Language is the music of emotion.
PLoS ONE presents research on music and words, showing that, no matter what language you use, speaking an emotion uses the same sounds as playing […]
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 moreCheer up, science fiction!
It’s probably just coincidence that the week after pulp hero John Carter, Warlord of Mars finally made it to the big screen, Neal Stephenson appeared […]
The simple elegance of the Flame Challenge.
Alan Alda asks exactly the right question in exactly the right way: As a curious 11-year-old, Alan Alda asked his teacher, “What is a flame?” […]
SONG: “Back into flow”
SONG: “Back into flow.” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on “What it’s like to wear a brain-stimulating ‘thinking cap’”, […]
Science Art: 5257: Life cycle of Diphyllobothrium latum.
Click to embiggen This is Diphyllobothrium latum, a tapeworm that might make itself at home inside you if you eat undercooked fish. The picture comes […]
What’s made from blue cheese and cleans itself?
If Inhabitat.com’s on the money with this one, the answer could soon be “just about anything,” thanks to Swiss scientists who’ve used blue cheese fungus […]
Happy birthday, zeppelin!
Wired celebrates the anniversary of that very special day, March 14, 1899, when Count Ferdinand Von Zeppelin got the U.S. patent for his design for […]
The Guild reviewed.
Check this out: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2012/03/songs-torn-from-science-headlines.html Forget your Variety and your Rolling Stone. The Guild of Scientific Troubadours just received positive notice from a writer for New […]
Facebook more efficient than IQ tests at determining employability. (Yeah, HR will be reading your updates.)
Forbes takes us one step closer to the Facebook-dominated society with a Northern Illinois University study that finds a quick social media review works better […]
100% efficiency? Bah. Here’s an LED that’s MORE than 100% efficient.
Wired reveals how MIT made this cool magic trick happen – by using a little bit electricity to convert heat into light: The LED produces […]
Science Art: Manière de pêcher la Tortüe; le Lamantin from Histoire des aventuriers flibustiers, Volume I (1744)
This engraving shows a bunch of humans spearing a sea turtle. But wait! A manatee looks on in terror, clutching her child! And thinks back […]
Vulture CSI: How carrion eaters are upending forensics.
Associated Press goes deep inside one of America’s most macabre jobs – studying how efficiently vultures consume dead bodies: Experienced investigators would normally have interpreted […]
The music of spider-silk strings.
BBC reveals a Japanese project that combines biology, engineering and beauty – spinning violin strings out of spider silk: Shigeyoshi Osaki of Japan’s Nara Medical […]
A salute: Trying and trying and trying by Gethan Dick.
Over the transom this morning, I just got word of an amazing science-music-art project that combined six University College London biomedical researchers with six bands […]
Slipping on the thinking cap.
Over at BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow waxes enthusiastic about the process of zapping your brain into a creative “flow” state: The “thinking cap” is something like […]