BREAKING: The Platypus is Weird.
New Scientist leaves us in no doubt: the platypus is not like other animals. Wesley Warren at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, led the […]
Science
Global Warming and DDT
New Scientist reveals an ugly, new problem from melting glaciers. They’re dosing penguins with DDT… and us with a whole bunch of other bygone pollutants: […]
Grim Aurora: Earth’s Magnetic Field and Suicide.
New Scientist brings up the odd notion that our planet might be using invisible forces against us, with the recent discovery that geomagnetism triggers suicides: […]
“Basket of Species”. Who knew they came in baskets?
LiveScience is skipping through the woods with news of legless lizards, horned toads and more things creeping out of an amazing new trove of animals […]
Science Art: Venus in Old China
Astronomical charts from Gujin Tushu Jicheng, a Qing dynasty Chinese encyclopedia.
Set the Controls for the Heart of the….
NASA is heading into the Sun: NASA has tapped APL to develop the ambitious Solar Probe mission, which will study the streams of charged particles […]
Tiny Telephones.
LiveScience is on the line with a call about insect telephones. Please hold – this plant is busy: When a subterranean insect takes up residence […]
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The BBC has us imagining that sound as New Zealand researchers thaw a colossal squid: “They’re incredibly rare – this is probably one of maybe […]
Pioneer Anomaly: A Long-Distance Bill
Scientific American closes in on the “Pioneer Anomaly” – the strange fact that the Pioneer deep space probes aren’t traveling at exactly the right speed. […]
Science Art: “Asian Types,” The New Students Reference Work (1914)
Click to embiggen A dicey bit of racial taxonomy from The New Students Reference Work (1914), edited by Chandler B. Beach, associate editor Frank Morton […]
Flammable Ice
New Scientist has a gas with the latest alternative energy source, flammable ice. …[I]t could be the world’s last great source of carbon-based fuel – […]
A City Older than Moses.
EurasiaNet reports on archaeologist Klaus Schmidt’s excavation of Gobekli Tepe, a 12,000-year-old city that could rewrite human history: “Everybody used to think only complex, hierarchical […]
Science Art: Doppler Effect
Diagram from Wikimedia Commons. It’s like op art.
A Lighter Shade of Wallpaper.
TechRadar.com brightens our day with the story of a Dutch designer who has created illuminated wallpaper. Delving deeper, Samson revealed that the wallpaper is constructed […]
The Handy Uses of a Home Computer, 1970
In 1970, Life wanted us to know that home computers can be useful: Those pioneer families who have one, like the Theodore Rodmans of Ardmore, […]