Unknown Pleasures: The story behind the cover.
Scientific American digs into one of the most recognizable, most influential records (and cover images) – the astronomical story behind Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures album […]
Science Art: Mirounga leonina 01, by H. Zell
This is a southern elephant seal, the largest marine mammal that isn’t a whale. They’re about twice as weighty …
Read moreScience Art: What can make any tape recorder sound a little more like an Ampex?, 1963.
This is an ad for Ampex tape from the August 1963 edition of Electronics Australia, a magazine (which I found o…
Read moreScience Art: Cygnus region in emission lines, 2025
This is a photo of space with a bit of color amplification so we can tell what we’re looking at. Nebulas on the…
Read moreScience Art: Heart apical two-chamber view myocardial regions, by Patrick Lynch
This is an illustration of a particular perspective in a cardiac echocardiogram. An “apical view” is one of the…
Read moreSONG: Sleeping Cathedrals
SONG: “Sleeping Cathedrals”. (OGG version here.)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Based on “World’s biggest whale g…
Read moreScience Art: Build Your Own Lie Detector, 1955
This is the opener for an article in the May 1955 issue of Popular Electronics. You can read the article here, …
Read moreFull body transplants.
New Scientist seems to be going a little around the bend with transplants this week (witness hand enthusiasm), especially when it comes to the prospect […]
Love (hormone) against alcoholism.
L.A. Times examines the biochemical power that love – or at least the “love hormone” oxytocin – has to neutralize alcohol and beat alcoholism: …[N]ew […]
SONG: White coffee and omelets.
SONG: “White Coffee and Omelets.” ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on “Cut Sugary Drinks; Add Coffee, Eggs“, Laboratory Equipment, 20 February 2015,as used in the post […]
Science Art: B.T. Babbit’s Low Pressure Canal Boat Steam Enterprise, 1876
Click to embiggen A big, useful boat, from Industrial America: Manufacturers and Inventors of the United States, 1876. [via New York Public Library Digital Collections]
Breakfast is championed (at last)
Laboratory Equipment preaches the (newly embraced) health benefits of a cholesterol-laden, high-caffeine breakfast, championing the joys of coffee and eggs, hold the sugar, not the […]
Stronger than spider silk
Washington Post reveals the natural substance that beats spider silk for toughness, and diamonds for hardness – and it’s limpet teeth: In a study set […]
Meet the Ruby Seadragon
Science Daily introduces us to a brand new sea creature, bright red and fantastically delicate, dubbed the ruby seadragon: Using DNA and anatomical research tools, […]
The DNA hard drive.
New Scientist marvels at the ability of DNA to store information, with a realization that glassed-in genes could safely store information for millennia: Just 1 […]
Telescopic contact lenses
They’re not exactly pretty yet, but New Scientist has the skinny on a real James Bond-style super-gadget, telescopic contact lenses: Developed by a team led […]
Science Art: Variation of the Electron Density with Altitude in the Venusian Ionosphere, 1975.
A look at the solar wind – charged particles whipping off our nearest star – and what they do to the second planet out, Venus. […]
Again, airships. With a little difference.
CityMetric takes a look at why the zeppelins went down in the end… and how one new system might bring them back Today, the Van […]
A social network for sharing your DNA. Online, I mean.
Fusion has the details on the growing community of DNA uploaders: Members of openSNP upload their genes along with things like their sex, age, eye […]
One dad, two moms… on the cellular level. Now, legal. Almost.
Nature reports on a British legal ruling that’s a world-first, a step toward allowing medical scientists to create “three-parent” embryos: This technique, known as mitochondrial […]
The age of the elephant rats.
Live Science describes a new sort of prehistoric monster – a bull-sized rodent with elephant-like tusks: An amateur paleontologist first unearthed the skull of an […]