sahara Desert of Niger — a bus-sized behemoth with a crescent-shaped… Read the rest “School bus-sized spinosaur discovered”

Scientific illustration of a commercially available electric switch from 1905, a lever that creates a connection which turns an arc light on or off, indicating if the circuit is live. It's designed for the mains of a house, I think, or at least for wiring entering a building.

Science Art: Modern Electrical Construction, Fig. 58, 1905

2 March 2026 grant 0

This is a switch for “constant current” electricity to go into a building, a “A modern commercial form of this switch,” is what the book calls it.

The book in question… Read the rest “Science Art: Modern Electrical Construction, Fig. 58, 1905”

Better long-term memory … for females, at least.

26 February 2026 grant 0

Nature reports on research that gave mice acetate, a common byproduct of digesting alcohol, glucose, or fiber… and found that it improved long-term memory — in the female … Read the rest “Better long-term memory … for females, at least.”

Scientific illustration of a human eye, a blue eye looking out from a yellow skull, the pink muscles attaching it to the optic arch of the eye socket.

Science Art: Eye orbit anatomy anterior 2, by Patrick Lynch.

23 February 2026 grant 0

Unblinking, the lidless eye gazes out from its skull, unseeing.

I found this anatomical image while browsing through the “Featured Images” collection on Wikimedia Commons… Read the rest “Science Art: Eye orbit anatomy anterior 2, by Patrick Lynch.”

Honey bees navigate VERY precisely.

20 February 2026 grant 0

PhysOrg considers the flight paths of honeybees in three dimensions and finds that the insects are even more precise than anyone imagined:

A team from the University of Freiburg led by neurobiologist

… Read the rest “Honey bees navigate VERY precisely.”

A drill older than the pharoahs

20 February 2026 grant 0

PhysOrg reports on a very old tool – does it count as a power tool? At any rate, it was made in Egypt thousands of years ago, rediscovered in the 1920s and then, on re-examination now, … Read the rest “A drill older than the pharoahs”

Scientific illustration of a Kentrosaurus, a relative of a Stegosaurus, pale bones on a black background.

Science Art: Kentrosaurus aethiopicus, by H. Zell.

16 February 2026 grant 0

This is an image from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, a German natural history museum, where they have a skeleton of a stegosaurus relative unearthed in Tendaguru, Tanzania.

It’s… Read the rest “Science Art: Kentrosaurus aethiopicus, by H. Zell.”

Black South African digger becomes paleontology star

12 February 2026 grant 0

NPR shared the story of Lazarus Kgasi, who started as a laborer but fell in love with the science — and is now helping shape what we know of life’s origins:

This is the story of how

… Read the rest “Black South African digger becomes paleontology star”

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RSS Help Wanted: ScienceCareers
  • NIA: Postdoctoral fellows
  • Washington University in St. Louis: Postdoctoral Research Associate- obesity and cardiovascular disease
  • University of Rochester Medical Center: Assistant/Associate Professor Basic Science Faculty Position – Mitochondrial and Metabolic Research
  • University of Lausanne - Department of Biomedical Sciences: Hosting ERC Starting Grant Applicants
  • University of Bath: Reader (Associate Professor) / Professor in Optical Fibres
  • City University of Hong Kong: Assistant Professors/Associate Professors/Professors/Chair Professors (on substantiation-track)
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
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"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

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