Cool nanotubes.
PhysOrg unveils the guts of the next supercomputer breakthrough – with carbon nanotubes that, curiously, make things nearby get hot while they stay cool: For […]
Science Art: Rudimentary Simulator, 1963.
This is Figure 3 from “Man-Machine System Simulation for Flight Vehicles” by Steven Belsley, an article which w…
Read moreScience Art: Astrapia Splendidissima, 1895
This is the first illustration in the article “A New Bird of Paradise” by the Hon. Walter Rothschild, published…
Read moreScience Art: Ever See This Before?, 1966.
This is an actual image of a cathode-ray tube, “the furthest advance yet made in man/ machine interface,” used …
Read moreScience Art: Sunrise - Philippine Sea, 2017
This is an image from the “Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth” gallery, maintained by the Earth Science …
Read moreScience Art: Égouts de Paris, by Jules Ferat.
There’s a subtitle here that Google Translate renders as “Sewer cleaning wagon. (System of Chief Engineer Mr. B…
Read moreScience Art: Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, by David K. Stone.
I found the image in the San Diego Air & Space Museum’s “Aerophilately Special Collection” on Flickr; this is a…
Read moreArmor-plated plankton getting weaker. And so is the planet.
The world’s future supply of chalk is threatened by global warming. That’s what I take away from this LiveScience report on how the souring of […]
About those CEO bonuses: How financial incentives make us less creative.
Nature blogger Graham Morehead isn’t looking over any new research with this post, which makes it all the more remarkable. Since the early 1960s, we’ve […]
Science Art: Where the sun sets twice, by NASA / JPL-Caltech / R. Hunt
Click to embiggen This is an image of a transit of Kepler 16. What that means is that, from where we’re sitting, it looks like […]
Living snail batteries – and backyard spies.
Science Daily creeps us out with a military-funded project that’s turning snails into living batteries: The electrified snail, being a biotechnological living device, was able […]
The moon is not so lonely.
PhysOrg says our moon has lots of company – little “minimoons” are always stopping by for an orbital visit: Mikael Granvik (formerly at UH Manoa […]
Senators demand giant blimp. (No, really.)
Wired’s Danger Room takes a long look at the Blue Devil project – a 370-foot-long airship that, if some legislators have their way, will be […]
Something is killing lots of dolphins in the Gulf.
Discovery News says the 714 reported dolphin deaths are just the tip of a much larger iceberg: NOAA declared the die-off an “Unusual Mortality Event” […]
The world’s first winemakers were the world’s first beekeepers.
They lived in the Republic of Georgia, says Eurasianet.org, where scientists have just found 5,500-year-old honeypots: The honey stains found in the ceramic vessels, found […]
Science Art: A red blood cell in a capillary, pancreatic tissue – TEM, by Louisa Howard
Click to embiggen Happy blood. April fool blood. Pancreas blood. Turning sweetness to pep blood. Smiling blood. Very, very enlarged blood. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
World’s largest laser gets just a little larger (and closer to making fusion happen).
Scientific American makes me jealous of the physicists at Livermore’s National Ignition Facility, who get to utter orders like, “Now, my assistants! Fire the FUSION […]
The hands ARE NOT CLEAN! (Or: how germs could cause OCD.)
New Scientist reveals a possible irony of microbiology. It could be that obsessive-compulsive disorder – in which the brain gets stuck in loops of repetitive, […]
Grampa Worm!
PhysOrg greets our oldest known ancestor – a very special worm: Researchers from the University of Cambridge, University of Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museum […]
Farewell, Great White North.
Climate scientists, as quoted in New Scientist, have said goodbye to summer ice in the Arctic. For good: Despite fears of runaway sea-ice loss after […]
A blood test for autism.
MedicalXpress reports that Swedish and Iranian researchers might have identified a way to diagnose autism physically, by checking biomarkers in blood plasma: In the current […]