Turning on the first tractor beams.
BBC reports on three ways scientists are bringing tractor beams into reality: The $100,000 (£63,000) award will be used to examine three laser-based approaches to […]
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 moreWho owns your face? (biometrics, meet property rights)
The Future Perfect blog chases down what it might mean once we use our faces online: One of the reoccurring conversations in the US that […]
Photon machines
Science Daily points the way for the next information revolution. Not using electrons, but light itself: The merging of two technologies under development — plasmonics […]
Science Art: Examining Plankton Haul, Plankton Hydrographic Cruise, Research Vessel Atlantis by O.E. Sette, 1935
Marine biology from the Diesel Age. Crowded organisms, barely visible through the equipment. (And I’m talking about the researchers.) Photo from NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science […]
Living shoggoths.
MSNBC (among other sources) reports on the amorphous, multiform, shuddering things that live and ooze in a crawling chaos across the deepest ocean floor: Gigantic […]
Dinosaur migration
Must’ve been something to see. The Telegraph gives a new picture of what it was like when hundreds of dinosaurs went a-walking: The journey would […]
Air miner.
Lando. Lando Calrissian. Cloud miner. Sounds like a great space opera profession, doesn’t it? But National Geographic is talking about exploiting the atmosphere for fuel: […]
Garage biology. (Like garage rock.)
The Daily is reporting on a revolution. DIY researchers are leaving the academy to take a punk rock approach to science: Three years ago, [Mackensie] […]
SONG: Move It Close to You.
SONG: “Move It Close to You.” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on “Mind-guided robotic arm lets paralyzed man touch […]
Science Art: Wattles of Cock Tragopans, by William Beebe, from A Monograph on Pheasants, 1918-1922.
The artist and writer William Beebe is better known for his deep sea explorations than his wattle portraiture. He studied at Columbia, but spent too […]
The 147 corporations that run everything.
New Scientist looks at where and how business happens – and reveals that out of 37 million global companies, it’s only a very few who […]
A Viking burial.
From around 900 CE, in a boat on Scotland’s west coast, comes a dead Viking warrior. BBC reports on the most complete Norse grave site […]
Spies turn to Twitomancy
That’s the use of Twitter for divination purposes. And, Nature says, is now an official field of government intelligence research: The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects […]
Polio spreads.
BBC says the disease, once thought practically eradicated, is now moving out into China from Pakistan: Polio has been found in China for the first […]
Herring AND good genes can keep you young.
So reports LiveScience’s “Bad Medicine” columnist Christopher Wanjek, writing about the woman who was the world’s oldest: The 115-year-old Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, who held the […]