NASA breaks scientific boundaries… in ballooning.
Nature profiles the amazing new high-atmosphere vehicle for exploring space from Antarctica: If all continues smoothly, experts expect the flight to last for 100 days […]
Science Art: Jupiter's Family of Comets, 1898
This is a diagram from A New Astronomy For Beginners, a textbook that’s about a century and a quarter old, or a…
Read moreSONG: Your Catalogue
SONG: “Your Catalogue”. (OGG version here.)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: NBC News, “New wild cat species is ide…
Read moreScience Art: Beebe's Bathysphäre, 1934
This is an image of William Beebe’s bathysphere, as placed on Wikimedia Commons by ETH Bibliothek. It was creat…
Read moreScience Art: Power of RCA Electron Microscope, May 1955
These are diatoms, I think, seen by two different microscopes.
As the caption from Popular Electronics says…
Read moreScience Art: Red Pepper, 1910.
Red pepper (Cayenne pepper) will cure almost any case of la grippe within 24 hours, or so they say. At least no…
Read moreScience Art: Figs. 1315-1333 (Various rotary piston engines), 1890.
This is a page of figures from (deep breath) The engineer’s sketch-book of mechanical movements, devices, appli…
Read moreThe oldest harmony. (Well, polyphony.)
University of Cambridge researchers have gotten to the root of the chord. (See, that’s a music theory joke.) No, really, they’ve found was seems to […]
Science Art: Nest of the Honey-Wasp Attacked by Jaguar, 1916
Click to embiggen From Marvels of Insect Life: A Popular Account of Structure and Habit, edited by Edward Step, found in the BioDiversity Library. This […]
SONG: Not Even Dancing Works
SONG: “Not Even Dancing Works.” ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on “Zoologger: Dancing in time makes crabs sexual failures“, New Scientist, 4 December 2014, as used […]
A new road to Mars
Popular Science charts a course to Mars that’s easier and cheaper… in a roundabout way: Spacecraft usually enter orbit around planets via Hohmann transfer, which […]
DIY warp drive. He’s folding space in his garage.
Omaha World-Herald wants the world to know about this guy who’s building a warp drive in his garage: [David] Pares’ garage is exactly as it […]
No song today.
It’s been a season, this holiday has. Mea maxima culpa. One verse and an arrangement sans guitar does not a song make. It’ll be posted […]
Life-extension wonder-drug: Advil. In multiple species.
Science Daily reveals a bizarre hidden power of one of the world’s most common over-the-counter analgesics: Regular doses of ibuprofen extended the lifespan of multiple […]
Science Art: Astronauts Clown Around In Space
Click to embiggen In 1984, astronauts had to ride out in the Space Shuttle Discovery to retrieve two broken-down satellites, and decided to have a […]
Honeybee stuff makes your hair grow.
Science Daily takes a look at propolis, the sticky putty-like stuff honeybees use to seal up their hives. There are all kinds of health claims […]
The mighty (tiny, but mighty) primate ancestor… waaay bigger than expected.
New Scientist tries to keep some perspective about our great-great-etc. grandfather, Ursolestes, a prehistoric primate who might seem to us, a squirrel monkey. To dinosaurs, […]
Dumb chemicals drop babies’ IQs.
Science Daily reveals that two kinds of phthalates – chemicals found in ordinary stuff like dryer sheets, soap, lipstick and vinyl fabrics – can drop […]
Once in the ocean, where does the plastic *go*?
Nature surveys the plastic in the seas, expects to see things like detergent bottles and Barbies breaking up into tiny “microplastic” particles, and doesn’t. So […]
Sugar (especially the kind in fruit juice) is replacing salt as blood pressure enemy No. 1.
MedPage Today is among the sources spreading the determination (with no mincing of words) that sugar is just as bad as salt – if not […]
Science Art: Fig 114 – July normal sea-level pressure, Southern Hemisphere.
Click to embiggen Making the invisible visible – the air over the South Pole, Australia, Tierra del Fuego, Cape Town and beyond. From General Meteorology […]