Flame Challenge returns… with TIME.
Remember Alan Alda’s quest to explain what a flame is so an 11-year-old would understand? He’s polled hundreds of elementary-school kids and is asking another […]
Science Art: Body-centered cubic (bcc) unit cell of iron, 2009
If you were curious about the crystalline structure of iron mentioned in the last post, here it is — a molecul…
Read moreScience Art: MOON: For the Benefit of Humanity, 2023
It’s a poster made by NASA for lunar exploration, showing some landers, space stations, and sample-taking equip…
Read moreScience Art: Bubble chamber with colour enhanced tracks, 2026
This is a CERN image from January 6, 2026, showing something that happened in the 1960s, but enhanced for 21st-…
Read moreScience Art: Dissection of Asterias rubens, by Hans Hillewaert.
Starfish anatomy.
If you want to know the parts, according to Dutch Wikipedia, they are:
Read moreLegend
1 Arm
2…
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 moreRivers on Titan
SciTech Daily salutes the latest Cassini discovery – first surface liquid spotted on an alien world: The international Cassini mission has spotted what appears to […]
Giant squid filmed at home.
Discovery doesn’t have much to say about it other than, in essence, YES! FINALLY! WE FILMED A GIANT SQUID! Mankind finally confronts the greatest mystery […]
Chemist: STOP WITH THE CHRISTMAS BALLOONS!
Telegraph does not take the ballooning helium shortage lightly, and neither does Cambridge chemist Dr. Peter Wothers: Helium is a non-renewable gas that is used […]
Science Art: Seventeenth Century Sites Examined by Archaeologists, from The Archaeology of Boston pamphlet,
A map from the Massachusetts Environment Department City Archaeology Program, found on archive.org.
More on the “party drug” that’s helping America’s veterans (and others).
New York Times reviews the research demonstrating that MDMA, better known as X, can work wonders with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder patients: Government regulators criminalized the […]
Mommy and me. (Or, I can’t get this kid out of my mind!)
Scientific American reveals that researchers have found evidence of what they call “microchimerism” – the children’s cells are living in their mother’s brains: We are […]
Genetical book review
Lost in Transcription’s “genetical book review” is a great idea executed well. Not a review of books as literature, but a review of the science […]
Durian mystery revealed: why *does* it stink so deliciously?
Laboratory Equipment plunges to the bottom of a pressing mystery – why the “king of fruits” packs such a pungent punch: Martin Steinhaus, from the […]
SONG: Complicated Man
SONG: “Complicated Man.” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on “New carnivorous harp sponge discovered in deep sea”, Nature, 9 […]
Science Art: The Hairy Water Tortoise, Scientific American, December 21,1878
Click to embiggen I think I’m happier not knowing exactly what this is illustrating. I mean, I think I can guess, but that’s not nearly […]
Pollution-tracking by bird.
Nature reveals the outdoor version of canaries in a coalmine – how researchers use swallows and homing pigeons to track pollution: Nesting birds that feed […]
Quantum computers can work.
Laboratory Equipment points the way for the next big breakthrough in thinking machines: Many quantum algorithms require that particles’ spins be “entangled,” meaning that they’re […]
Reading really is fundamental. Neurologically. (Or: A Good Book Is Universal.)
Nature reveals that no matter what language you’re reading, your brain lights up the same way when you do it: Previous studies have suggested that […]
Tanzi is a rock star.
Boston Globe profiles the geneticist and Alzheimer’s expert who played organ on Aerosmith’s last album: It was 2009 when Dr. Rudy Tanzi was asked to […]