Echoes of the magma oceans of Io
Wired gets all hot about some of our solar system’s OTHER moons – specifically, the strange magnetism of the magma oceans of Io: The magma […]
Science Art: Mirounga leonina 01, by H. Zell
This is a southern elephant seal, the largest marine mammal that isn’t a whale. They’re about twice as weighty …
Read moreScience Art: What can make any tape recorder sound a little more like an Ampex?, 1963.
This is an ad for Ampex tape from the August 1963 edition of Electronics Australia, a magazine (which I found o…
Read moreScience Art: Cygnus region in emission lines, 2025
This is a photo of space with a bit of color amplification so we can tell what we’re looking at. Nebulas on the…
Read moreScience Art: Heart apical two-chamber view myocardial regions, by Patrick Lynch
This is an illustration of a particular perspective in a cardiac echocardiogram. An “apical view” is one of the…
Read moreSONG: Sleeping Cathedrals
SONG: “Sleeping Cathedrals”. (OGG version here.)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Based on “World’s biggest whale g…
Read moreScience Art: Build Your Own Lie Detector, 1955
This is the opener for an article in the May 1955 issue of Popular Electronics. You can read the article here, …
Read moreStar sprinklers.
Just in time for summer, National Geographic lets us know that someone left the sprinklers on way up there: The discovery suggests that protostars may […]
Mother cow.
It must be strange to work in a facility like the ones Sky News just reported on – the places where genetically modified cows produce […]
The shrunken head considered.
I never realized there was doubt about the tales of vicious headhunting tribes in South America until I read this Discovery News item. Apparently, they’ve […]
Voyager finds “froth” at the border of the solar system.
Like foam on a wave, I guess – or a kind of magnetic barrier. NASA says they’re surprised at what the space probes are turning […]
Science Art: Batocera Wallacei, from Archives entomologiques ou Recueil contenant des illustrations d’insectes nouveaux our rares by James Thomson, 1857
Mmm. Borer beetles. Or, more precisely, Wallace’s long-horn beetle. Beetle-obsessed millionaire James Thomson’s book is on archive.org, but I found it via [Scientific Illustration].
Fertile Antarctica
I know I already kinda wrote a song about this (and isopods), but still – the Mother Nature Network has joined the voices marveling over […]
One scary reason why the poor stay poor.
The New Republic looks at the science of choice… and the mental costs of not being able to afford much: In the 1990s, social psychologists […]
Chimpanzee hunters drive endangered monkeys to the brink.
Not people hunting chimpanzees, Scientific American reports, but chimpanzees hunting monkeys: According to a study published May 9 in the American Journal of Primatology, this […]
Skilled Veterans Corps heads into the fire.
BBC reports on a team of senior heroes, coming out of retirement – literally – to fight the radiation at Fukushima power station: The retired […]
“Werewolf family” gene discovered.
Scientists studying Mexico’s family of sideshow entertainers – all of whom are covered head-to-foot in hair – and similar family in China have made a […]
Science Art: Laggania cambria, statue by Espen Horn (photo by H. Zell)
Click to embiggen This is an anomalocaridid – a really big, really old shrimp-like critter – named Laggania cambria. These were as big as it […]
Rule #34 – and what it says about us.
Time asks probing questions of the the researchers who studied all the porn on the internet: Why did you decide to analyze online porn searches? […]
Science Art (from new NASA exhibit): Titan, by Daniel Zeller (2005)
This ink-on-paper drawing of Saturn’s moon is one of the 70 pieces in the new “NASA/Art: 50 Years of Exploration” exhibit at the National Air […]
Endeavour’s last touchdown.
Historic video: That’s the second-to-last shuttle mission. Ever. [via Washington Post]