Why don’t we know what blew up in 774?
Nature asks a question that gets more peculiar the more one considers it. A Japanese researcher looking at tree rings from two ancient cedars found […]
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 moreGrandad’s got a better password than you, kiddo.
In all likelihood, that is. New Scientist doesn’t actually *know* your password, of course. But they know that if you’re over 55, you’re more likely […]
Science Art: Artist concept of proposed mission to the Jupiter system, NASA/JPL, 2009
This is concept art originally painted to help NASA and ESA imagine what it might be like to explore Jupiter and its moons Ganymede and […]
Renaissance grave reveals what it takes to kill a vampire.
LiveScience unearths a scientific controversy over what seems to be a plague victim’s corpse defaced by vampire hunters: The controversy begins with a mass grave […]
“Splashdown Successful!”
Elon Musk celebrates his historic spacecraft’s return home – in less than 140 characters.
So the anarchists are killing scientists now…
I’m getting this from Nature, although New Scientist has also been covering it. A group called “the Olga Cell of the Informal Anarchist Federation International […]
Cannabis pills not effective against MS.
BBC breaks some not-terribly-encouraging news from the stoner desk. Neuromedical researchers have found marijuana-based meds don’t slow the progress multiple sclerosis: Lead researcher, Professor John […]
Science Art: Figure 1, “Biosystematic Studies in Papaver, Section Oxytona,” Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 1974
Click to embiggen Poppies. For Memorial Day. Funny how that saturated color automatically looks so 1970s now, when all they were trying to do was […]
Science Art: Plate II, Mitchill’s Fishes of New-York, by Alexander Anderson, 1815.
Alexander Anderson, medical doctor and illustrator, is remembered as America’s first wood engraver. He helped Samuel Mitchill explain what that was wriggling on the end […]
Pesticides make bees… picky.
PhysOrg finds something weird about the nicotine-based pesticides that seem to be making trouble for bees. Neonicotinoids make them picky eaters: The UC San Diego […]
MIT: Facebook is about to kill the Internet. (Seriously?)
MIT’s Technology Review is not a publication ordinarily given to hyperbole. So it’s a little distracting when their web desk declares that Facebook is heading […]
Putty fixes bones like chair legs.
The health desk at The Atlantic might be looking a little bit like a wood shop, thanks to their reporting on the medical marvels of […]
Turning pollution into gold.
PhysOrg gets me all het up over this modern-day alchemist who’s figured out how to transmute greenhouse gases into useful materials… and energy: Making carbon-based […]
When bad science happens…
…bad consequences follow. Forbes traces the problems with the most authoritative “we can cure the gay out of you” study: [Dr. Robert L.] Spitzer now […]
Science Art: Paillettes de glace eclairées par les rayons du soleil observées en ballon, by M. Albert Tissandier
Click to embiggen When you’re a pioneering aviator, it pays to have a brother who’s an illustrator. From the Tissandier collection in the Library of […]